by Oleg Maslov

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.