Operation Featherweight: Month 15, Week 2, Day 3.

Yesterday the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) destroyed the 2000 year old Arch of Triumph in the Syrian city of Palmyra which sits on the M20 motorway roughly 150km (90 miles) east of the disputed city of Homs and 200km (120 miles) south-west of the ISIL controlled city of Deir-er-Zour.

As with most of the ancient structures in Palmyra the Arch of Triumph has absolutely no religious or spiritual significance. Instead it was built by the Romans as a way for them to celebrate military victory as part of their Triumph ceremony.

As I've mentioned numerous times before ISIL are ideological nihilists. So as with the Nazi Germany of Adolf Hitler they have this constant need to be destroying something or someone in order to validate their existence. Therefore it is all too easy to read too much into ISIL's decision to destroy something.

However I've noticed that since they ran out of western hostages to kill and since the western media has taken a deep interest in Palmyra ISIL have been using it almost as a bargaining chip. This has often involved issuing a threat to destroy something in Palmyra, starting rumours that something has been destroyed before finally destroying it and releasing a video as proof.

Therefore I can't help but think the destruction of the Arc of Triumph is ISIL's response to the recent start of Russian air-strikes against them.

The message seems to simply to be that ISIL does not fear Russia and is ready to deny them any military victory or triumph.

I'll leave you to speculate as to why ISIL felt the need to reassure their supporters of this in such a loud and forceful way.

Palmyra is a particularly poor choice of places for ISIL to use to send messages to the world. Throughout this conflict ISIL supporters such as Turkish President/Prime Minister/Emperor Recep Tayyip Erdogan have claimed that ISIL is allied with the Syrian government.

Worryingly this has been reportedly widely as fact by western news agencies and even US President Barack Obama has hinted at this mythical alliance.

However this claim that ISIL and the Syrian government are allies is so utterly contradicted by all the evidence on the ground the only word I can think of to describe it is; "Bullsh*t."

Palmyra is a prime example of this;

Prior to May 2015 Palmyra was completely under the control of the Syrian government.

However in April 2015 the Army of Conquest/Jaish al-Fatah (JAF) - made up the Al Qaeda affiliated Al Nusra Front (ANF) and  the Islamic Movement of the Freemen of the Levant/Harakat Ahrar ash-Sham al-Islamiyya (FML/Ahrar ash-Sham) alongside the Free Syrian Army (FSA) - launched their north-western offensive which eventually captured the town of Jisr al-Shughur.

This left the Syria government with a choice; It could either deploy it's forces in an attempt to defend the  strategically important town of of Jisr al-Shughur that controls the main communication routes in the region or it could use its forces to defend what is essentially a tourist attraction.

Taking advantage of - some would say "in co-ordination with" - the JAF offensive ISIL attacked Palmyra succeeding in taking control of the city on May 26th (26/5/15). Some 200 Syrian government troops were killed in the failed defence of Palmyra.

In early July 2015 the Syrian government launched an offensive to re-capture Palmyra which largely ground to a halt in late August. In mid-September the Syrian government attempted to reinforce this offensive by conducting air-strikes against ISIL positions around Palmyra. As usual this was reported in the western media as; "Assad brutally attacks civilians."

It was at this point the US-led coalition - Combined Joint Task Force: Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTFOIR) - suddenly became very interested in Palmyra and start flying missions over the city making the occasional air-strike. This would fit with new CJTFOIR member, Turkey's desire to establish "No-fly/Safe Zones" where the Syrian government would be unable to carry out air-strikes.

We've actually seen something similar along the Euphrates River where Turkey's involvement has led to a dramatic drop-off in the frequency in CJTFOIR air-strikes in ISIL's heartland around Raqqa creating something of a protective dome to be established over ISIL.

Although they are still blocking me on Sunday (4/10/15) CJTFOIR carried out another air-strike in Palmyra with what are being described as "inconclusive" results. This seems to be a euphemism for "We bombed an empty field." On Monday (5/10/15) Russia carried out an undisclosed number of air-strikes against ISIL positions in and around Palmyra. These seem to have produced far more conclusive results.

Similarly I could talk about the ISIL offensive in the city of Hasakah which ran throughout May and June. Here ISIL attacked Syrian government positions within the city only for the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) to come in and dislodge ISIL from the positions they had just captured from the Syrian government.

On Thursday (1/10/15) Russia knocked on the door of CJTFOIR's protective dome attacking ISIL positions close to Deir-er-Zour which sits around 130km (80 miles) south-east of Raqqa along the Euphrates. ISIL responded to this by immediately launching an attack on Syria government positions to the area south of the city which is usually described by the western media as; "Under complete ISIL control."

In fact you could almost go so far as to say that the only group in Syria that has shown absolutely no desire to fight ISIL are JAF - The people CJTFOIR are supplying with training, weapons and equipment to fight ISIL.

It has today emerged that amid all the diplomatic sound and fury of Thursday (1/10/15) US President Obama signed an order re-authorising the supply of US training, weapons and equipment to the YPG and what is being termed "The Syrian-Arab Opposition."

This could mean that Obama intends to make good on the threat he issued in his Friday (2/10/15) press conference to turn Syria into a quagmire for Russian forces by massively increasing US support for JAF and ISIL.

Alternatively it could mean that the US is now, finally going to support the YPG in their fight against ISIL.

This can't come a moment to soon because it will require a massive build up of troops and equipment for the YPG to even contemplate attacking ISIL in Raqqa. In fact I would even go so far as to say that such a thing can't even be contemplated until ISIL have been pushed entirely out of Iraq - something that Obama has been trying hard to avoid over the past 14 months.

An attempt to move too soon could even be viewed as an attempt to have the YPG slaughtered in the hope the ensuing panic provides Turkey with an excuse to invade northern Syria re-establishing ISIL's supply lines.

So I strongly suspect that once the dust has settled a bit Obama will be asked to clarify exactly what he means by that order before it is acted upon.

On Monday (5/10/15) Turkey convened an emergency meeting of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) alliance demanding action over what it claims was violation of Turkish airspace by a Russia jet on Saturday (3/10/15). This seemed to be the first step in Turkey trying to invoke NATO's Article 4 clause taking the alliance to war with Russia.

The problem is that Turkey freely admits that at no point did this Russian jet enter Turkish airspace. Instead it remained 8km (5 miles) within Syria airspace where it had full permission to operate.

The confusion seems to stem from the fact that Turkey seems to believe that is has the right to extend it's military operations into Syrian territory in preparation for the establishment of a safe-zone.

No-one has authorised this and no-one except the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) has the authority to authorise this.

I will agree though that Obama could have made that a little clearer to Erdogan.

Sadly this is not the first time that Turkey has tried this stunt. On June 22nd 2012 (22/6/12) Turkey demanded another emergency NATO meeting after claiming that one of it's jets had been shot down in Turkish airspace by the Syrians.

However it quite quickly emerged that the aircraft in question - an F4 Phantom - had been intentionally flown into Syrian territory at high speed and low altitude to avoid detection. It was radioed and warned to leave. When it refused it was placed under radar/missile lock which sets off dozens of cockpit alarms and again asked to leave. Once it again refused so was shot down.

More then three years on I can't remember if Turkey even got a NATO meeting or whether it was deterred by all other NATO members trying to avoid making eye-contact with the Turkish delegation. The intention being to remind Turkey that Article 4 is a mutual defence clause that doesn't apply when a NATO member decides to attack another nation state.

On this occasion NATO were much more receptive to Turkey's outburst. Not only was a meeting called but it issued a very strongly worded statement condemning "Russia's violation of Turkish airspace" and issuing the veiled threat that Russia would be held "responsible for any undesired incident that may occur.”

NATO has indicated that it is supportive of further Turkish accusations of 'Russian violations.' However these further violations only refer to radar locks on Turkish aircraft that can be carried out over distances of hundreds of kilometres.

We actually had great fun with radar locks during the south-east Asian leg of Rihanna's Diamonds World Tour and the search for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 that followed.

What seems to have changed NATO's position between 2012 and now is the civil war in Ukraine.

As I think is well established Russia has opposed illegal attempts to bring about regime change in Syria since they began back in 2011. This made the nations supporting those efforts furious.

So furious in fact that in the summer of 2012 the head of Saudi Arabia's intelligence service openly threatened to launch terror attacks against the 2013 Winter Olympics being held in Sochi, Russia if Russia did not drop its support for international law.

With a series of Islamist terrorist bombings the Sochi regional transport hub of Volgograd in the weeks running up to the Winter Olympics it seemed that Saudi Arabia was following through on its threat.

However at the last moment the US (and most other intelligence agencies) intervened to protect Saudi Arabia from the inevitable backlash this would cause. For example Israel spent 20 years hunting down and killing all those involved in the terrorist attack on the 1972 Munich Olympics. I gather Saudi Arabia has now changed the head of its intelligence service.

Rather then simply intervening the US also felt the need to provide Saudi Arabia with an alternative. They did this by supporting violent extremists such as the Right Sector and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UIA) in overthrowing the democratically elected government of Ukraine.

I say frequently that ISIL are a lot like the Nazis of Hitler's Germany. Right Sector and the UIA take great pride in the fact that their parents and grandparents fought for Nazi Germany as the 1st Galician/14th Grenadier Division of the Waffen SS.

To the surprise of absolutely no-one immediately after seizing power in Ukraine these extremists picked up right where they'd left off and set about trying toexterminate Ukraine's ethnically Russian minority. This triggered a refugee crisis amd forced that minority to take up arms to defend themselves triggering the civil war that goes on to this day.

This civil war provided the international community with an excuse to blame Russia and impose economic sanctions against Russia for its opposition to ISIL without the international community being forced to admit that it was supporting ISIL.

As part of this effort the US and others like Sweden have whipped some of NATO's newer, less-experienced members such as the Baltic states and Poland into such an immense anti-Russia frenzy that they're just looking for any excuse for war.

Therefore I've found Russia's response to these Turkish accusations extremely interesting;

However at around 17:40 on 6/10/15 (UK date) that will have to wait until after dinner.

Edited at around 18:55 on 6/10/15 (UK date) to have a bit of a tidy up and add;

The first thing Russia did was chose not to invoke the entirely reasonable defence that its aircraft was in Syrian airspace rather then Turkish airspace.

Throughout Ukraine's bloody civil war US President Obama's oft repeated mantra has been; "In the 21st century you cannot change the borders of Europe through force!"

This of course neatly ignores the fact that following the overthrow of the Ukrainian government the people of Crimea used the ballot box rather then the bullet to hold a referendum that voted to re-join Russia. Much to Russia's annoyance.

Beyond that though it is the type of carefully nuanced position you would expect from a legal scholar. For example by limiting it to "The 21st Century" Russia is unable to respond by pointing out that NATO saw absolutely no problem whatsoever with using military force to re-draw Serbia's borders in 1999 - right at the end of the 20th Century.

Likewise by limiting in geographic scope to "Europe" it still gives the US and NATO the freedom to use force to re-draw national borders everywhere else in the World. Along with the South China Seas Syria and Iraq spring immediately to mind.

So by refusing to challenge Turkey's re-drawing of Syria's border Russia has got NATO to admit that they see the re-drawing of national borders through military force as perfectly acceptable.

Instead Russia has declared the incident to be the result of a "Navigational Error." This strikes me as a highly intelligent and deeply sarcastic way of going; "Oh, I thought Turkey's border was over there last month. I guess I must have been mistaken(!)"

Russia has also blamed the 'navigational error' on the weather and supported this with a TV weather forecast that gave a precise break-down of how great weather conditions over Syria are for aerial bombing are at the moment.

This seems to be a reference to the timing of Russia's decision to commence operations in Syria during the opening of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA).

As they did with the overthrow of the Ukrainian government the talking heads on US TV - particularly the Republicans of Fox News - have been falling over themselves to explain it away as an aggressive power play by Russian President Vladimir Putin. They then proceed to get all twitchy in the brain as they try to explain the details of this grand conspiracy theory.

I must say though that I found the timing of Russia's move to be extremely irritating. You may remember that just before the start of the UNGA I posed a series of questions about how the peer review process for a new deal to combat climate change would work.

Last Monday (28/9/15) I was on the brink of being able to post my answers to those questions. I would very much have liked to be able to do that while the Heads of Government/State (HOG/S) of all the World nations were gathered together for a UNGA where this climate change deal was the second main issue. Just behind this war in Syria.

Obviously that has now not happened. However sticking to their schedule the almighty Secretariat of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) have produced a whole new version of the negotiating text.

I should point out though that over the past month I have found myself trying to write an update on the war against ISIL without mentioning the build up or Russia forces or mentioning the aerial dome CJTFOIR have established to protect ISIL.

If I had to use a weather related metaphor to describe this situation I would have talked about the oppressive humidity building causing you to almost pray that the storm would finally break.

Blocked at around 20:10 on 6/10/15 (UK date).

A prime example of this has been the villages of Fuaa and Kafraya on the Idlib/Latakia front-line. On September 24th (24/9/15) the United Nations (UN) brokered a cease-fire that would see the FML part of the JAF coalition withdraw from the town and release the roughly 10,000 Syrian civilians they had been holding hostage.

Unfortunately the day before the International Commission of the Red Cross/Crescent (ICRC) went into evacuate the refugees (25/9/15) an un-named White House official made the wild claim that Russia was moving to prop-up a Syrian government that could collapse at any day. Sadly FML took this at face value and emboldened reneged on the ceasefire the next day (26/9/15). The civilians remain hostage.

As for the weather itself if you look at South Carolina at the moment it seems to be invoking the metaphor of a dam breaking and the water behind rushing towards us all.

After a delay of nearl 90 minutes and - I assume - the permission of Edward Snowden I am now hopefull free to publish.

22:05 on 6/10/15 (UK date).