Geo-politics over MH17
Mahir Ali :
The least indecent course of action for whoever shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 over Ukraine last Thursday would obviously have been to acknowledge their culpability for what was in all probability a horrible mistake and accept the consequences.
Decency, however, is not a common virtue among belligerents, be they officially authorised military personnel or “non-state actors”, and there is no telling whether those who played a starring role in this particular act of mass murder are even troubled by nightmares for causing the loss of nearly 300 lives.
Internationally, the finger of blame has been pointed more or less unequivocally at the separatist rebels of the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic, who in preceding days had shot down a couple of Ukrainian military aircraft and, going by circumstantial evidence, appeared to believe they were repeating that feat.
Moscow has also been implicated, by virtue of its reputation as a sponsor of the Ukrainian rebels. It is suspected of having supplied them with not just the surface-to-air missile likely to have been responsible for blowing MH17 out of the sky while on its way from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, but also the technical expertise required for operating the weapon.
In both respects, the suspicions cannot seriously be discounted. Nor, in the absence of definitive proof, should they be accepted as infallible.
In retaliatory accusations, Russia has held the Ukrainian authorities accountable for the catastrophe. Sections of the Russian media initially suggested that the airliner was shot down by Ukrainian fighter planes. A complementary bit of speculation was that the Ukrainians actually intended to attack the plane that was at the same time conveying Vladimir Putin back to Moscow through European airspace, following the Russian president’s visit to Latin America.
That wasn’t by a long stretch the most outlandish suggestion – the prize for utter grotesqueness surely goes to the organ that reported MH17 was conveying a cargo of corpses.
Somewhat less absurdly, a Kremlin spokesman has pointed to purported evidence that the Ukrainian military had lately deployed anti-aircraft batteries on the outskirts of Donetsk, even though the separatists have no air power.
Kiev, on the other hand, claims to have photographic evidence that anti-aircraft devices in separatist use were rushed back across the Russian border following the tragedy.
It has broadly been claimed, meanwhile, that the rebels’ initial reluctance to allow international observers and investigators access to the crash site was intended to give themselves time to destroy or contaminate all evidence that could come in handy in pinpointing guilt for the unconscionable act of destroying a passenger plane.
That may well be so. There is also something to be said for Putin’s claim that the disaster would probably have been avoided had Kiev not rescinded a ceasefire in eastern Ukraine – and skirmishes in the Donetsk region over the past couple of days suggest the government of Petro Poroshenko is seeking military advantage amid the crisis – with little risk of a serious reprimand from its western fans. At the same time, the veracity of evidence offered up by Ukrainian intelligence agencies, ostensibly sourced from social media and intercepted phone conversations, imputing rebel guilt and quite possibility Russian complicity, has been called into question.
It is uncertain whether the black boxes will yield any information that may help to confirm what most people (including many Russians) suspect: namely that some separatist fighters made a monumental – and unforgivable – blunder. No one can seriously doubt the need for a thorough, and unhindered, investigation.
Dutch passengers dominated the MH17 flight manifest, followed by Malaysians, which makes the Netherlands and Malaysia the most justifiably aggrieved nations, although Australia (which lost 28 citizens) and the United States (which lost one, although it was initially informed by Kiev that there were 23 Americans aboard the airliner) have been more aggressive in making demands on Moscow.
For Malaysians, the tragedy is inevitably compounded by the loss in March of Flight MH370, which simply vanished after deviating from its designated path to Beijing. That mystery, unresolved more than four months later, elicited a series of bizarrely misleading responses from Kuala Lumpur, and later from Canberra, after the latter took charge of the search of the plane, following indications that it was likely to have fallen into the sea some way off Australia’s western coast.
Inevitably, the incident also spawned a number of conspiracy theories, at least a few of which continue to be aired every now and again.
Malaysia Airlines, meanwhile, has attracted the attention of business obituarists, even though there’s no evidence that either of its misfortunes was of its own making. There’s a decidedly better chance of getting to the bottom of the avoidable fate of MH17 than in the case of MH370, but no one is likely to be comforted by the findings.
The least indecent course of action for whoever shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 over Ukraine last Thursday would obviously have been to acknowledge their culpability for what was in all probability a horrible mistake and accept the consequences.
Decency, however, is not a common virtue among belligerents, be they officially authorised military personnel or “non-state actors”, and there is no telling whether those who played a starring role in this particular act of mass murder are even troubled by nightmares for causing the loss of nearly 300 lives.
Internationally, the finger of blame has been pointed more or less unequivocally at the separatist rebels of the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic, who in preceding days had shot down a couple of Ukrainian military aircraft and, going by circumstantial evidence, appeared to believe they were repeating that feat.
Moscow has also been implicated, by virtue of its reputation as a sponsor of the Ukrainian rebels. It is suspected of having supplied them with not just the surface-to-air missile likely to have been responsible for blowing MH17 out of the sky while on its way from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, but also the technical expertise required for operating the weapon.
In both respects, the suspicions cannot seriously be discounted. Nor, in the absence of definitive proof, should they be accepted as infallible.
In retaliatory accusations, Russia has held the Ukrainian authorities accountable for the catastrophe. Sections of the Russian media initially suggested that the airliner was shot down by Ukrainian fighter planes. A complementary bit of speculation was that the Ukrainians actually intended to attack the plane that was at the same time conveying Vladimir Putin back to Moscow through European airspace, following the Russian president’s visit to Latin America.
That wasn’t by a long stretch the most outlandish suggestion – the prize for utter grotesqueness surely goes to the organ that reported MH17 was conveying a cargo of corpses.
Somewhat less absurdly, a Kremlin spokesman has pointed to purported evidence that the Ukrainian military had lately deployed anti-aircraft batteries on the outskirts of Donetsk, even though the separatists have no air power.
Kiev, on the other hand, claims to have photographic evidence that anti-aircraft devices in separatist use were rushed back across the Russian border following the tragedy.
It has broadly been claimed, meanwhile, that the rebels’ initial reluctance to allow international observers and investigators access to the crash site was intended to give themselves time to destroy or contaminate all evidence that could come in handy in pinpointing guilt for the unconscionable act of destroying a passenger plane.
That may well be so. There is also something to be said for Putin’s claim that the disaster would probably have been avoided had Kiev not rescinded a ceasefire in eastern Ukraine – and skirmishes in the Donetsk region over the past couple of days suggest the government of Petro Poroshenko is seeking military advantage amid the crisis – with little risk of a serious reprimand from its western fans. At the same time, the veracity of evidence offered up by Ukrainian intelligence agencies, ostensibly sourced from social media and intercepted phone conversations, imputing rebel guilt and quite possibility Russian complicity, has been called into question.
It is uncertain whether the black boxes will yield any information that may help to confirm what most people (including many Russians) suspect: namely that some separatist fighters made a monumental – and unforgivable – blunder. No one can seriously doubt the need for a thorough, and unhindered, investigation.
Dutch passengers dominated the MH17 flight manifest, followed by Malaysians, which makes the Netherlands and Malaysia the most justifiably aggrieved nations, although Australia (which lost 28 citizens) and the United States (which lost one, although it was initially informed by Kiev that there were 23 Americans aboard the airliner) have been more aggressive in making demands on Moscow.
For Malaysians, the tragedy is inevitably compounded by the loss in March of Flight MH370, which simply vanished after deviating from its designated path to Beijing. That mystery, unresolved more than four months later, elicited a series of bizarrely misleading responses from Kuala Lumpur, and later from Canberra, after the latter took charge of the search of the plane, following indications that it was likely to have fallen into the sea some way off Australia’s western coast.
Inevitably, the incident also spawned a number of conspiracy theories, at least a few of which continue to be aired every now and again.
Malaysia Airlines, meanwhile, has attracted the attention of business obituarists, even though there’s no evidence that either of its misfortunes was of its own making. There’s a decidedly better chance of getting to the bottom of the avoidable fate of MH17 than in the case of MH370, but no one is likely to be comforted by the findings.
(Mahir Ali is a Sydney-based writer)
