Operation Featherweight: Month 32, Week 3, Day 1.

Last Friday - March 3rd (3/3/17) - the latest meeting in the United Nations (UN) sponsored Geneva Process on Syria drew to a close in Geneva, Switzerland.

Being somewhat fluent in UN speak I prefer to describe this as a process rather than talks. That's because the talks don't ever really stop and then start up again. Instead they're almost continuous with only the intensity changing.

For example there were low intensity talks to get the parties - the Syrians and the High Negotiation Committee (HNC) - to the talks. With the parties arriving in Geneva on February 23rd (23/2/17) these then became high intensity talks the following day - Friday February 24th (24/2/17). They then reverted to being low intensity talks last Friday (3/3/17) as the parties discuss attending another meeting later this month.

However you refer to them the Geneva Process serves no purpose in defeating the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and associated groups. Instead they are designed to empower those groups to overthrow the Syrian government.

The conflict within Syria has been raging on since 2011. The first phase of the Geneva Process took place in June 2012. As such I think it is fair to say that it has not made much progress in its objective of overthrowing the Syrian government.

The Geneva Process suffered a significant setback in April 2016 when Syria held its Parliamentary election. This was the second Parliamentary election that Syria has held since the start of the war and the third in total with a Presidential election being held in 2014. It was won comfortably by the Ba'ath Party of Syria's incumbent President Bashar al-Assad.

This latest victory served to significantly undermine the claim that President Assad and the Syrian government have no public support and therefore legitimacy. It is this claimed lack of legitimacy that has been used to justify the previous six years of violence against Syria.

The Geneva Process suffered a further significant setback in December 2016 when the Syrians were able to liberate all of the northern Syrian city of Aleppo.

Against the backdrop of those setbacks the Geneva Process has shifted its approach. The objective is now no longer focused on empowering ISIL and their associates to overthrow the Syrian government. Instead it has become focused on allowing different armed groups to annex parts of Syrian territory from the Syrian government.

This practice known as; "Balkanisation" was aggressively supported by former US President Barack Obama in the dying days of his regime.

As it has been throughout the conflict the majority of Syrian territory has remained under the control of the Syrian government. This area of control stretches from the city of Darraa in the south to Aleppo City in the north.

However to the south-west of Aleppo City there is a small pocket of territory centred around the city of Idlib. This is roughly bordered to the south by the M4 Motorway between the border with Turkey and the town of Saraqib. To the north it is roughly bordered by a line running west from Aleppo City to the Turkish border.

Designated; "The Sudetenland" this roughly 600kmsq (360milesq) area is under the control of the Army of Conquest/Jaish al-Fatah (JAF) coalition of extremist Islamist groups.

The three largest with in the Army of Conquest coalition are;

The Support Front/Jabhat al-Nusra (ANF) - Al Qaeda's affiliate within Syria.

 The Islamic Movement of the Freemen of the Levant/Harakat Ahrar ash-Sham al-Islamiyya (Ahrar al-Sham) - an extremist Islamist group who as their name suggests share ISIL ideology.

The United Turkmen Army (UTA) who are an irregular and therefore illegal branch of the Grey Wolves paramilitary wing of the Turkish Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) under the command of Turkish President/Prime Minister/Emperor Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

In the north of Syria there is a roughly 5,000kmsq (3,000 milesq) pocket of territory designated as; "Garvaghy Road." This stretches roughly from the town of Azaz/Kilis to the west, the Euphrates River to the east and the town of al-Bab to the south. It is under the control of the United Turkmen Army and backed by the regular Turkish military.

In the north-east of Syria there is the Euphrates River basin including the cities of Raqqa, Deir-ez-Zour and Palmyra. This is under the control of ISIL.

The largely unpopulated but oil rich area of Syria south of Palmyra and west of As Suwayada is under the control of the Southern Front coalition. This is a group of moderate and radical Islamist fighters who are organised by Britain and supported out of Britain's longterm regional ally Jordan.

Under Erdogan Turkey's objective is to unite the Sudetenland, Garvaghy Road and the ISIL controlled Euphrates basin in order to annex them as part of Erdogan's new Ottoman Empire. This very closely resembles Adolf Hitler's attempts to annex parts of Czechoslovakia in 1938. Hence the area has been designated The Sudetenland.

Having suffered a string of recent defeats both in Iraq and Syria ISIL are becoming increasingly desperate for this plan to advance. So on the day this latest round of Geneva Process meetings formally began (24/2/17) ISIL carried out twin attacks designed to trigger the next phase of the plan.

The first of these occurred on the Friday (24/2/17) morning close to the town of al-Bab.

Since November 2016 Erdogan's forces in the Garvaghy Road have been making a big performance of trying to capture al-Bab. A large part of this has been displacing the local Sunni-Arab population from al-Bab under the pretence of protecting them from the fighting.

That morning Erdogan's forces had gathered a large number of those Sunni-Arab civilians at a checkpoint just outside al-Bab. This gave Erdogan's allies ISIL a large target to mount a suicide bomb attack that succeeded in killing 63.

In the first instance with Sunni-Arab population of al-Bab having being reduced this provided Erdogan with an opportunity to move in Turkish families instead altering the ethnic make-up of the town. This lays the groundwork for Erdogan to absorb the town into his new Ottoman Empire by claiming it is a Turkish town.

Secondly this attack on civilians allows Erdogan to claim that the local population need to be protected. This gives him an excuse to send more regular Turkish troops into Syria in the hope of linking Garvaghy Road to the Euphrates basin.

ISIL's second attack on February 24th (24/2/17) was against a Jordanian border post close to al-Rukban. This killed 15 Jordanian border guards. ISIL's hope was that this would give Jordan an excuse to send the Southern Front further north into Syria to link up with ISIL at Palmyra under the guise of "security." 

Erdogan and ISIL's main barrier in this plan to annex parts of Syria is the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF/QSD). This is a wide coalition of Arab, ethnic Turkmen and Assyrian forces that is dominated by the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG).

The SDF control the area north of the Sudetenland and west of Garvaghy Road. Centred around the city of Afrin this roughly 520kmsq (310 milesq) area is designated; "The Afrin Canton."

The SDF also control a much larger east of Garvaghy Road and north of the ISIL controlled Euphrates basin. Stretching over some 15,200kmsq (9,120 milesq) this has been designated; "Shangri-La."

Under US President Obama the US was all too keen to help Erdogan eradicate the SDF so he could move into the Afrin Canton and Shangri-La and link up with the ISIL's controlled Euphrates basin.

Obama's plan to get the SDF out of the way of Erdogan's new Ottoman Empire had three main elements;

The first of these was to create internal divisions with the SDF coalition. To this end Obama instructed the US military to establish a rival power structure within the SDF known as the Syrian Arab Council (SAC). As the name suggests this group is made up exclusively of Arab fighters. The idea being to create tension and division between the different ethnic groups with the SDF.

The second element was to create tension between Syria's Kurds and Iraq's Kurds. To this end Obama along with Erdogan and the President of Iraq's Kurdish Region Masoud Barzani set about training a rival Kurdish force to be sent to Syria known as the Roj Peshmerga. The intention being to get the Roj Peshmerga and the YPG to fight each other leaving the SAC, ISIL and the UTA as the winners.

The third element was to force the SDF to launch an attack on Raqqa - ISIL's de facto capital within Syria. Even with the US arming the SAC the SDF are a lightly armed guerrilla force wholly unequipped to liberate a major city from a well defended enemy.

The thinking being that the YPG element of the SDF would sustain heavy casualties during the Raqqa operation. On top of casualties sustained fighting the SAC and the Roj Peshmerga this would cause the SDF to collapse allowing the UTA to waltz in absorbing the SAC into their ranks.

The Geneva Process on Syria now has a rival, non-UN sponsored process in the form of the Astana Process between Russia, Syria, Turkey and Iran. The first meeting of the Astana Process took place in Moscow, Russia on December 20th 2016 (20/12/16).

At that first meeting Erdogan was very keen to raise the issue of Iran's longterm support for Kurds both in Iraq and Syria. This support began with the 1961 Iraqi Kurdish uprising led by Masoud Barzani's father Mustafa Barzani and continued through both the Iranian Revolution of 1979 and the Iran-Iraq war between 1980 and 1988.

During the Iran-Iraq war what went on to become the Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga fought alongside the Badr Army. The Badr Army are now one of the key groups within Iraq's Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF) militias.

The Astana Process progressed to the declaration of a ceasefire in Syria on December 29th 2016 (29/12/16). Following a recent meeting on January 24th 2017 (24/1/17) the Astana Process has focused on establishing a mechanism between Russia, Turkey and Iran to monitor and enforce that ceasefire.

At around 17:55 on 6/3/17 (UK date) I'll pick this up after dinner.

Edited at around 19:30 on 6/3/17 (UK date) to add;

As meetings over the Astana ceasefire have progressed it's becoming increasingly clear that things are not going Erdogan's way.

Although the Syrian government control the territory between Darraa in the south and the Sudetenland in the north-west there are little pockets of Army of Conquest fighters remaining. In a village here or a district of a city there.

Ahead on the January 24th (24/1/17) Astana meeting a lot of the focus was on the villages of Wadi Barada and Ayn a-Fijeh which sit just outside the Syrian capital Damascus and control much of the city's water supply. They were under the control of the Army of Conquest. However despite the ceasefire and the Astana Process the Syrians pushed ahead and liberated the villages.

Since then the Syrians have moved on to liberate further areas. These include areas around Daraa, the East Ghouta suburb of Damascus and Army of Conquest held areas in the city of Homs. These operations appear to have been permitted by the Astana ceasefire mechanism and Russia has participated in some of them.

Adding to Erdogan's woes Barack Obama is no longer the US President. His term expired on January 20th (20/1/17) and he was replaced by Donald Trump. One of Trump's first actions was to instruct various departments of the US government to draw up a new strategy for Iraq and Syria. The indicators are that this will be dramatically different from the US' strategy under Obama.

On January 28th (28/1/17) President Trump issued a number of executive orders banning travel from seven nations including Syria to the US for 90 days and the acceptances of refugees from Syrian indefinitely. With these orders being delayed rather than defeated by the US Courts President Trump has today issued a replacement order intended to nullify the opposition.

When Erdogan does not get his way we know what he does. He dispatches terrorists disguised and refugees to attack the nation(s) that he considers to have wronged him. The fact that the US has already taken action to remove this method of retaliation from Erdogan suggests that Erdogan is about to receive some news he's really not going to like.

Also on February 2nd (2/2/17) the Turkish media declared that a number of civilians had been killed in a Russian airstrike within the Sudetenland.  However on February 12th (12/2/17) the US announced that it had carried out the airstrike. Far from killing civilians the targeted strike had killed senior Al Qaeda leader Abu Hani Al-Masri along with 10 other Al Qaeda members.

On February 26th (26/2/17) the Turkish media again declared that a number of civilians had been killed in a Russian airstrike in another part of the Sudetenland. Again though on February 28th (28/2/17) the US confirmed that it had carried out the airstrike and far from killing civilians the targeted strike had killed another senior Al Qaeda leader Abu al-Khayr al-Masri.

With his dreams seeming to slip through his fingers Erdogan has decided to take action to change the reality on the ground before the US draws up its new strategy.

On Sunday February 26th (26/2/17) Erdogan invited President of the Iraqi Kurdish Region Masoud Barzani on a visit to Turkey. During this visit Barzani was afforded the full pomp and ceremony normally afforded to a national leaders. This included the flying of the flag of the Iraqi Kurdish Region.

Far from being an honour bestowed on Barzani this was simply Erdogan making a fool out of him.

To the surprise of absolutely no-one the MHP objected loudly to the flying of the flag of Iraq's Kurdish Region. Such was the scale of this outrage it apparently left Erdogan no option other than to let the MHP's paramilitary wing - the UTA - launch an attack against SDF's positions at Manbij - around 50km (30 miles) north-east of al-Bab.

This triggered several days of crisis within the Garvaghy Road area. Matters came to a head on Tuesday (1/3/17) when the US was forced to contact Russia and beg them to use the Astana ceasefire mechanism to get Turkey to stop bombing US Special Operations Forces (SOF) embedded with the SDF. In response Russia took things one step further the following day (2/3/17) and moved Syrian forces between the UTA and the SDF to act as a buffer.

However Erdogan had one more trick up his sleeve. On Wednesday (2/3/17) he instructed President Barzani to deploy the Roj Peshmerga to the town of Sinjar/Shingal in northern Iraq.

Although I personally consider Shingal to be Kurdish it is very firmly outside of the Iraqi Kurdish Region. It is currently being defended by the Shingal Resistance Units (YBS) who like generations of Kurds before them operate alongside the Badr Army as part of the PMF under Iraqi government control.

At Erdogan's instruction the Roj Peshmerga launched an attack intended to oust the YBS from Shingal. Although the fighting has since stopped a tense stand-off continues as Barzani refuses to recall the Roj Peshmerga back to the Kurdish Region.

It's long been known that President Barzani harbours this strange dream that all he needs to do is sell oil to Turkey and Iraq's Kurdish Region will suddenly become an independent nation. In a war that has forged some odd alliances Barzani has been warned about this futility of this idea both by Iran in January and Britain in February.

However on Sunday (5/3/17) the full extent of Barzani's fantasy was laid bare;

In an interview published in an Italian newspaper Barzani declared that the liberation of Mosul would trigger a Czechoslovakian style break-up of Iraq and the establishment of a Kurdish nation. This alone displays a fundamental lack of understanding of the history of Czechoslovakia.

The famous "Velvet Divorce" that led to the creation of the nations of Slovakia and the Czech Republic was an extraordinarily complex affair. It took five years of complex and peaceful negotiations between two consenting parties.

By sending troops to snatch Iraqi cities such as Kirkuk and Shingal President Barzani is instead pursuing the example of Yugoslavia which stood in stark contrast to the Velvet Divorce.

It was the near decade of brutal, genocidal wars that caused the break-up of Yugoslavia that lead to the term; "Balkanisation" being coined. If you look at the continuing tensions between Serbia and its southern Kosovo province you would know that the matter is far from resolved.

It turns out though that Barzani's dreams are not just limited to Iraq's Kurdish Region.

Instead Barzani believes that the liberation of Mosul will be such a monumental event that that it will suddenly sweep aside six years of competing interests within Syria. Erdogan's plan for a new Ottoman Empire will disappear and ISIL, the UTA and the Army of Conquest will simply withdraw from Syria.

In their place will stand a Greater Kurdistan, a Greater Israel and a Greater Jordan.

Apparently the only thing standing in the way is the evil Iranians and their hatred of the Kurds. That alone displays not only a fundamental misunderstanding of the history of Iranian-Kurdish relations but also a fundamental misunderstanding of Barzani's own family history.

So I'm forced to ask whether President Barzani has received assurances on this bold plan of his from the Israelis, the Jordanians, the British and the Americans.

Or has he perhaps just foolishly believed everything that Erdogan's told him?