Operation Featherweight: Month 26, Week 2, Day 3.

Last Wednesday (25/8/16) Turkey launched an invasion of Syria focused on the border town of Jarablus using a mixture of both regular and irregular troops.

Turkish President/Prime Minister/Emperor Recep Tayyip Erdogan was quite clear that this operation - named "Euphrates Shield" - was protect Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) positions west of the Euphrates River.

This would be done by defeating the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF/QSD) who had liberated the city of Manbij from ISIL on August 13th (13/8/16). Manbij sits around 35km (20 miles) south of Jarablus on the western bank of the Euphrates.

With Turkish troops, tanks and aircraft rushing to their aid ISIL obviously celebrated this invasion. On Friday (27/8/16) they released in which they executed Sunni Kurds, Sunni Arabs and Shia Arabs.

Entitled "The Nations Are Uniting Against You" this was intended to show that through Turkey ISIL now had the full backing of the World powers as it set out to cleanse the Levant of all those groups and more.

Alarmingly what has become clearer since then is that ISIL were not merely celebrating Erdogan's invasion. The two forces were actually operating in concert with each other.

It of course took the Turkish force less then 12 hours to fully liberate the town of Jarablus. That is because the roughly 1,400 ISIL fighters stationed there simply left having received advanced warning of the arrival of Turkish and knowing that they had nothing to fear from ceding territory to those Turkish forces.

This is far from the first time we have seen this type of coordination between ISIL and Turkey.

Back in August 2015 Erdogan wanted to invade Syria to defend ISIL's supply lines in an area between the town of Marea to the west and the Euphrates to the east. This area is referred to as either; "Erdogan's Pocket" or "Garvaghy Road."

Erdogan decided the best way to do this was to allow ISIL to move right up to the Turkish border so he could claim the invasion was needed to eliminate the ISIL threat. So Erdogan simply instructed the Al Qaeda-led Army of Conquest/Jaish al-Fatah (JAF) coalition to cede Marea to ISIL without a fight.


In December 2015 it had become increasingly apparent that Erdogan would not be given permission to invade Syria and the SDF had crossed the Euphrates at the Tishrin Dam. So Erdogan simply ordered ISIL to cede Marea to irregular Turkish forces known as the Syrian Turkmen Brigades (STB). ISIL promptly complied.


In April of 2016 Erdogan attempted to use the STB to attack the SDF from the west in order to protect Garvaghy Road. So he ordered ISIL to cede control of the town of Cobanbey to the STB. This sits roughly 45km (30 miles) west of Jarablus right on Syria's border with Turkey. Obviously ISIL immediately complied.


It was then made clear to Erdogan that under no circumstances would the STB be allowed to advance to Jarablus in order to attack the SDF. So Erdogan simply ordered the STB to cede control of Cobanbey back to ISIL.


Not only did ISIL coordinate the handing over Jarablus to Turkish forces they used it as an opportunity to launch a series of offensives against the SDF.

The first of these came against the town as Al-Shadadi. This sits roughly 50km (30 miles) from Syria's border with Iraq around 100km (60 miles) north-west of Deir er-Zour and roughly 50km (30 miles) south of the city of Hasakah. Fortunately this attack was repelled by Friday (27/8/16).

The much more serious ISIL attack was launched against SDF positions in Manbij. Following the handover of Jarablus Turkish forces began advancing south towards the SDF controlled city of Manbij being stopped around the village of Bir al-Kusa which sits roughly 13km (8 miles) south of Jarablus. At roughly the same time ISIL launched an offensive against SDF positions in and around Manbij from the south.


This placed the city and the SDF in the jaws of a classic military pincer movement. It showed the clear coordination between Turkey and ISIL with Turkish forces forming the northern jaw of the pincer and ISIL its southern jaw.


What the US-led coalition - Combined Joint Task Force: Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTFOIR) should have done is deliver a swift uppercut to this offensive in the form of intense airstrikes to the southern jaw. If this prevented Turkey from providing air cover to the northern jaw. Well that would just help to underline to Erdogan where he sits in the CJTFOIR pecking order.


Unfortunately the US did what is always seems to do these days - call a Time Out and try to preserve the status quo. Even if that status quo is trench warfare and genocide.


Under CJTFOIR supervision the SDF and Turkish forces agreed a temporary truce halting the Turkish advance on Manbij on Tuesday (30/8/16) morning. Turkey denies this.

At the same time the US has been trying to coax the Turkish forces to move west and attack the town of Al-Bab. This sits around 40km (25 miles) south-west of Manbij. With Al-Bab being a critical supply ISIL node not only for Raqqa - their de facto capital in Syria - but also Aleppo City you would no more want it under Turkish control than you would Manbij.


While the US was trying to do this things got even more embarrassing for them on Tuesday (30/8/16) at the other end of Garvaghy Road. In Aleppo City Russian airstrikes killed ISIL commander Abu Muhammad al-Adnani.


Although it might seem hard to believe before joining ISIL al-Adnani was Al Qaeda's poet in residence. This way with words and oratory style meant that not only was al-Adnani part of the inner-circle of ISIL's leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi he was the group's main spokesman and propagandist.

In the wake of the July 14th (14/7/16) terror attack in Nice, France many media commentators made reference to an ISIL message to its supporters instructing them to carry out terror attacks. This told them that if they didn't have a gun they should use a knife and if they didn't have a knife they should use a stone.

This message was written and delivered al-Adnani. Therefore his death will have a significant impact on ISIL's ability to inspire its followers to launch that type of lonewolf attack in the future.

This is hugely embarrassing for the US because certainly since July 2016 they have been loudly demanding that Russia stops conducting airstrikes in Aleppo City. The fact that they have been making these calls in order to protect people like al-Adnani and allow them to go about their evil business unhindered is certainly hard to explain.

It is particularly hard for the French government to explain its decision to join the US in these calls for the al-Adnani's of this world to be protected. Not least because as the Russians were killing al-Adnani France was suffering yet another terror attack carried out by one of his followers. This time against police officers in Toulouse.

So as the news of al-Adnani's death broke the US responded by accusing all those saying he'd been killed in Aleppo City liars. Instead the US claimed al-Adnani had been killed in a US airstrike in Al-Bab - some 40km (25 miles) away. That of course provided an excellent excuse as to why on earth the US was conducting airstrikes in Al-Bab rather than around Manbij.

In their rush to claim responsibility for killing al-Adnani the US blurted out that they believed he had ordered the shooting down of a Russian Su-24 over Syria on November 24th 2015 (24/11/15) and its aircrew be machine gunned as they ejected.

The problem with this is that we all know who carried out the shooting down of that Su-24. It was Turkey.

We also know that the machine gunning of the aircrew was carried out by a group called the Sultan Mehmet Division. Named after the Ottoman Sultan Mehmet the Conqueror that group is part of the STB. Its spokesman Alparslan Celik is from the Turkish city of Keban.

The fact that Turkey gives ISIL orders and the STB carry out ISIL orders rather underlines the entire problem with this Turkish invasion of Jarablus.

20:30 on 1/9/16 (UK date)