Operation Featherweight: Month 3, Week 1, Day 5.

Almost miraculously Kurdish fighters have continued to slow the advance of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) fighters in Kobane/Ayn al-Arab - the strategic city which sits just 1km (0.6 miles) from Syria's border with Turkey and around 140km (84 miles) north of the ISIL stronghold of Raqqa.

Unfortunately ISIL appear to be focusing their efforts on completely encircling Kobane by seizing control of the cities only border crossing. If this last remaining corridor to the outside world is closed by ISIL then Kobane will simply become a killing ground. With 10,000 to 13,000 Kurdish civilians still within Kobane this will lead to a massacre that far exceeds the scale of the atrocity at Srebrenica when more then 8,000 Bosniak civilians were slaughtered in just three days by Serbian forces. Ratko Mladic the commander of Serb forces at the time is currently on trial at the International Criminal Court (ICC) over that 1995 genocide.

Despite a vast crime against humanity becoming increasingly imminent the US-led coalition appears to have dramatically scaled back it's already insufficient efforts to protect Kobane from ISIL. Since my post yesterday there have been no reports of any further air-strikes against ISIL positions in the area from either the US military or sources on the ground. At a press conference yesterday the US' Deputy National Security Adviser Tony Blinken attempted to justify the US' failure to protect Kobane by claiming that it cannot commit resources to fighting ISIL in Syria because their strategic priority is to protect Iraq from ISIL's advance. This is simply not true.

You may remember that as recently as September 16th (16/9/14) the Kurdish Peshmerga were poised to liberate the Iraqi city of Mosul  - around 83km (50 miles) north-west of the Iraqi Kurdish capital of Arbil and around 330km (200 miles) north of Baghdad - from ISIL after having dramatically crossed the Great Zab River to liberate the towns and villages around Mosul. The Iraqi army had also launched a large, multi-pronged operation to secure Haditha - around 200km (120 miles) north-west of Baghdad and 115km (69miles) south west of Tikrit - whilst at the same time liberating the cities of Ramadi and Fallujah which are 100km (60miles) and 50km (30miles) west of the capital Baghdad respectively.

Then on September 22nd (22/9/14) the annual opening of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) began in New York, USA and the coalition suddenly lost all interest in what was going on in Iraq deciding instead to start randomly bombing targets in Syria. If this was an attempt to secure a United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolution granting the coalition the freedom to bomb Syrian government targets it failed miserably. The coalition has though continued to focus all its efforts on randomly bombing Syria at the expense to Iraqi efforts to liberate the cities of Mosul, Ramadi and Fallujah from ISIL control. As a result the Iraqi military has found itself overstretched and ISIL have continued to advance along the Euphrates River to the point where they are now just 13km (8 miles) from Baghdad's international airport.

To further underline that Iraq is most certainly not the coalition's strategic focus US President Barack Obama's Special Envoy for the operation - General John Allen - recently stated that the coalition has no intention of even beginning to plan an operation to liberate Mosul for at least another year.

So it is abundantly clear that the US' strategic focus is not to defeat ISIL in Iraq nor is it to defeat ISIL in Syria. Instead the US' main focus seems to be putting on an bit of a show to convince voters that it is doing something while continuing to appease the wishes of local despots.

The most clear evidence of that appeasement came yesterday when Deputy State Department Spokeswoman Marie Harf announced that the US is going to grant Turkey a role in training and arming supposedly moderate opponents of the Syrian government. This is an absolutely massive gift for the US to hand to Turkey and one that seems particularly poorly timed given Turkey's role in the battle for Kobane where they have repeatedly blocked attempts to get much needed supplies and reinforcements to the city's defenders.

Despite the way it has been portrayed in the western media in particular there never was something called "The Arab Spring." Instead there were popular revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt which were rapidly followed by a crushing of dissent and a race amongst the regional powers to dominate the entire region. The most significant of these players have been Saudi Arabia and Qatar but Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has also had the role of an also-ran.

To start with Erdogan supported Egypt's Islamist 'President' Mohamed Morsi. Then when Morsi was deposed in a popular uprising a year later Erdogan began supporting Islamist terrorists linked to the Muslim Brotherhood in their war against the Egyptian state under the 4-fingered Rabaa protest banner. This is actually reminiscent of the way the Ottoman Empire came absorb Syria with Turkey's Sultan Selim the First seizing the role of Caliph from the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt during the Ottoman-Mamluk war of 1516/17.

With the overthrow of Morsi dramatically reducing Erdogan's influence in the region he next turned his attention to massively increasing the support he gave Islamist fighters in Syria in order to regain some standing. As a result one of ISIL's main Twitter battle-cries is "#Dabiq!" which is a reference to the 1516 battle of Marj Dabiq that took place near modern day Aleppo in which Mamluk leader Al-Ashraf Qansuh al-Ghawri was killed effectively winning the Ottoman-Mamluk war for the Ottoman Empire.

As such I think it is an act of pure madness to involve Turkey in military operations against ISIL in any way, shape or form because Erdogan clearly has his own sectarian, expansionist agenda and is so closely allied with ISIL that he cannot be trusted to fight them. However if Turkey are to be granted such a privilege they should be expected to pay a very high price for it. So if the US is even going to discuss the issue of Turkish involvement then Turkey must first allow Syrian Kurds to be supplied with weapons and equipment to fight ISIL and Turkey must give permission for United States Air Force (USAF) Incirlik to be used by coalition aircraft to fight ISIL.

(Originally Posted) 15:50 on 11/10/14 (UK date).