Operation Featherweight: Month 19, Week 1, Day 3.

It is January. Across the northern hemisphere it is cold, dark, wet and no-one can really be bothered.

This is also true for Iraq and Syria. As a result the frequency of my updates on the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and associated groups have decreased because there's not that much going on in terms of actual fighting.

Backed by the Russians the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) have continued their operations to liberate the Latakia mountains from the Turkish backed Syrian Turkmen Brigades (STB).

On January 12th (12/1/16) they succeeded in liberating the town of Salma which sits around 30km (20 miles) north-east of Latakia City and around 20km (12 miles) south-west of the town of Jisr al-Shugur. On Sunday (24/1/16) they succeeded in liberating the village of Rabia which sits around 15km (8 miles) to the north-west of Salma.

The liberation of Rabia marks the defeat of the last STB presence in Latakia Province and leaves the SAA free to concentrate on liberating Idlib and Aleppo Provinces as they advance towards ISIL's bastion in Raqqa Province.

On Monday (25/1/16) the SAA also succeeded in liberating the town of Sheikh Maskin from the Army of Conquest/Jaish al-Fatah (JAF) coalition of which the Al Qaeda affiliate Al Nusra Front (ANF) and the Islamic Movement of the Freemen of the Levant/Harakat Ahrar ash-Sham al-Islamiyya (FML) are the largest factions.

Sheikh Maskin sits around 80km (50 miles) south of the Syrian capital of Damascus and around 18km (10 miles) north of the city of Deraa. Crucially it sits at a crossroads between the provinces of Damascus, Suwaida and Quneitra and divides the east and west of Deraa Province. As such the SAA now have control over all the main supply routes across of the provinces south of the capital.

As a nihilistic organisation that constantly needs to conquer and destroy in order to exist in mid-January ISIL launched a fresh offensive to capture the city of Deir ez-Zour from the SAA. This sits on the banks of the Euphrates River around 130km (75 miles) south-east of Raqqa City - ISIL's de facto capital in Syria.

Although ISIL have long controlled the areas of Deir ez-Zour and Raqqa Provinces that surround it they have not yet been able to capture the city itself. For the most part ISIL's advances have been kept at bay by Russian air-strikes. 

However on January 16th (16/1/16) ISIL were able to capture the village of al-Bagaliyeh which sits roughly 4km (2.5 miles) north-west on the outskirts of Deir ez-Zour. Here they kidnapped more then 400 civilians. On January 20th (20/1/16) - following an international outcry - ISIL released the 270 women and children of that group. However the fate of the 130 men is still unknown although it is believed that they were massacred alongside 140 SAA soldiers.

The humanitarian situation in Deir ez-Zour has been growing increasingly grim with the Russians being forced to airdrop emergency supplies to the besieged civilians. However you won't here anything about that story in the western media because it blows apart the frequent claim that Russia and the SAA aren't fighting ISIL.

While the pace of fighting has naturally slowed if anything the amount of diplomacy has increased. This is an area where it is very hard for me to add anything of value but one where it is very easy for me to make a mess.

At around 18:00 on 28/1/16 (UK date) I'll be back after dinner to attempt to do more of the former than the latter.

Edited at around 19:50 on 28/1/16 (UK date) to add;

This unseasonable diplomatic push has been led by the US. So last Friday (22/1/16) US Vice President Joe Biden began a two day visit to Turkey. At the same time US Secretary of State John Kerry visited Saudi Arabia before heading on to Vietnam and China.

The US' objectives of these dual visits was really twofold. In the first instance they wanted Saudi Arabia and Turkey to end their support for Islamic Movement of the Freemen of the Levant/Harakat Ahrar ash-Sham al-Islamiyya (FML) and by extension Al Qaeda through the JAF coalition.

To this end on January 15th (15/1/16) the US Justice Department announced that a Syrian born US-citizen - Amin al-Baroudi - had plead guilty to attempting to supply tens of thousands of dollars tactical equipment such as sniper's sights to FML. Obviously they prosecuted him because they did not want this violent extremist walking the streets of America.

However to prosecute him for providing material support to a terrorist group the US would first have to declare FML to be a terrorist group. This would mean designating Turkey and Saudi Arabia as state sponsors of terrorism. So instead they prosecuted him for attempting violate US sanctions on the Syrian government.

With the stated aim of the FML being the overthrow of the Syrian government this legally highly questionable. After all if it is an offence then the US federal government which is prosecuting the case has itself committed the offence by supplying this type of non-lethal equipment to groups trying to overthrow the Syrian government.

As such I think if Mr al-Baroudi were to appeal his conviction he would have a good chance of success. However with it being clear where Mr al-Baroudi's loyalties lie I suspect that he's not going to appeal.

The US' other objective was to get Saudi Arabian and to a greater extent Turkish permission to ally with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF/QSD). This is of course the group that has established a massive buffer-zone along Syria's border with Turkey from the Euphrates River all the way to Syria's border with Iraq. The QSD currently holds positions just 50km (30 miles) from Raqqa.

To this end whilst Biden was in Turkey and Kerry was in Saudi Arabia the US confirmed - through semi-official channels - that it had been working to extend the runway at the Rmeilan airstrip which is deep inside this QSD controlled buffer-zone.

Although some people got over excited claiming that the US was trying to build an airbase in Syria the work was simply to accommodate large transport aircraft like the C130 Hercules. I seem to remember the Canadian air force doing something similar in Haiti following the 2010 earthquake in about three days.

The intention being to signal that the US would very much like to supply the QSD. It's a completely unnecessary move because you can bring in supplies from Iraq by road these days.

Although the official announcement didn't come until Saturday (23/1/16) rumours that this US work was being undertaken had been swirling for a couple of weeks.

Almost immediately afterward those rumours began further - yet to be confirmed - rumours emerged that Russia had sent engineers to Al-Qamishli International Airport which is also in the QSD controlled buffer-zone around 70km (40 miles) north-west of the Rmeilan airstrip. The Russians seem to be working on the far more ambitious plan of turning that civilian airport into a Russian Air Force base just 3.5km (2 miles) from the Turkish border.

The message the Russians seem to be sending there is that the US had better hurry up getting permission to support the QSD or give up seeking permission before Russia is once again force to step in and just do it anyway.

It appears that the US' latest diplomatic push has failed on both fronts.

For reasons that I still need explaining to me tomorrow (29/1/16) the United Nations (UN) plans to bring together the 'moderate opposition' in Geneva, Switzerland to discuss plans to overthrow the Syrian government. Saudi Arabia who handles the invitations has invited the FML. However it has refused to invite the QSD.

As Biden was making his trip to Turkey the Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu was making a trip to Germany to meet with German Chancellor Anglea Merkel. Coming little more than a week after Turkey murdered 9 German citizens in an Istanbul suicide bombing this visit raised further questions over Merkel's judgement.

The Turks though decided to press home the insult. Just before the visit Turkey announced that it was ending it's military operations in the predominately Kurdish city of Diyarbakir saying that it just had to remove a few ditches and barricades. None of this has actually happened.

It was intended as a threat to Germany that if it complained about the human rights abuses in Diyarbakir Turkey would respond by removing the ditches and barricades it has built along the border with Syria in an effort to convince us that it is tackling ISIL's supply lines.

Under Ms Merkel's much vaunted leadership Germany and the rest of the European Union (EU) has recently borne a particularly heavy burden in the fight against ISIL and associated groups.

On November 13th 2015 (13/11/15) there was of course the Paris Massacre in which 130 civilians were murdered. Since then France alone has experienced several other smaller terror attacks and there have been raids, discussions about martial law, alerts and false alarms across the EU.

While I've been writing this a prime example of the tense atmosphere the EU finds itself in has emerged from Disneyland Paris in France. Although it's still early days it seems that all that's happened is that in a scenario that is familiar to many Americans a man has simply decided to take his legally held pistols on vacation with him. It is only at the last minute when the metal detectors went off he discovered his hotel had been designated a gun-free zone.

Then because he's probably a French Muslim of north African descent everyone has proceeded to completely lose their sh*t.

Then of course there has been the refugee crisis. Following the scandal of the New Year's Eve sex attacks in Cologne, Germany people across the EU have become very interested in what other crimes committed by asylum seekers are being covered up. The answer is a lot with sex attacks, robberies and murders emerging from Sweden in the north-west down to Greece in the south-east.

The EU's response to all this has been to try and tear itself apart. Not only has there been a lot of talk recently about scrapping the passport-free Schengen agreement which is seen as central to the EU on Monday (25/1/16) it was even suggested that Greece is expelled from the EU simply because their great enemy keeps dumping refugees on them.

As such most outside observers - particularly in the US - are becoming increasingly convinced that it can't be long before the EU stops punching itself in the face and simply breaks off diplomatic ties with Turkey until it stops being the number 1 security threat to the EU.

For example over the weekend the leader of the UK Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn visited migrant camps in Calais and Dunkirk in France that are often referred to as; "The Jungle." The set piece of Corbyn's visit was a protest by Anarchists that saw migrants storm a ferry shutting down the port of Calais. This seemed to trigger a weekend of violence amongst the migrants including a gun battle at the Dunkirk Jungle.

So on Tuesday (26/1/16) there was a shooting in homeless camp in Seattle, Washington, US which is also known as; "The Jungle" as the Americans tried to be included in the story.

Also on Tuesday numerous schools across France and the UK had to be closed amid a grand bomb hoax. This was repeated again today. Although I stand by what I said yesterday this was also a US attempt to be included in the EU discussions as a way to predict what is going to happen next.

The fact that these bomb hoaxes were sent from a Twitter account registered to a Russian email account was a reference to France setting fire to the Paris Ritz hotel on January 19th (19/1/16) in response to the Rihanna/DiCaprio scandal.

Being entitled to mock France's sense of panic Russia quickly responded to this by setting fire to a TV broadcast tower. This mimicked a fire on a communication pylon at Egypt's Cairo airport the previous day which was just a fire. The intention being to remind France and the US that Russia has not forgotten about the bombing of 7K9268.

Anyway I gather there's been a similar fire on a construction crane in New York City, US just this afternoon.

21:45 on 28/1/16 (UK date).