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THE least indecent course of action for whoever shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 over Ukraine last Thursday would obviously have been to acknowledge their culpability for what was in all probability a horrible mistake and accept the consequences.
Decency, however, is not a common virtue among belligerents, be they officially authorised military personnel or ‘non-state actors’, and there is no telling whether those who played a starring role in this particular act of mass murder are even troubled by nightmares for causing the loss of nearly 300 lives.
Internationally, the finger of blame has been pointed at the separatist rebels of the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic, who in preceding days had shot down a couple of Ukrainian military aircraft and appeared to believe they were repeating that feat.
Moscow has also been implicated, by virtue of its reputed sponsorship of the Ukrainian rebels. It is suspected of having supplied them with not just the surface-to-air missile likely to have been responsible for blowing MH17 out of the sky while on its way from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, but also the technical expertise required for operating the weapon.
A probe into the MH17 crash may not be conclusive.
In both respects, the suspicions cannot seriously be discounted. Nor, in the absence of definitive proof, should they be accepted as infallible.
In retaliatory accusations, Russia has held the Ukrainian authorities accountable for the catastrophe. Sections of the Russian media initially suggested that the airliner was shot down by Ukrainian fighter planes. A complementary bit of speculation was that the Ukrainians actually intended to attack the plane that was at the same time conveying Vladimir Putin to Moscow through European airspace.
Somewhat less absurdly, a Kremlin spokesman has pointed to purported evidence that the Ukrainian military had lately deployed anti-aircraft batteries on the outskirts of Donetsk, even though the separatists have no air power. Kiev, on the other hand, claims to have photographic evidence that anti-aircraft devices in separatist use were rushed back across the Russian border following the tragedy.
It has broadly been claimed, meanwhile, that the rebels’ initial reluctance to allow international observers and investigators access to the crash site was intended to give themselves time to destroy all evidence that could come in handy in pinpointing guilt for the unconscionable act of destroying a passenger plane.
That may well be so. There is also something to be said for Putin’s claim that the disaster would probably have been avoided had Kiev not rescinded a ceasefire in eastern Ukraine — and skirmishes in the Donetsk region over the past couple of days suggest the government of Petro Poroshenko is seeking military advantage amid the crisis — with little risk of a serious reprimand from its Western fans.
At the same time, the veracity of evidence offered up by Ukrainian intelligence agencies, ostensibly sourced from social media and intercepted phone conversations, imputing rebel guilt and quite possibility Russian complicity, has been called into question.
The United Nations Security Council on Monday called for free access to the scene of the crime and a thorough international investigation. Most of the victims’ bodies, after days of negotiations, were dispatched in a refrigerated train to Kharkiv, from where they were expected to be transported to the Netherlands. The cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder have been handed over to Malaysian representatives.
It is uncertain whether the black boxes will yield any information that may help to confirm what most people (including many Russians) suspect: namely that some separatist fighters made a monumental — and unforgivable — blunder. No one can seriously doubt the need for a thorough, and unhindered, investigation.
It may not turn out to be utterly conclusive — after all, the type of missile the rebels have been accused of using can be found in both Ukrainian and Russian arsenals; and identifying the culprits would require a level of cooperation that, unfortunately, may not be forthcoming.
The profoundly disturbing fate of MH17 isn’t, of course, the first catastrophe of its kind. A Siberian Airlines flight from Tel Aviv to Novosibirsk was downed in 2001 over the Black Sea, and blamed on Ukrainian military exercises. An American airship shot down an Iran Air airbus, claiming to have mistaken it for an F-14 fighter jet, killing all 290 passengers and crew, on a flight to Dubai in 1988. The Soviet air force slew all 269 people aboard a South Korean airliner that had strayed off course, later alleging the plane was on a spy mission.
None of that detracts from the gravity of the most recent crime, nor can it offer any succour to the relatives and friends of its victims. What it could potentially do is spur more determined efforts to resolve an unnecessary conflict, for which Moscow is by no means wholly to blame. Sadly, there are precious few indications so far of possible progress in that direction, at least in the short run.
Published in Dawn, July 23rd, 2014
