Operation Featherweight: Month 15, Week 3, Day 4.

Last Friday (9/10/15) the US announced that it is "pausing" its Train & Equip program for what is termed the "Syrian-Arab Opposition."

Although US President Barack Obama declined to deliver promised remarks providing more detail on the change it is believed that Train & Equip is to be replaced with a much smaller program to provide ammunition and what is mysteriously being termed "manoeuvring advice" to Syrian-Arab forces in the north of Syria only.

On Sunday (11/10/15) forces in the north of Syria announced they had formed a coalition to be known as the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

This is made up primarily of the Kurdish People's Protection Forces (YPG/J) who are already allied with the Euphrates Volcano/Burkan al-Furat (BAF) fragment of the Free Syrian Army (FSA). 

They are to be joined in the SDF by another fragment of the FSA - the Revolutionary Army/Jaish al-Thuwar (JAT) and the Syriac Military Council (MFS) which is a small militia made up of Syria's predominately Christian Assyrian/Syriac minority. The SDF is also backed by two of the areas main tribes.

This is not the first time that such a coalition has been suggested. In fact as far back as the Battle of Kobane which ended in January 2015 Turkish President/Prime Minister/Emperor Recep Tayyip Erdogan was making the formation of such a coalition a pre-condition for the US-led coalition - Combined Joint Task Force: Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTFOIR) - to provide any form of support to the YPG.

Primarily this was simply a blocking tactic being used by Erdogan to prevent the YPG receiving international support without Erdogan being forced to admit that he supports the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in their war against the YPG and most everybody else. 

However there was also a suggestion that this was an attempt to weaken the YPG by diluting their influence as part of a coalition.

Although they're certainly not allies both the YPG and the Syrian government have worked out that their energies are better spent fighting ISIL rather then each other. As a result in cities like Aleppo and up until recently Al-Hasakah you've had this delicate situation whereby the YPG and the Syrian government will control neighbourhoods right next to each other with both sides trying really hard to ignore the other.

The problem with the FSA is that they have always viewed the Syrian government as their primary enemy rather then ISIL. In fact in the south and central parts of Syria the FSA fragments are operating as part of the Army of Conquest/Jaish al-Fatah (JAF) coalition alongside the Al Qaeda affliate Al Nusra Front (ANF) and the Islamic Movement of the Freemen of the Levant/Harakat Ahrar ash-Sham al-Islamiyya (FML/Ahrar ash-Sham) in battles against the Syrian government that certainly benefit ISIL.

Therefore there is a concern that as part of a coalition the FSA would force the YPG into battle against the Syrian government in places like Aleppo City and Al-Hasakah City. This would weaken both the Syrian government and the YPG making it easier for ISIL to defeat both those forces in other areas of the country.

Beyond that specific problem forming military coalitions is always complex and fraught with egos. The first thing you've got to do is establish a Supreme Commander that everybody in the coalition takes their orders from. 

In this case that is clearly going to have to be a member of the YPG/J because they make up some 57,000 of the SDF's roughly 64,000 strength. Also the current female YPG/J Supreme Commander has time and time again proved herself to be extremely capable and highly competent.

Once you've established a Supreme Commander you've got to decide how each element of the coalition will operate. For example will the FSA fragments remain as a separate force under the Supreme Commander with their own officers or will YPG/J officers be put in control of FSA units.

Following the Battle of Kobane the Euphrates Volcano/Burkan al-Furat (BAF) were able to integrate themselves with the YPG/J command structure and the two have gone onto have a hugely successfully partnership. However at the same time the Army of Revolution/Jaish al-Thuwar (JAT) were not able to reach such an accommodation with the YPG/J. 

One of the first challenges the SDF will face is to see if the YPG/J and JAT have been able to overcome their differences.

Into this mix the US on Monday (12/10/15) air-dropped in 45 tonnes of small arms ammunition and grenades to the Jaish al-Thuwar part of the SDF coalition near Hasakah city. 

In itself this was rather odd because Hasakah city really sits on the south-eastern border of this vast buffer-zone that Kurdish forces have created across northern Iraq and Syria. Therefore if the US wanted to supply equipment to Hasakah city or even now Sarrin on the banks of the Euphrates River they could simply drive it in by road from Iraq.

The reason why the US opted to re-create the dramatic air-drops that were seen during the Battle of Kobane was to promote discussion with Turkey who of course blocked the supply of Kobane by road. 

By delivering the weapons to JAT specifically the US was trying to strengthen their position within the SDF command structure by giving them resources to bargain with.

However despite the US' insistence to the contrary I don't think anyone seriously believes that none of those bullets are going to end up in YPG rifles. That indicates to Turkey that the US is now on the brink of arming the YPG directly regardless of Erdogan's objections.

As with Friday's (9/10/15) announcement on Train & Equip rather then taking this indecisive, will-we-won't-we approach what I would have done in this situation would be to act decisively and effectively plant a flag in the situation by announcing that the US is now supplying the YPG directly. 

That would force Erdogan to either accept the new reality or announce that he is putting his country in direct confrontation with the international community to support the people who carried out Saturday's (10/10/15) bombing in Ankara - the worst terror attack in Turkey's history.

Noticing the US' mistake Russia Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov attempted to step into help. Yesterday (13/10/15) Lavrov declared that there was no doubt the weapons the US had air-dropped would fall into the hands of terrorists. However he forgot to clarify whether by "terrorists" he meant ISIL whom most people consider to be terrorists or the YPG whom Erdogan considers to be terrorists.

Despite Lavrov's intervention the US' indecisive approach has only succeeded in handing the initiative in the negotiation back to Erdogan. Yesterday (13/10/15) a 'suspicious package' was discovered at the site of the Ankara bombing provoking alarm and quietly suggesting that Turkey was not happy about the air-drop. 

Today (14/10/15) Turkey summoned the Ambassadors from both the US and Russia to joint meeting on the air-drop giving Turkey are front-row seat to any discussions that might be going on between the leaders of the two air-coalitions currently operating in Syria.

Going back to the Ankara bombing by Sunday (11/10/15) the Turks had given up on their efforts to convince us it was the Kurds who had bombed themselves instead blamed the attack on ISIL.

Today (14/10/15) Erdogan announced that he is ordering the State Supervisory Council (DDK) to investigate the bombing. The DDK operates outside of Turkey's formal security apparatus and is controlled directly by Erdogan's President's office. This was followed almost immediately by the sacking by Erdogan of three senior police officers including the Chief of Police in Ankara.

These moves seem to be an attempt by Erdogan to shift responsibility for the bombing away from himself and his Justice & Development Party (AKP) and onto the deep state. Although members to the deep state are not automatically members of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) they do tend to vote for the MHP come election time.

The deep state/MHP quickly moved to shift the blame from themselves back onto the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) with the arrest of two people on the fringes of the PKK who Tweeted vague warnings about the Ankara bombing on Friday (9/10/15) evening. The implication being that because the pair had prior knowledge they must have carried out the bombing.

The problem with this is that although no-one agrees with them the PKK view south-east Turkey as the independent nation of Kurdistan and themselves as the protectors of that nation. So not only do they have an armed wing they also have an intelligence wing similar to Britain's MI5, the American CIA or the Turkish MIT.

With the PKK fighting ISIL in both Syria and Iraq where they are being bombed by Turkey this intelligence wing has become very focused on ISIL and what they are planning. For example in response to the July 20th (20/7/15) Suruc bombing the PKK killed an ISIL fighter - Mursel Gul - in Istanbul after tracking him from the battle fields of Syria to his refuge in Turkey.

Therefore it is entirely likely that the PKK picked up some indication that something was going to happen in Ankara but this stopped short of being the type of actionable intelligence they could have used to go public and cancel the march or eliminate the attackers in advance. 

It would be enough though for people on the fringes of the PKK intelligence wing to speculate vaguely about on Twitter.

The US shift towards arming the YPG hasn't suddenly happened in response to Russia joining the fight in Syria. Instead it's something the US has been indecisively hinting at since Turkey formally joined CJTFOIR. 

Rather underlining Obama's inability to successfully negotiate with Erdogan the US has been close to accepting as a condition of that support that it is used to launch a YPG assault on Raqqa - ISIL's de facto capital in Syria which sits just 50km (30 miles) south of the YPG buffer-zone.

As we've seen from the Battle of Kobane, the Iraqi Security Forces' (ISF) struggle to liberate Tikrit and their failed operations to liberate Baiji, Ramadi and Fallujah urban warfare is utterly brutal. All a defending force really needs to do is place a machine gun atop of a tall building and one or two fighters can cut down hundreds of attackers as they are channelled through the narrow streets.

Although the YPG/J has a force of around 57,000 part of that force is located in what is termed the "Afrin Canton" in the north-west of Syria's Aleppo province right on the border with Turkey. They are almost completely cut off from another section of YPG/J forces in Aleppo City and both groups are almost entirely cut off from the bulk of the YPG/J force located in the north-eastern buffer-zone.

In order to maintain that buffer-zone the YPG/J have to not only man a defensive perimeter around the buffer-zone but also mount patrols and man check-points within it to prevent ISIL infiltrating the area. As a result they certainly don't have the manpower to liberate a city of 200,000 people which is being held by a highly motivated enemy that has been preparing for an assault for months.

As a result I can only view any attempt to get the YPG/J to attack Raqqa either as part of the SDF or otherwise as a suicide mission. The intention being to kill enough of the YPG/J that they are unable to maintain the buffer-zone creating a crisis which will provide a pre-text for Turkey to invade to re-establish ISIL's supply lines.

My position on this matter will not change until I am satisfied that the YPG enjoys the full support of CJTFOIR. That means YPG fighter acting as forward air controllers with the ability to instantly call in air-strikes against ISIL positions. 

It also means the establishment of a reliable supply routes over land from Iraq into Syria. Those routes must used to massively increase the firepower of the YPG. For example I would not contemplate an assault on Raqqa until the YPG have tanks or other such heavy armoured vehicles.

In fact I would not plan for a YPG assault on Raqqa at all. 

That though obviously puts me in the rather difficult position of trying to explain the anti-ISIL strategy on the Internet for ISIL to read.

However it is well established military doctrine that you attack from the point where your forces are strongest. CJTFOIR's forces are strongest in Iraq meaning that any operation to liberate Raqqa will have to come from there with the YPG/SDF acting in support role preventing ISIL from fleeing to the north.

Obviously in order to act from Iraq ISIL first need to be cleared out of Iraq. Unfortunately President Obama has spent the last 14 months resisting this in every way possible. As a result CJTFOIR is many months from being in a position to launch any type of operation against Raqqa.

On Sunday (12/10/15) there were signs that the Iraq part of the operation was beginning to get back on track with the Iraqi announcement of an ISF operation to finally liberate the areas around Tikrit/Salahudin once and for all. 

The assumption being that this would see the ISF pause the operation to liberate Ramadi in order to concentrate their efforts on Tikrit. Then once the Tikrit task is complete the ISF would be able to concentrate its forces on Ramadi.

Unfortunately the US has today come out to put pressure on the ISF to intensify their Ramadi operation at the same time they conduct the Tikrit operation. I can only view this as an attempt to divide the ISF's forces in an effort to make sure both operations fail slowing down the anti-ISIL operation further.

So right now looking at President Obama's anti-ISIL strategy I'm getting the distinct impression of a man whose trying to put his shoes on before his trousers.  

17:00 on 14/10/15 (UK date).