Operation Featherweight: Month 31, Week 4, Day 4.

As I seem to do every day yesterday I talked about this 100km (60 mile) stretch of Syria's border with Turkey known as; "Garvaghy Road."

To the east of Garvaghy Road you have an area known as; "Shangri-La." This is the 15,200kmsq (9,120 milesq) - and growing - area controlled by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). Although a de facto safe-haven for civilians this still needs to be designated as such under law.

To the west of Garvaghy Road you have an area known as; "The Afrin Canton." This roughly 440kmsq (265 milesq) area is also under SDF control and functions as a de facto safe-haven for civilians if not yet a safe-haven de jure.

To the south of the Afrin Canton you have an area known as; "The Sudetenland." This roughly 750kmsq (450 milesq) area is under the control of the Al Qaeda led Army of Conquest/Jaish al-Fatah (JAF). Centred around the city of Idlib this is where civilians were forcibly transferred by the Army of Conquest following the liberation of eastern Aleppo City on December 12th 2016 (12/12/16).

On January 23rd (23/1/17) and January 24th (24/2/17) talks were held in Astana, Kazakhstan on Syria between Russia, Turkey, Iran, Syria and the Army of Conquest. The main conclusion of that meeting was to establish a mechanism between Russia, Turkey and Iran to implement a ceasefire that had been agreed on December 29th 2016 (29/12/16).

On February 6th (6/2/17) Russia, Turkey and Iran held their first what is termed a technical meeting again in Astana. As the name suggests the purpose was to discuss the technical aspects of the ceasefire mechanism. Due to the time difference this meeting began pretty much as the US Super Bowl was coming to an end.

The period between the January 24th (24/1/17) meeting and the February 6th (6/2/17) meeting saw the bounds of what can and can't be considered a ceasefire violation tested.

So for example on January 25th (25/1/17) Turkish forces based in Turkey opened fire on civilians in the town of Ghzail killing 8. Ghzail sits within the SDF controlled Shangri-La area. Turkey - or perhaps more accurately their President/Prime Minister/Emperor Recep Tayyip Erdogan - considers the Army of Conquest to be covered by the ceasefire but not the SDF.

On February 3rd (3/2/17) Syria conducted airstrikes against Army of Conquest positions around Idlib City which is at the centred of the Sudetenland. As they are an Al Qaeda led group Syria does not consider the Army of Conquest to be covered by the ceasefire. However Erdogan does.

On February 7th (7/2/17) Syrian aircraft again struck Army of Conquest positions in the Sudetenland. This would suggest that the February 6th (6/2/17) technical meeting did not reach the conclusion that Erdogan had been pressing for. That message seems to have been reaffirmed on February 9th (9/2/17) when Syria conducted airstrikes against Army of Conquest positions. This time in the city of Homs which sits around 200km (120 miles) south of the Sudetenland.

The results of the February 6th (6/2/17) technical meeting seems to have provoked something of a tantrum from Erdogan. That evening Erdogan's forces in Azaz within the Garvaghy Road area launched a ferocious and sustained artillery barrage against civilians in the SDF controlled Afrin Canton.

On February 9th (9/2/17) the Army of Conquest opened fire on a Syrian Arab Red Crescent (SARC) aid distribution centre in Aleppo City. This attack killed one member of SARC's staff  and wounded seven others along with killing two civilians.

The attack seem to have been a response to the killing by the US of senior Al Qaeda envoy Abu Hani al-Masri along with 10 other Al Qaeda fighters at SARC Idlib City Headquarters on February 2nd (2/2/17) and February 4th (4/2/17). The message seemed to be that if SARC is not prepared to shelter the Army of Conquest then the Army of Conquest is not prepared to allow SARC to distribute aid to Syrian civilians.

Over the weekend you may have heard numerous western news outlets - particularly CNN - reporting that US President Trump's executive orders on immigration had been defeated in the US Courts. This was simply not true.

Highlighting just how untrue this was yesterday (13/2/17) the case rather than merely the application for a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) came before a US Court for the first time.

At this hearing in front of James Robart in Seattle the US government made an application for the case to be delayed indefinitely.

This is quite a clever move because just after an Appeals Court has upheld the TRO you can't really make an application for the TRO to be scrapped. However you can make an application which gets the Judge to agree that the case is going nowhere fast. In doing this the Judge would also agree that it is inappropriate to impose a TRO indefinitely and withdraw it.

However if the Judge can't pick up on the subtly of that and insists the TRO must stay in place he is also insisting that the case must be treated as an urgent emergency. As such he should clear his case load and work through the night if necessary until the matter is resolved.

Having acknowledged that the case is indeed an emergency that needs to be resolved before the capture of al-Bab in the next week it falls on the Judge to hurry up and actually hear the case. His first decision is whether he wants to do this in open court or in private. "In Camera" for those of us who aren't bedazzled by a little bit of Latin.

The applicants case rests on the US government's ability to demonstrate that the threat profile has changed since the last review of immigration vetting was carried out in late 2015.

In order to demonstrate that the threat profile has changed the US government will have to present Top Secret evidence. Some of this is so sensitive that I am not even happy discussing it here.

However I think it is general enough to say that the US government has sources within the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) feeding them information about how ISIL is working within refugee camps in an effort to carry out attacks against the US. If these sources were revealed in open Court ISIL would simply kill those and the US government's ability to protect American citizens would be reduced.

It is not simply enough to try and protect the sources by giving them a pseudonym or codename.

If you are familiar with this type of things you would know that you can read between the lines to identify a source from the information itself. For example if only three people were at a meeting two of them are going to know that they're not the spy. Also ISIL have a longstanding practice of taking a large group of people they suspect of being spies and just murdering them all on the assumption they're bound to get the one spy in the group.

Although I obviously can't know for certain I suspect that the intelligence that led to the death of al-Masri in SARC's Idlib City HQ will play a large part in the US government's evidence. After all SARC are key to the US' vetting of refugees.

Quite beyond the usual issues of protecting intelligence sources this issue of Al Qaeda infiltration of SARC is a contentious one to say the least.

Since 2012 the United Nations (UN) have overseen what is known as the Geneva Process on Syria. Since the Russian-led Astana process on Syria began the Geneva Process has been on its knees. There was supposed to be a Geneva Process meeting on February 2nd (2/2/17) but it was cancelled due to the Astana process.

Within the Geneva Process and along with various UN Security Council (UNSC) resolutions SARC are given a great deal of prominence. For example they are considered one of the few bodies able to deliver aid within Syria. The US proving beyond all doubt that SARC have been heavily infiltrated by Al Qaeda would probably kill the Geneva Process stone dead.

Therefore if Judge Robart declines an in camera hearing he will give the US government a stark choice. They can either scrap five years of diplomacy and abandon the middle east region to Russia or they can decline to submit evidence that would prove their case.

To deny in this case a respondent the opportunity to submit evidence to prove their case is to deny them due process under law.

Also today US National Security Adviser Michael Flynn has resigned. This is a peculiar one.

The resignation comes in response to newspaper reports that Flynn had spoke with the Russian Ambassador to the US on December 29th 2016 (29/12/16). They discussed the sanctions that former US President Obama had imposed on Russia that day. At the time Flynn was on the Presidential Transition team and therefore fully authorised to discuss matters of policy with foreign officials.

As such the only scandal I can see in the story is that Obama imposed sanctions on Russia on December 29th 2016 (29/12/16). Coming just 22 days before he left office this was simply Obama trying to bind President Trump to the policies that his designated successor Hillary Clinton fought and lost an election on.

This childish move also couldn't have come at a worst time. It was on December 29th (29/12/16) that Russia and Turkey agreed to the Syria ceasefire and move forward with the January Astana meetings. It was also the day that Russia conducted airstrikes in aid of Erdogan's forces in al-Bab. The first time ever that Russia had assisted a NATO nation in combat.

So if Russian President Putin had wanted to retaliate against Obama's temper tantrum he could quite easily have increased military co-operation with Erdogan making Turkey the first nation to leave the NATO alliance. He could also have simply given Erdogan support to attack US Special Operations Forces (SOF's) embedded with the SDF. That killing of  US forces would normally leave the US at war with Turkey and NATO at war with itself.

So at that point the US really, really needed someone to reach out to the Russians to assure them that amateur hour was over.

In fact I actually though that the story broke on the same day that the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals screwed up the TRO hearing to reassure the world that despite local tantrums the grown ups were still in charge.

So quite why Micheal Flynn resigned is an utter mystery to me. I assume his replacement will be Michael Flynn.

18:45 on 14/2/17 (UK date).