Operation Featherweight: Month 33, Week 1, Day 6.

In my post on Friday (24/3/17) I wrote about how the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) were on the brink of defeat in both Iraq and Syria. Their allies the Al Qaeda-led Army of Conquest/Jaish al-Fatah (JAF) coalition are also on the brink of defeat within Syria.

Both of these groups are now looking towards the United Nations (UN) backed Geneva Process on Syria to save their skins. The latest round of meetings within in the Geneva Process began last Thursday (23/3/17).

As with the latest round of meetings within the Astana Process which took place on March 15th (15/3/17) and March 16th (16/3/17) the start of the Geneva meetings were accompanied by an upsurge in violence.

Within Syria the Army of Conquest launched a conventional military assault on Syrian positions around the city of Hama. Syria's longstanding ally Russia suffered an ISIL attack which killed six National Guard soldiers within the autonomous region of Chechnya. Even the UK suffered an attack at the Parliament building in London on March 22nd (22/3/17).

Friday (24/3/17) also a saw a suicide bomb attack near the Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport in Bangladesh's capital Dhaka. Fortunately the attack succeeded in killing no-one but himself.

During the six years of the conflict in Syria Bangladesh has been a growth in extreme Sunni, Salafist Islam like that which is practised by the Army of Conquest. As a result Bangladesh has steadily become an increasingly hostile environment both for non-Muslims and even moderate Muslims. In the early part of 2016 barely a week went by without non-Muslims, secularists or gay-rights activists being murdered by Islamist extremists.

The most significant recent attack in Bangladesh though occurred at the Holey Artisan Bakery restaurant in Dhaka on July 1st 2016 (1/7/17). In total 29 people including 5 attackers and two police officers when terrorists claiming to represent ISIL stormed the restaurant and conducted a massacre.

Within intelligence circles this attack is considered highly sensitive. It seemed to be the follow up chapter to the June 12th 2016 (12/6/16) attack against the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, US in which 49 people were murdered in similar circumstances. Also at the exact time that the attack began I was having lunch in one of my mothers in a very similar style restaurant thousands of miles away in London.

Demonstrating the global nature of the threat from Islamist terrorism Friday (24/3/17) also saw an attack in the Central African Republic (CAR). Here 50 people in several villages in the Bambari region were massacred by a Sunni Islamist militia.

Last Wednesday's (22/3/17) attack in London was carried out by a man identified as Adrian Ajao. It has though since emerged that rather than being his birthname this is his stepfather's name which he adopted at a very young age before going on to adopt the name Khalid Masood. The family name "Ajao" is West African in nature.

West Africa and Nigeria in particular has long suffered at the hands of Islamist terrorism. Most notably the Boko Haram group. This has its roots in the 2011 war against Libya.

Following the overthrow of the Libyan government many of the Islamist fighters in the country moved south to Mali to form the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MOAJWA). This Al Qaeda affiliated group went on to establish a self-styled Islamist Caliphate in northern Mali.

In 2013 France intervened to support the Malian government against the MOAJWA defeating them in a little under six weeks. However the group fragmented to reemerge as Boko Haram in Nigeria and its neighbours. At the same time the Islamist Seleka (rebel) Alliance overthrew the government in the Central African Republic (CAR).

As within Nigeria former US President Barack Obama's childlike mind saw the violence in the CAR as simply oppressed Muslims chafing against the persecution of their white devil oppressors. So he responded by negotiating a power sharing agreement between the CAR's Christian population and the Seleka Alliance. Friday's (24/3/17) massacre was carried out by a faction within the Seleka Alliance - Unity of Central African People (UPC) - looking to increase their influence within the power sharing government.

The main sponsor of both ISIL and the Army of Conquest has been Turkish President/Prime Minister/Emperor Recep Tayyip Erdogan. He has long used violence and intimidation to force the international community to continue to allow him to support these terror groups.

Particularly in dealing with the European Union (EU) Erdogan's main tactic has been to send floods of irregular migrants from Turkey into the EU. The intention is to destabilise society and force those EU nations to sort through those hundreds of thousands of irregular migrants to determine which of them are legitimate refugees while providing housing, food and other services to all of them.

A particular challenge caused by this flood of irregular migrants is security. This has been made much worse because Erdogan has also included within this migrant flow Islamist terrorists with instructions to carry out terror attacks against EU nations. Most notably the November 13th 2015 (13/11/15) Paris Massacres in France.

The third and less talked about string to Erdogan's bow has been to use Turkey's intelligence and diplomatic services to organise ethnic Turks already living within EU nations into a sort of fifth column against the governments of those nations.

One of the most high profile examples of this occurred on February 15th 2017 (15/2/17) in Germany. Here the Germans expelled four Imans belonging to the Turkish government's Diyanet religious affairs department. They had been working with the Turkish diplomatic mission to Germany to collect information on and intimidate ethnic Turks - often German citizens - who disagree with Erdogan.

On Sunday (26/3/17) Turkey's immediate neighbour and EU member Bulgaria held its Parliamentary election. Traditionally ethnically Turkish Bulgarians have supported the Movement for Rights and Freedoms Party (DPS). However the DPS recently urged Bulgaria's Turks not to support Erdogan.

So Erdogan set about busing hundreds of thousands of Turks into Bulgaria to vote for the rival Democrats for Unity, Solidarity and Tolerance Party (DOST). This forced Bulgaria to close its border to keep this illegal voters out.

Erdogan is currently seeking permission to change Turkey's constitution to give him absolute power in a public referendum to be held on April 15th (15/4/17). He was blocked in his effort to change the constitution without a public referendum by his Justice and Development Party (AKP) defeat in the June 2015 election.

Following this defeat Erdogan simply called a second election in November 2015. He secured a narrow victory in this by declaring war against Turkey's own Kurdish population and Kurds in Iraq and Syria in order to secure the support of Turkey's Ultranationalists.

Erdogan is hoping that it is this support from the Ultranationalists that will help him secure victory in the referendum. As a result as the date of the referendum approaches Erdogan has been behaving increasingly aggressively.

Just on March 1st (1/3/17) Erdogan ordered the Turkish air force to conduct airstrikes against the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF/QSD) - including US Special Operations Forces (SOF's) embedded with them - close to the Syrian town of Manbij.  This increasingly aggressive behaviour by Erdogan has led to EU nations to become increasingly concerned about his actions within their countries - particularly his efforts to build his fifth column.

Matters came to a head on March 4th (4/3/17) when Germany withdrew permission for AKP rallies in Gaggenau, Cologne and Frechen. Erdogan initially responded by issuing bomb threats against the venues where the rallies had been scheduled to take place. He then escalated things further by accusing the Germans of being Nazis.

These threats by Erdogan were considered so serious that on March 9th (9/3/17) German authorities issued a generalised threat warning that Erdogan would conduct a retaliatory terror attack somewhere in south-west Germany at some point in the future. That threat materialised that very evening with a stabbing attack at a railway station in the south-west German city of Dusseldorf.

The Germans have an extremely poor record of acknowledging when they have been victims of a terror attack. For example they initially claimed that the Muslim Iranian who carried out a mass shooting at a shopping mall on the sight of the 1972 Munich Olympic games on July 22nd 2016 (22/7/16) was a white supremacist.

As a result Germany's decision to blame the attack in Dusseldorf despite having issued an earlier terror warning prompted a lot of angry discussions with its neighbours. For example later that night there was a shooting in Switzerland - right on Germany's south-western border. Then on March 11th (11/3/17) Germany closed a shopping mall in the south-west city of Essen claiming there was an imminent and specific terror threat.

In response to Germany's banning of AKP rallies and the resultant attack in Dusseldorf many other EU nations including Austria and Sweden also cancelled AKP rallies planned in their countries for March 11th.

When authorities in the Netherlands announced plans to cancel an AKP rally in Rotterdam that evening which had been scheduled to be attended by AKP foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu the AKP responded by threatening to impose sanctions against the Netherlands. This prompted the Netherlands to refuse entry to its territory by Cavusoglu and all other AKP ministers.

The AKP completely disregarded the Netherlands right to do this and secretly sent another AKP minister -
Sayan Kaya - to Rotterdam. In an effort to prevent Sayan Kaya being deported from the Netherlands the AKP gathered its supporters in the streets outside the Turkish Consulate in Rotterdam. 

This failed attempt to prevent the Netherlands exercising its right to say who is and who isn't allowed to enter the country provoked a night of rioting. At one point Sayan Kaya's protection detail drew their weapons in an attempt to stop the Dutch police. This forced the Dutch police to deploy their equivalent of a SWAT team in what developed into an armed standoff.

In response to events in Rotterdam almost all EU nations have now banned all AKP rallies in their nations. This has caused Erdogan to escalate the rhetoric intensely accusing the EU nations to be Nazis and threatening to use ethnic Turks living within EU nations to lead a Turkish takeover of those nations.

Probably the clearest example of Erdogan directing a terror attack against an EU nation was the March 22nd 2016 (22/3/16) attacks in Brussels, Belgium against Zavertam airport and the cities Metro system. 

Within Turkey March 18th is considered victory day used to mark victory in the 1915 - 1916 Canakkale/Gallipoli campaign. In his 2016 Canakkale speech Erdogan addressed the issue of terrorism and said simply; "Brussels will be next." Four days later Brussels was attacked.

This year Canakkale Day occurred on Saturday March 18th (18/3/17). Inevitably the first anniversary of the Brussels attacks occurred on Wednesday March 22nd (22/3/17). Erdogan again used his Canakkale speech to condemn the EU and urge ethnic Turks living in EU countries to have as many children as possible in order to conquer Europe by stealth.

On March 18th (18/3/17) a 39 year old French Muslim of North Africa origin attacked a policewoman in the Garges-les-Gonesse district of Paris. He went on to hijack a car and drive to Orly Airport just outside Paris where he held an knife to the throat of a soldier in an attempt to steal her weapon before being shot and killed by her colleagues.

Much as I dislike Erdogan the amateurish nature of this failed attack means that I don't think he intentionally directed it. Instead the attacker whipped himself up into a frenzy due to all of Erdogan's campaign rhetoric along with media coverage of events in Germany and Rotterdam and the impending anniversary of the Brussels attacks.

However Erdogan has certainly contributed to the rhetoric that inspired the Orly attacker and has continued to do so since. On the anniversary of the Brussels attacks and the morning of the London attack Erdogan gave a speech in which he claimed that Europeans will soon be unable to walk the streets in safety.

On March 23rd (23/3/17) - the day after the London attack and the Brussels anniversary - a French Muslim of North African origin tried and failed to drive a car into pedestrians along the Meir shopping street. He was stopped by soldiers who have become a common sight on the streets of both France and Belgium in response to the terror threat.

Again rather than being a directed attack I think the Antwerp attack was the actions of a self-motivated copycat. He'd seen the coverage of the previous day's London attack and decided to try and give it a go himself.

20:35 on 27/3/17 (UK date).