What’s next? Nothing.

It only took the Air Accident Investigation Branch (AAIB) a week after the Lockerbie crash to find residue of explosives among the debris and conclude that the plane had been brought down by a bomb. Tomorrow morning, it will have been one week since the Kogalymavia/Metrojet crash in Sinai. I’m not holding my breath for definitive announcements this weekend either from the Egyptians or the Russians.

I should add that the Dec. 28, 1988, announcement by the AAIB is probably the only finding of fact in the Lockerbie case that has not been challenged and remains universally accepted. The weakest link in the official version is the claim that the bomb was brought on board another flight in Malta and transferred to the PanAm plane in Frankfurt. On the balance of probabilities, Heathrow is where the suitcase bomb was planted.

In the Sinai crash, clear evidence of a terror attack would make the Egypt government deeply unhappy without pleasing Moscow, either – and it’s these two countries that are investigating. On the other hand, if the US and UK have such evidence, Egypt will probably have to accept it. So will Moscow – eventually. The most likely outcome for the next few weeks, however, is no outcome.

5 Comments

  1. I think it’s likely the Islamists in Sinai were planning an attack like this anyway as a way of damaging the Egyptian economy by hitting its tourist industry. Compare the massacre of holidaymakers in Tunisia this summer. Putin’s intervention in Syria might have led them to switch the target to Russian civilians. Two birds with one stone.

    It wouldn’t surprise me if Western intelligence agencies had already tried to pass on rumours of increased terrorist activity in the area to their Russian counterparts. How would Putin respond to such information? By doing nothing. There may be parallels with Stalin’s lack of reaction to Western warnings about the imminent German invasion in 1941.

    • The only thing that’s almost certain at this point is that a bomb brought down the plane. It’s also more probable that it was planted in Sharm el-Sheikh rather than in St. Petersburg. Is there any connection with the Paris massacre? Is this a mere coincidence? Are we dealing with a hydra or with separate beasts?

      • There’s a theory that the Paris massacre may have been a response to ISIS’s loss of Sinjar, a vitally important strategic town. Obviously, ISIS would have planned for the Paris attacks weeks or months in advance but the decision to activate it on Friday might have been intended to divert attention from the news that they are beginning to lose in the Middle East. But who knows?

        • I’ve read a few unbelievable theories, including one blaming everything, including Paris, on Putin. If it’s true that every major terrorist grouping is infiltrated by all major intelligence services, even this theory is not completely crazy.

  2. “I think it’s likely the Islamists in Sinai were planning an attack like this anyway as a way of damaging the Egyptian economy by hitting its tourist industry. Compare the massacre of holidaymakers in Tunisia this summer. Putin’s intervention in Syria might have led them to switch the target to Russian civilians.”

    ISIS are now saying this is in fact what they did. They had planned to down a Western plane but switched to a Russian one after Putin started bombing Syria. In some ways this is odd because Putin didn’t really target ISIS until after the atrocity, focusing on the non-ISIS rebels instead. But ISIS is a weird apocalyptic cult which allegedly wants to bring on a final confrontation with the “Byzantines” (in the absence of any actual Byzantines since 1453, French or Russians will do as substitutes).

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