The Pain of It

"According to our experts, a homemade explosive device equivalent to one kilogram of TNT went off on board, which caused the plane to break up in the air, which explains why the fuselage was scattered over such a large territory. I can certainly say that this was a terrorist act."
Russian FSB head, Alexander Bortnikov

"There's no statute of limitations for this. We need to know all of their names."
"We're going to look for them everywhere wherever they are hiding. We will find them in any place on Earth and punish them."
Russian President Vladimir V. Putin

Photo: Kayhan Ozer/AFP/Getty Images ... Tuesday, 17 November 2015

Sorrow for the innocents, unaware that they would never reach their destination. The Metrojet Airbus 321-200 which took off from Sharm El-Sheikh had aboard in its luggage compartment what has been described as a 'home-made' explosive device, a bomb. Placed within the fragile confines of an airplane, so that when it exploded shrapnel would pierce the plane's slight armour, and the 224 passengers' slight and vulnerable flesh, tearing them apart even while the plane they believed would take them to St.Petersburg was being torn apart.

A dreadful loss of life, but one that gave reason for the triumph of conquest and celebration to the Sinai Province Salafist Islamist group in Egypt, an Islamic State affiliate whose exploit garnered it honourable mention in the annals of Islamist exploits. Little wonder Russia is furious. Both the population and their government elite; everyone genuinely in mourning, and vowing vengeance.

What a home-made bomb could accomplish a far more sophisticated Buk missile could also accomplish; blow a passenger jet out of the sky and rain the fragments of human bodies onto the landscape of eastern Ukraine below. No home-made bomb, but a sophisticated destructive missile whose intent was to strike a Ukrainian military jet, fired by ethnic Russian rebels to whom Moscow had provided the means. Pity, that.

Pfff! In one instant the lives of 283 passengers, including 80 children, and 15 crew members gone, perished, as though they had never existed. After an exhaustive investigation the answers came and they shone no pleasant light on President Putin. But then he had already distinguished himself by taking possession of Crimea, and invading Ukraine. And threatening to scoop up more of eastern Ukraine as well, with the international community not bombing him but imposing sanctions.

One mass killing does not deserve another. Innocent people die for the sins of their political overseers. One can only wish Vladimir Putin good hunting in having his intelligence agents track down those responsible for the dreadful atrocity visited on innocent Russian civilians by a vicious Islamist conspiracy that takes great delight in slaughter and in triumphantly boasting over such an evil success.

At least Russian jets are being diverted from their preoccupation with bombing Syrian rebels attempting to dislodge Mr. Putin's pet Syrian tyrant from power, to targeting Islamic State and that can only be a good thing. With cruise missiles hitting Raqqa, ISIL's 'capital' of its caliphate, the unfortunate thing is that within that city also live ordinary Syrians who would hugely prefer not being involved with ISIL, let alone becoming targets for Russian rage.

But then, that's the trouble with conflicts of any kind; it is civilians who tend to bear the brunt of the pain, the anguish and the sorrow.