Operation Featherweight: Month 31, Week 3, Day 1.

This should be read as a direct continuation of; http://watchitdie.blogspot.co.uk/2017/02/operation-featherweight-month-31-week-2_4.html

Alongside the Syrian government, the SDF, ISIL and the Army of Conquest there is a fifth group acting within Syria. The Southern Front.

This is a coalition made up of around 60 fragments of the Free Syrian Army (FSA). As the name suggests the Southern Front is located in the south of the country between the capital Damascus and the Jordanian border - predominately around Daraa and As-Suwayda provinces.

They were formed in February 2014 by Britain and are trained by the British Special Operations Forces (SOF's) - the famous Special Air Service (SAS) - within camps in Jordan. As part of the discussions surrounding the 2016 Rio Olympics Britain took the rare step of releasing photographs of the SAS deployed within Syria alongside the Southern Front.

Originally the Southern Front were formed to act as allies alongside the Army of Conquest and ISIL.

The thinking being that as the Army of Conquest advanced from the north and ISIL advanced from the north-west the Southern Front would advance from the south to the capital. Once the three groups had converged on Damascus they would overthrow Syria's secular government and replace it with a radical Sunni-Islamist one.

However since Erdogan's invasion of Syria and the SDF's achievements have become clear to see the Southern Front have expressed a keen interest in forming an alliance with the SDF against ISIL.

I have a number of concerns about such an alliance between the Southern Front and the SDF.

Firstly the Southern Front were formed to impose a radical Sunni-Islamist agenda on Syria. So while some of the FSA fragments within the Southern Front are moderate and would fit in well with the SDF some of them are utterly crazy and have no place anywhere in Syria's future.

For example around a fifth of Southern Front describe themselves either as Jihadist fighters (Mujahideen) or refer to Syria as; "The Levant" - sharing ISIL's own nihilistic ideology. Roughly another fifth of the Southern Front are quite open about the fact that they are soldiers of Sunni-Islam fighting a sectarian war against other religions and branches of Islam.

In August 2016 at least 200 members of the Southern Front defected to the Army of Conquest taking their weapons and equipment with them. Most worryingly they defected to the Al Qaeada and Islamic Movement of the Freemen of the Levant/Harakat Ahrar ash-Sham al-Islamiyya (Ahrar al-Sham) elements of the Army of Conquest.

On November 4th 2016 (4/11/16) members of the Southern Front shot and killed three US servicemen at an al-Jafr airbase in an apparent insider attacker. However I can't help but that was in part at least a commentary on the US' ability to successfully vet moderate Sunni-Arab rebels under Obama.

My second concern with the Southern Front is that they are under British command.

Particularly post-Brexit Britain seems to view itself as a sort of global middle man. As such the Southern Front's loyalty and objectives are likely to switch and change as Britain's own objectives are blown by the winds of whatever trade deal is being discussed. That means that the Southern Front are hardly what anybody could describe as a reliable ally.

My main problem with the Southern Front though is that they were originally formed to support ISIL. As a result they are located at completely the opposite end of Syria to ISIL.

That means before the Southern Front will be able to engage in battle with ISIL they first have to travel across 700km (420miles) of tough, inhospitable desert. Once they join that battle the Southern Front will then have to sustain their supply lines across that vast expanse of inhospitable desert.

Fortunately that vast expanse of desert between Southern Front and ISIL positions is so inhospitable that it is almost completely unoccupied. Therefore a possible alliance between SDF and the Southern Front has no bearing on the discussion over the creation of SDF safe-zones.

Today the SDF have launched the third phase of its "Wrath of Euphrates" operation. The primary objective of this operation is to secure control of the main Raqqa to Deir-ez-Zour road that runs north of the Euphrates parallel to the M4 Motorway.

As with the first two phases of the Raqqa operation this will liberate vast swathes of rural areas from ISIL thus increase the area of Shangri-La under SDF control. Therefore I don't object to it being undertaken.

However the fact that it has been undertaken indicates to me that the SDF are still committed to Obama's lame-duck plan. As I discussed yesterday the endgame of Obama's lame-duck plan is the destruction of the SDF.

Therefore the SDF do need to be made aware of the fact that Obama's lame-duck plan has been scrapped before anyone even contemplates an attack on Raqqa City itself.

With no-one realistically contemplating an attack on Raqqa City for at least another six months I have to question the wisdom of putting pressure on the civilians within the city by cutting water and food supply lines at this time.

As I've said on numerous occasions I consider the immediate priority now to be exactly the same as it was on August 27th 2016 (21/8/16).

17:25 on 4/2/17 (UK date).