ANALYSIS_ Sinai plane crash may show price of Putin's military adventurism in Syria

The Guardian

Sinai plane crash may show price of Putin's military adventurism in Syria

By making an enemy of Isis, the Russian president has put his country’s citizens directly in the firing line


Simon Tisdall
Thursday 5 November 2015 21.19 AEDT

Photo: Vladimir Putin has long identified Islamist terrorism as a threat to Russia and its central Asian allies, as well as to Arab and western countries. Photograph: Dai Tianfang/Xinhua Press/Corbis

If the British government is correct in suggesting an on board bomb brought down the Russian Airbus over Sinai on Saturday, killing 224 people, the political and human price of Vladimir Putin’s military adventurism in Syria just got a lot higher.

The Russian president’s intervention came out of the blue last month, following a rapid, covert buildup of personnel and weapons. His main motive was to shore up the crumbling regime of Bashar al-Assad in Damascus and boost Syrian government forces. But Putin justified his action, which was not authorised in advance by the UN security council, to an international audience by saying that Russian combat planes would target Islamic State forces already under attack in Syria by a US-led coalition.

While it quickly became apparent that western-backed Syrian rebels were being hit in the Russian sorties, Putin’s planes also bombed Isis bases and weapons dumps in northern and eastern Syria. Isis predictably vowed to take revenge. An Isis affiliate, Sinai Province, which has killed hundreds of Egyptian security personnel since the army deposed Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood president, Mohamed Morsi, in 2013, issued an immediate claim of responsibility for bringing down the Airbus. An Isis website repeated the claim.

Isis involvement was quickly dismissed by both Russian and Egyptian officials. But Sinai Province repeated its claim on Wednesday, saying it would reveal details of how it carried out the bombing at a later date. “We, with God’s grace, are the ones who brought it down, and we are not obliged to disclose the mechanism of its demise,” the group said. With many US and European security officials now appearing to agree that a bomb on board the plane is the most likely cause of the disaster, questions will be asked about why a Russian airline, rather than any other airline, was attacked – and why Putin was so keen to discount the possibility that terrorism was responsible.

The most likely answer to both questions is Putin’s Syria adventure. To be fair to the Russian leader, he has long identified spreading Islamist terrorism as a threat to Russia and its central Asian allies, as well as to Arab and western countries. Islamist separatists in Russia’s Muslim Caucasus region, particularly in Chechnya, have a recent history of terror attacks on Russian soil. And many Chechen fighters have reportedly joined Isis ranks.

But by making an enemy of Isis, Putin has put Russia directly in the firing line. This will not go down well with the Russian public, which showed little support for another recent Russian interventions, in Crimea and eastern Ukraine. Body bags, military and civilian, bring back bad memories for Russians of the disastrous war in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

For a man who is notoriously touchy about Moscow’s reputation and standing, the fact that the Obama administration and British ministers publicly predicted that Putin’s intervention would make Russia a terrorist target is galling.

Ash Carter, the US defence secretary, said last month that Putin had started something he would struggle to finish. “This will have consequences for Russia itself, which is rightly fearful of attacks. In coming days, the Russians will begin to suffer from casualties,” he said.

There is unlikely to be any immediate political cost to Putin, given his government’s dominant control over parliament and the media. Rather, the next pressing question, if Moscow accepts that Isis caused the disaster, is what Russia may do by way of retaliation.

Putin has spoken about reacting in an appropriate way once the facts are established. What this means is unclear. It could involve significant escalation against Isis in Syria, or an expansion of Russian involvement into Iraq, where parliament has already urged the Baghdad government to seek Moscow’s help in fighting Isis in the north. Or Putin’s response could include a crackdown on Islamist militants in Chechnya and other Muslim areas, something he has done before at times of national stress.

The Egyptian government also has questions to answer about why it was so quick to discount a terror attack, despite the ongoing insurgency in Sinai. Whatever it says now, it will be widely suspected that Cairo’s initial statements were designed to protect its lucrative tourist industry, rather than to ensure the efficacy of security measures at Sharm el-Sheikh airport, where the plane took off.

Egypt’s first reaction to Britain’s decision to cancel flights to and from Sharm el-Sheikh was to complain about the impact this would have on tourism. This does not sound like the behaviour of a responsible government concerned about international aviation security.

The fact that the Egyptian president, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, is visiting London is an embarrassment for the British government, which had been hoping to cement ties with his regime, not be accused of undermining Egypt’s economy. But the strengthening evidence of an Isis link to the crash will highlight Sisi’s lead role in repressing, jailing and executing thousands of Egyptian Islamists since 2013, which his critics argue has left them no alternative but to resort to violence. Human Rights Watch says the human rights crisis in Egypt is the “worst in memory”.

The overthrowing of Morsi, an elected president, sent a negative message to Islamists across the region that normal, democratic political routes to power are not open to them. The fact that Sisi’s illegal takeover was ultimately backed by the US and Britain suggested that they, too, have little regard for the legitimate aspirations of faith-based, Muslim political groups.

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