Islamic State Indirectly Admits Russian Airstrikes Far More Effective than ‘Coalition’ Airstrikes
by Oleg
Maslov
6
November, 2015
Islamic
State representatives have taken many efforts to claim responsibility
for placing a bomb on board a Russian Metrojet passenger airplane
bound for Saint Petersburg from Sharm el Sheikh in Egypt. Kogylmavia
(Metrojet) Flight 9268 broke apart in the air over Egypt’s Sinai
Peninsula on Saturday, October 31, and the wreckage landed in an area
roughly 20 square kilometers in size, leading to the death of all 224
passengers and crew on board, including dozens of children.
Videos
published by the Islamic State immediately claimed responsibility for
the atrocity and multiple videos claiming responsibility were
published over several days, with the latest high quality production
being released Wednesday. Initially, facts about the largest
catastrophe in Russian aviation history were few and far between and
analysts were confined to the field of speculation on technical
conditions of the airplane and other accidental factors as playing
the major role in the downing of the jet. However, Western
governments, especially the US and the UK, released their own
intelligence based on undisclosed evidence claiming that the aircraft
carrying hundreds of Russian tourists to a popular vacation
destination may in fact have been targeted by Islamic State militants
or sympathizers who probably snuck a bomb on board the airliner.
Realistically,
the possible causes of an Airbus A321 passenger jet breaking up in
mid-air are quite limited. The range of technical factors involved in
previous air catastrophes have not been known to cause a structural
breakup of the fuselage in midair and big, clunky surface-to-air
missile technology required to bring down a passenger jet flying at a
height of 10,000 meters are clearly visible to satellites and
thoroughly tracked by various intelligence agencies. Mobile surface
to air missiles don’t have the range necessary to reach a passenger
airline and air-to-air missiles will be excluded from this analysis
because it is also relatively easy for intelligence agencies to track
fighter jets.
Although
anything is possible in an atmosphere of uncertainty, if we remove
these causes from the list of factors for the purpose of continuing
this thought exercise, and exclude any overly fantastic explanations,
only one real cause remains – that of an explosive system snuck on
board the flight. Medical experts also seem to corroborate this
conclusion by claiming that injuries on the deceased passengers are
consistent with those suffered by people in the damage zone of an
explosion.
While
leaving the work to forensics experts and not drawing any conclusions
before experts make their results known, we can still work with the
information that has been released and use this unfolding narrative
as a base for analysis.
If
in fact Islamic State militants or sympathizers did manage to deliver
an explosive device on board Metrojet Flight 9268, this narrative
speaks volumes about the true enemies of the Islamic State and
priorities of the militant group to affect public and governmental
opinion in different countries. Russian airstrikes on Islamic State
targets, as well as targets of other extremist groups like al Nusra
and Ahrar al Sham, were only started on September 30, just over
a month ago, while airstrikes of ‘Coalition’* forces targeting
the Islamic State had already been ongoing for over a year when
Russian airstrikes began.
Without
undermining the terrible nature of previous Islamic State atrocities,
including mass killings and beheadings, the downing of a Russian
airliner in scale and international visibility, especially taking
into account the amount of foreigners killed in one attack, would
make the downing of Metrojet Flight 9268, if experts confirm that it
has in fact been perpetrated by Islamic State, the biggest in scope
and scale to date. The amount of planning, international
coordination, money spent in bribes, and other complicated managerial
requirements to oversee and carry out such a multi-faceted and
complex crime, even down to selecting the proper flight carrying a
majority of Russian citizens and getting the timing right, requires a
considerable amount of energy and resources. Further, after only a
month of Russian airstrikes, the time constraint on the planners also
plays a vivid role.
The
central question to this puzzle thus becomes: why in fact did the
Islamic State choose to target a Russian airliner instead of an
American airliner, or any other passenger plane from a country
belonging to the ‘Coalition’ forces, especially if the
‘Coalition’ forces have been hitting Islamic State targets for a
much longer period of time?
In
fact, (again – if this disaster is confirmed to have been committed
by the Islamic State), Islamic State militants are confirming the
veracity and effectiveness of Russian airstrikes compared to the
strikes of the ‘Coalition’ forces, which have clearly not
elicited the same intensity in terms of response.
I
would like to highlight that any tragedy is terrible and I am in no
way trying to undermine the suffering of those affected by other
heinous acts of the Islamic State. However, it is important to coldly
analyze the tactics of this group for the reason described by Sun Tzu
many thousands of years ago: “Know your enemy”.
Not
only does this desperate act of retribution confirm the devastating
effect that Russian airstrikes are having on operations of the
Islamic State, but it also highlights the lackluster nature of
‘Coalition’ airstrikes using the same measurement. ‘Coalition’
airstrikes, despite their much longer duration and the much larger
amount of sorties flown by ‘Coalition’ jet fighters, are simply
not affecting Islamic State operations, notably being unable to
prevent the expansion of Islamic State in any significant way and
being unable to curtail physical and operational capabilities.
‘Coalition’ forces have not published results of their airstrike
campaign in the same thorough and detailed nature that the Russians
have. There are no lists of dead IS commanders, training centers,
weapons labs, or even munitions storage sites.
Islamic
State almost seems comfortable to let the ‘Coalition’ strikes
continue, perhaps in an effort to allow the ‘Coalition’ forces to
report to their people that they are trying to stop the Islamic State
while actually also allowing the Islamic State to tacitly achieve
their geopolitical goals of rearranging the political order to the
Middle East before even thinking about lifting a finger to actually
prevent it. And this is certainly not for lack of military technical
capabilities or intelligence, which the ‘Coalition’ forces have
in abundance, or for any sort of incompetence, as many layers of
‘Coalition’ generals and experts are involved in the war effort.
In
this respect, the Metrojet catastrophe (if confirmed as perpetrated
by the Islamic State) is sending a very strong signal of the
realities of military operations and military alliances in the Middle
East. The Russian airstrikes are actually presenting a clear and
present danger to the aspirations of the Islamic State and having a
real and measured effect on their operations, thus, Islamic State
scrambled to seek revenge in a very dramatic and visible way. The
‘Coalition’ forces are in a ‘scratch my back, I scratch yours’
relationship, where ‘Coalition’ strikes serve only a cosmetic,
public relations purpose without actually impeding or infringing on
any Islamic State priorities, in a policy that requires loud banging
of drums in the domestic press to convince constituents that Islamic
State is ‘being taken care of’, but a pragmatic policy of
‘looking the other way’ while Islamic State takes care of Bashar
al Assad, then Hezbollah, then takes Baghdad, then begins to fight
Iran – leaping over all of the major American, Turkish, and Gulf
State geopolitical hurdles in the Middle East – before somehow
finally coming to their senses and riling their populations with war
fever to convince them to rise up with massive troop and hardware
deployments and explosions in military budgets to tackle the Great
Evil 2.0.
There
is no clearer signal of the stomach churning level of cynicism
combined with utterly hypocritical opportunism of the ‘Coalition’
forces than the Islamic State attack on Metrojet Flight 9268 (if
confirmed – for the last time, I promise).
*
‘Coalition’ is always in brackets because it is an open secret
that the vast majority of ‘Coalition’ forces, including technical
military hardware and personnel, is actually American.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.