Is it possible to understand developments surrounding the Russian passenger plane crash in Sinai and to fathom the ramifications of that tragedy independently from the framework of the domestic, regional and international conflicts currently flaring in and over the region? This is a perfectly legitimate question, but to answer it we must first review the chain of events. On the morning of 31 October, an Airbus 321 owned by the Russian company Metrojet took off from Sharm El-Sheikh airport on its way to St Petersburg. On board were 217 passengers, almost all Russian and Ukrainian tourists. There were also seven crewmembers on the plane, which vanished from radar screens 27 minutes after take-off. Shortly afterwards, it was announced that the plane had crashed in Sinai. Debris from the wreckage was found scattered over a 13-square-kilometre area and it was subsequently confirmed that all passengers and crew had been killed. There was not a single survivor. The plane's two black boxes were discovered intact and the process of analysing them was immediately set in motion. In addition, the remains of most of the passengers were recovered and returned to their grief-stricken families. As is readily apparent to all, this was a painful humanitarian tragedy that carries heavy material and moral consequences for many parties. This makes it all the more urgent to determine precisely what happened and whether the crash was caused by a technical flaw, human error or a terrorist act. This is a great responsibility, one that requires the greatest degrees of precision, discipline, and scientific and moral integrity. The consequences that follow the determination of who was responsible for this disaster will be extremely grave. Therefore, there can be no room for any form of manipulation or manoeuvring. If it is established indisputably that this was a terrorist act, it will then be necessary to determine beyond a shadow of a doubt the identity of the actual perpetrator, and whether he acted on his own or in collusion with others. In the process, it will also be necessary to discover his motives and aims, in a clear and transparent manner. It was only natural that a catastrophe of this magnitude would capture the world's attention, dominating international news bulletins and the reports of international news agencies around the clock, all the more so as within only a few hours of the crash the Islamic State (IS) group claimed responsibility. In its announcement, the terrorist organisation said that its intent was to take revenge on Russia and that it would reveal at an appropriate time the means it used to bring down the plane. As there is a long record of terrorist organisations falsely claiming responsibility for acts, whether to mislead or to paint an exaggerated picture of their own power, the IS announcement was not initially accepted as compelling evidence or proof that the crash was the product of a terrorist act. Nevertheless, this scenario remained one of several possibilities, none of which can be excluded definitively until all the technical probes are complete, and this is a process that can take months. A few days after that incident, President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi left Cairo for London on a state visit. Hardly had his airplane landed than the British press announced that the British prime minister had decided to suspend all flights to Sharm El-Sheikh after having received intelligence indicating that the crash was caused by a bomb that IS had managed to smuggle onto the plane with the aid of others at Sharm El-Sheikh airport. Within hours Western media outlets were vying with one another to transmit the most sensational reports they could. Britain's The Sunday Times reported that Ansar Bayt Al-Maqdis leader Abu Osama Al-Masri had “masterminded” the heinous attack and that British officials offered “to help Egypt or Russia in a ‘kill or capture' mission . . . a move that could involve the deployment of the SAS to Egypt.” As if to spice up the sensationalism with an air of mystery, the newspaper added that those same officials were closely examining the possibility that British extremists were behind the bombing of the Russian jet over Egypt. Communications spies at GCHQ in Cheltenham had overheard them “celebrating moments after the explosion that blew the plane apart” and exchanging congratulations “in London and Birmingham accents.” In such a context, news of the ill-fated aircraft and its fallout would overshadow that related to the Egyptian president's visit to the UK. Still, one could not help but to be struck by the fact that the growing preponderance given to the hypothesis that IS planted a bomb on the plane was used as a pretext to deliver slights and insults against the Egyptian head of state precisely while he was there. A salient example is Michael Deacon's “political sketch” in The Daily Telegraph about that visit and the press conference attended by only two British journalists. On the fact that he and other colleagues had not been invited to that conference, he remarked with acerbic wit, “After all, given President Sisi's treatment of journalists, perhaps Mr Cameron was simply putting our safety first.” Deacon then relates that the prime minister's talks with the president lasted barely “an hour or so after lunch.” After this, “Mr Cameron popped to the Savoy for the Spectator's Parliamentarian of the Year awards, collected the main prize . . . then returned to his guest in Number 10.” Al-Sisi “must have felt honoured to be squeezed into the prime minister's busy diary,” writes Deacon, full of schadenfreude and himself. “I don't know what the president found to do during this absence. Perhaps he has a book on the go.” But the repercussions abroad went well beyond political gibes and taunts. They were also about inflicting harm — deliberately, it would appear — on the already suffering Egyptian economy. While Western news agencies homed in on the “evacuation” of thousands of British tourists from Sharm El-Sheikh, Russian President Vladimir Putin decided to halt all flights, not just to Sharm El-Sheikh but also to Egypt, and to evacuate all Russian tourists as well. The airplane disaster was being purposely escalated into a full-scale political and economic disaster for Egypt and the Egyptian people. The crash of the Russian plane in Sinai was not the first such catastrophe in the history of aviation, and it will not be the last. Even if it is proven conclusively that the incident was the result of an act of sabotage executed by planting a bomb on the plane — which remains a possibility, but has not been confirmed incontrovertibly — this will not be the first or last terrorist attack against civil aviation. The downing of Pan American Flight 103 over Lockerbie was very similar to that of the Russian passenger plane on 31 October. Yet international reactions to the two cases could not be more different. After all, in the first case, the airport where the suspected planting of the bomb took place was European, whereas in the second case it was Egyptian. It is impossible, here, to list many discrepancies. Suffice it to say that Western intelligence experts took about two years before they collected what they regarded as sufficient evidence to blame agents of Libyan leader Muammer Gaddafi, which were eventually proven to have been involved in the bombing of the Pan Am flight that, moreover, did not bring flights to a halt in any airport or occasion the mass evacuation of tourists! I do not exclude the possibility that IS was involved in the bombing of the Russian airplane. But why would it target Russia, which only intervened militarily in the Syrian crisis about two months ago? Why would it suddenly act as though it were an ally to the US that, along with 60 other countries, had declared war on it over a year ago? Is it not quite possible that the intelligence agencies of countries hostile to the Russian intervention and, simultaneously, keen to create a crisis between Russia and Egypt were implicated, with or without the help of IS? Surely this possibility merits serious study and should not be dismissed offhand with charges of “conspiracy theorising.” There are circles at home and abroad that are rubbing their hands in glee. They imagine that this incident will help isolate the Egyptian “dictator” at home and abroad. I believe, however, that the majority of the Egyptian people will be deeply angered by what they perceive to be a Western siege targeting the Egyptian state, not the “regime”, and that they will rally around their ruler in this ordeal, even if he is a “dictator”. As for Putin's behaviour during this crisis, some may see it as puzzling and in need of closer analysis. But this is another subject that would require another article. The writer is a professor of political science, Cairo University.
