Operation Featherweight: Month 3, Week 3, Day 7.

Overnight fighting has continued between the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and the Kurdish Peoples Protection Units (YPG) in the east of the strategically important city of Kobane/Ayn al-Arab which sits just 1km (0.6miles) from Syria's border with Turkey.

Despite 34 ISIL fighters being confirmed killed this seems to have been relatively light fighting rather then being a full on assault. This is a classic war of attrition tactic. Essentially ISIL know that their supply lines are stronger then the YPG's so they mount these constant harassment attacks in order to force the YPG to use up their supplies of ammunition and fighters in what is basically a fight over nothing.

Fortunately though it appears that the YPG's supplies could soon be boosted. As I write two artillery platoons belonging to the Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga have left their base in Arbil, northern Iraq on route to Turkey. From there they hope to be allowed to travel through Turkey into Kobane although having heard so many times that Turkey has given its permission for this to happen only to change its mind I for one will find it hard to believe that it's really happening until I see pictures of the Peshmerga actually arriving in Kobane. Of course if Turkey do allow the Peshmerga to cross into Turkey then this type of supply convoy will have to become a regular occurrence. After all soldiers without supply lines are often a liability rather than an asset.

During last night's fighting ISIL's propaganda department released a video showing British hostage John Cantlie 'reporting' for ISIL from inside Kobane. Parts of this video do appear to have been shot just outside the eastern outskirts of Kobane on Tuesday (21/10/14) or Wednesday (22/10/14) of last week. However the script that Cantlie was reading from hardly gave an accurate picture of the situation in Kobane claiming that ISIL had completely over-run the city and were in the final stages of a mopping up operation. In reality at the time it was shot ISIL were only in control of around 20% of Kobane in several pockets around the northern border crossing, the governance district and the south-east entrance. The fact that ISIL are desperate to claim victory in Kobane along with the vast number of troops led by some of their top commanders that have been sent to seize Kobane shows just how important it is to them. In fact I would go so far as to suggest that ISIL could not withstand defeat at Kobane and they would quickly start to collapse in on themselves.

What I also found interesting about the video is that it refers to Kobane being defended by the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) rather then the YPG and seems to celebrate the fact that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has drawn the anger of US Secretary of State John Kerry by blocking the fight against ISIL. This strikes me as a further indication that Erdogan and ISIL are close allies who are pursing the same aims.

A possible reason why this week old video was released yesterday as opposed to on Sunday (26/10/14) or today is that yesterday the US convened a meeting of the Gulf Co-Operation Council (GCC), - Saudi Arabia, Qatar etc - Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Turkey, Iraq, France and the UK in Kuwait to tackle ISIL propaganda. Putting aside the fact that ISIL were apparently able to spend more then a week preparing for this meeting it strikes me as being at best an expensive waste of time and at worst an effort to actively assist ISIL.

Although the John Cantlie videos are clearly the jewel in the crown of ISIL's propaganda efforts the remaining 99% of it is largely awful. The religious and theological justifications for ISIL's actions are so thin I can quite easily discredit them and I am far from an Islamic scholar. Similarly ISIL's claims of battlefield successes are equally easily discredited and often completely detached from reality. A prime example came on October 13th (13/10/14) when I writing a post about how the YPG had succeeded in repelling a very large ISIL assault. The next day the YPG broke out of Kobane and re-captured Tall Shair hill from ISIL. However in the middle of me writing that post an ISIL spokesman popped up to not only claim that ISIL's assault had been successful but they were in control of the entire city. That of course does beg the question of what has been going on for the last 15 days.

Therefore the real success that ISIL have had in getting their message out has not come from their own efforts but from the extensive support they've been given by professional news organisations such as the US news networks who still insist on incorrectly referring to them as "ISIS," Qatar's Al Jazeera, the UK's BBC and in particular the UK's Channel 4 News. In the west these organisations have worked hard to legitimise ISIL by changing the acronym by which their known in order to disguise their true purpose and by portraying them as being in some humanitarian fight against the Syrian government. Gulf based news organisations have been even more blatant quite happily portraying ISIL as good Sunni Muslims engaged in a holy war against the Shia infidel even though they actually seemed to be engaged in the Gulf Monarchs distinctly unholy war against democracy and human rights.

As such rather then setting up a task force to tackle ISIL propaganda online which seems like a way to trick money out of the US and get the US to highlight the problems with ISIL propaganda so the Gulf nations can help them improve it seems much more sensible to simply reduce the legitimisation of ISIL in the mainstream media. This should be particularly easy for Qatar - after all their King (Emir) Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani is the cousin of Hamad bin Thamer bin Mohammed Al Thani who runs the Al Jazeera new network.

As for the US' utterly spineless decision to give Turkey a USD10 million to help meet the cost of Kurdish refugees from Syria whilst Turkey continues to refuse to allow the use of United States Air Force (USAF) base Incirlik words truly fail me.

(Originally Posted) 17:25 on 28/10/14 (UK date).