Operation Featherweight: Month 19, Week 2, Day 5.

I really do need to write a more in depth analysis of the Syrian government's recent advances out of Latakia Province and towards Aleppo City.

Unfortunately this latest round of Geneva 'peace-talks' forced me to sit out six days this past week. With awards season in full effect and it now being Super Bowl weekend this is all contributing to a sensation that not that dissimilar to drowning.

However as I briefly touched on in my previous post on Wednesday (3/2/16) the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) was finally able to break the three and a half year sieges on the villages of Nubul and Zahraa. These sit just 15km (9 miles) to the north-west of Aleppo City. Their liberation leaves Aleppo City surrounded on three sides seemingly in preparation of an operation to liberate the city.

This has triggered a mass movement of around 70,000 civilians away from Aleppo City and the surrounding areas. Turkey is referring to these people as "refugees" and lazily this definition is being used by much of the western media and even apparently the European Union (EU). This is incorrect because I think they are more properly described as Internally Displaced Persons (IDP's).

Quite when an IDP becomes a refugee is a bit of a grey area. However as a general rule refugee seek long term refuge in a foreign country while IDP's temporarily move away from an area of combat in the hope of quickly returning once combat has ended in one particular area.

The big step forward Israel made during the 2014 Gaza war is that rather than invading the entire Gaza Strip in one go they instead broke it down into sections which were tackled one at a time. This was done specifically to minimise civilian casualties by allowing those civilians to alternate between safe areas and combat areas.

It is quite obvious why civilians would want to temporarily move out of the areas of combat around Aleppo City. Throughout the SAA's advance through Latakia Province and towards Aleppo City the armed groups in those areas have been trying to stop them with the routine, daily use of chemical weapons such as Sulphur Mustard gas. 

In order to end this war crime the SAA and the Russian air forces that are supporting them are entitled to use incendiary weapons such as Napalm and White Phosphorus to destroy those chemical weapon stockpiles.

Ideally what should have happened by now is that the US-led coalition - Combined Joint Task Force: Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTFOIR) - should have backed the Syrian Democrat Forces (SDF/QSD) to extend their buffer-zone beyond the Euphrates River all the way to the Afrin area on Syria's western border with Turkey. 

The IDP's created by the operations around Aleppo City could then have been cared for within that buffer-zone.

As such if I were a liberal working for a news agency such as the BBC I would think very carefully before joining in with hysterical calls for Turkey to throw open its border to these refugees.  

After all that would be to facilitate the ethnic cleansing of the region. Something that is most certainly considered a crime against humanity.

15:35 on 6/2/16 (UK date).