Operation Featherweight: Month 16, Week 3, Day 4.

Monday November 30th (30/11/15) will see the opening of the 21st Conference of Parties (COP21) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Paris, France.

By the Summit's end on December 11th (11/12/15) it is expected to produce a new global agreement to tackle climate change replacing the Kyoto Protocol (KP).

Back when this process started in Cancun, Mexico in 2010 Ben Ali was still the President of Tunisia, Hosni Mubarak was still the President of Egypt and Syria was a safe and stable secular nation.

I'll be damned if I going to let five years of hard work fall apart in the last few weeks for the sake of a war that is clearly still going to be with us on December 12th (12/12/15).

So until then my updates on the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in Iraq and Syria are likely to be limited to periodic overviews of the main events rather then detailed analysis' of every minor issue.

Since my last update on November 3rd (3/11/15) there have been some significant developments.

I suppose I should start with the liberation of Sinjar/Shingal which was completed just today. This is of course the city that sits at the foot of Sinjar/Shingal mountain around 50km (30 miles) east of Iraq's border with Iraq and Syria and around 55km (33 miles) west of Mosul - ISIL de facto capital in Iraq.

You may remember that in August 2014 ISIL advanced into Sinjar and proceeded to massacre 5,000 men belong to the Yezidi religion who are part of the Kurdish ethnic group. ISIL kidnapped and raped almost the same number of Yezidi women and girls many of who are still being kept in sexual slavery.

The rest of the population of Sinjar city - some 50,000 people - were forced to flee up Mount Sinjar where they became trapped and faced death by dehydration and starvation.

This generated so much fury amongst the White House press corp that US President Obama knew that with the mid-term elections just 3 months away he was no longer able to freely admit that ISIL were his allies and ISIL's values are his values.

So Obama dispatched a handful of US Navy jets to fly in skies over Iraq and bomb the occasional patch or desert while Obama built up the Islamic Movement of the Freemen of the Levant/Harakat Ahrar ash-Sham al-Islamiyya (FML) as the acceptable face of Sunni extremism in Iraq and Syria.

Eventually Kurdish forces were able to rescue the Yezidi from Mount Sinjar and by the spring of 2015 they had been able to force ISIL back from the foot of the mountain and out of most of Sinjar city.

It was at this point Kurdish forces hit a problem in the form of thousands of landmines and Improvised Explosive Devices (IED's) that ISIL had littered across Sinjar city and the surrounding area.

Lacking the expertise to clear these booby-traps the Kurdish forces were unable to secure the city and the surrounding area. This allowed ISIL to return a small presence of some 600 fighters to around 75% of Sinjar city.

Almost immediately the UK and Germany stepped up sending bomb disposal experts to train the Peshmerga - the armed force of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) - in how to defuse and remove all these explosives. This training was completed in the late summer at which point the operation to liberate Sinjar hit another problem.

The main Kurdish force that rescued the Yezidi from Mount Sinjar and initially liberated Sinjar city was the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). In the process the PKK formed, armed and trained the Sinjar Resistance Units (YBS) - a militia made up exclusively of Yezidi Kurds.

In a General Election in June 2015 Turkey's Justice & Development Party (AKP) failed to win the Parliamentary majority it needed to make party founder Recep Tayyip Erdogan President for life in defiance of Turkey's constitution.

With the permission of US President Obama Erdogan then declared war on the PKK in an effort to wrap himself in the flag and win that majority at a fresh round of elections. Erdogan's self-styled "War on Terror" saw him launch air-strikes against the training camps of the PKK and the YBS in northern Iraq. Those air-strikes against anti-ISIL forces continue.

With US President Obama and the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) refusing to demand that Erdogan ceased those strikes and respected Iraq's sovereignty and territorial integrity in line with the UN Charter the KRG felt that it was in no position to demand the strikes end.

So instead they turned on the PKK demanding that they comply with Erdogan's demand that they stop fighting ISIL and leave Iraq. This obviously led to a high degree of tension between the KRG, the PKK and the YBS that further delayed the liberation of Sinjar.

After an agreement that the KRG would be given full credit for the liberation of Sinjar despite the PKK and the YBS already holding around 25% of the city the operation was finally ready to start in the week beginning November 2nd (2/11/15). However it was delayed by bad weather.

On Thursday (12/11/15) the combined forces of the Peshmerga, the PKK, the YBS and the Syrian Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) backed by close air-support from the US-led coalition - Combined Joint Task Force: Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTFOIR) - finally began their operation.

On the first day the Kurdish forces encircled Sinjar city from three directions cutting off access to the city. On the second day they swept into the city completely liberating it.

In the process Kurdish forces have cleared around 175km^2 (105 miles^2) from ISIL control liberating several villages that Yezidi refugees are now desperate to return to.

They also succeeded in taking control of the strategically important Highway 47 where it runs through Sinjar city. This cuts ISIL's main supply route between Mosul and Raqqa - it's de facto capital in Syria.

Although there are other, smaller roads and Kurdish forces were already in control of Highway 47 where is runs through Tal Afar between Sinjar and Mosul  this tightens the noose around Mosul in preparation for an operation to finally liberate the city.

Apart from their support for the liberation of Sinjar the YPG who also been busy with an operation of their own as part of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) which were formed on October 16th (16/10/15).

This is of course the operation that began on October 30th (30/10/15) that aims to drive ISIL back from the city of Hasakah and the town of Tel Hamees by liberating the areas around al-Hol and al-Ghazayleh.

Rather annoyingly my Internet connection is mysteriously preventing me from reading the latest updates on this operation which unfortunately I have failed to memorise. However the first objective is to sweep through all the small villages and farms in the area before encircling al-Hol and al-Ghazayleh. 

The SDF seem to be making steady progress in the objective killing significant numbers of ISIL fighters in the process.

The success of the SDF has clearly not gone unnoticed by Turkey who continue artillery barrages against SDF positions along the Turkish border. The majority of this fire in recent days has been directed against Kobane including on November 10th (10/11/15) where four civilians were killed in Turkish attacks.

There has also been significant progress in the west of Syria.

This is the area where after joining up with Al Qaeda's Syrian affiliate Al Nusra Front (ANF) to form the Army of Conquest/Jaish al-Fatah (JAF) coalition the FML have been advancing against Syrian government forces.

With the support of Russian air-power which is averaging around 150 air-strikes daily it seems that the JAF advance has been completely stopped and steady progress is being made rolling it back.

On November 4th (4/11/15) Syrian government had succeeded in liberating so much of the surrounding territory from JAF they were able to re-open the M5 Motorway that runs all the way from the capital Damascus to the city of Aleppo. 

This re-establishes a vital supply line for Syrian government forces and cuts JAF's supply lines from Turkey into Hama, Homs, Idlib and Latakia provinces.

Capitalising on these improved supply lines on November 10th (10/11/15) Syrian government forces were finally able to break through ISIL lines lifting the siege on Kweires Airbase which is just south of Aleppo city.

Along with emerging reports that Syrian government forces have also been able to liberate some of the suburbs of Aleppo city from ISIL this creates a very real possibility that they will very soon re-establish control over both Aleppo city and province trapping ISIL in a very small area between Aleppo city and the SDF controlled buffer-zone on the eastern banks of the Euphrates River.

Essentially it means that the situation will have returned to the one that existed when CJTFOIR began operations.

In response to these ISIL defeats Turkey seems to be furious. On Wednesday (11/11/15) sources close to Erdogan's AKP announced that plans are being finalised to send 10,500 Turkish troops into Aleppo province in mid-December in order to prevent ISIL from being defeated.

Obviously this could be post-election bluster but it is a situation that needs to be very carefully monitored. The most obvious deterrent is that if Turkish troops were to mount this wholly illegal invasion they would be cut to pieces by Russian air-power.

However US President Obama seems to be working very hard to remove that deterrent by deploying US F-15E fighter jets to Incirlik in Turkey. The only conceivable role for these air-superiority fighters would be to attack Russian aircraft in order to protect a Turkish invasion force.

On Thursday (12/11/15) Lebanon risked being dragged further into the ISIL quagmire when ISIL carried out twin suicide bombings against a Palestinian refugee camp in a Hezbollah controlled area killing 41.

Although particularly brutal this attack didn't really tell us anything new about the conflict. 

It has never been about the government of Syria nor the government of Iraq. It has always been a Saudi attempt to exterminate all Shia Muslims. That is because Shia's are far less likely then Sunnis to be taken in by the Whabbist perversion of Islam that the al-Saud's use to keep their population in poverty and penury.

As such this is far from the first time that the conflict has spilled over into Lebanon. It is also why Russia was forced to intervene to prevent ISIL and associated forces reaching the Lebanese border.

Then of course there was yesterday's (13/11/15) killing of Mohammed Emwazi (AKA: Jihadi John) in US drone strike in Raqqa.

I am obviously far from upset by this news and might even go so far as to describe it as damn funny. 

However Emwazi has not murdered a hostage since his true identity was revealed back in February 2015 - it seems that simply letting him know that we knew his identity was enough to scare him away. Since then though ISIL has not stopped murdering hostages.

Therefore if you ask me to assess the military value to Emwazi's death there simply isn't one.

Instead it seems to be Obama back in his favourite "Drone Queen" role. 

The thinking being that if he can wrap himself up in the flag of one headline grabbing death it will prevent people asking all the difficult questions about the progress of the operation raised by the above.

Of course last night's massacres in Paris meant that everyone quickly forgot about Jihadi John and all those difficult questions are front and centre of every new bulletin.

So today the US tried repeating the same stunt with a drone strike that is believed to have killed the leader of ISIL's Libya branch.

Again I am far from upset that this man is dead. However although ISIL's growth in Libya, Egypt and Afghanistan underlines the complete failure of Obama's non-strategy ISIL are far from the biggest problem in Libya.

That remains the Libya Dawn Islamist militia in the west. These are the people who pushed Libya's elected government out of Tripoli and continue to wage a low-level civil war that has given ISIL space to flourish.

US President Obama's position on Libya Dawn - communicated through the UNSC - remains the same. 

The results of Libya's election must be overturned and it's democratically elected government must be removed so the Islamists can rule the nation in accordance with a strict interpretation of Sharia law.

21:30 on 14/11/15 (UK date).