Share This

Showing posts with label MH17 Tragedy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label MH17 Tragedy. Show all posts

Sunday 20 July 2014

MH17 shot down, more questions than answers


While there is no doubt that shooting down MH17 was a grave crime, everything else remains uncertain.

ALL the big questions about MH17 began only after the passenger jet fell from the sky and crashed to the ground.

Up to that point, everything about it was routine and unspectacular: leaving Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport at a quarter past noon (6.15pm Malaysian time) on Thursday, it was scheduled to arrive at KLIA early Friday morning.

Flying at a cruising altitude of 10km over Ukraine, it was 300m above a closed airspace over a zone of conflict. The International Air Transport Association (IATA) had confirmed this was an established altitude for commercial aircraft.

Then at 10.15pm Malaysian time on Thursday, radio contact was abruptly lost. All the necessary answers for the fate of the plane also began from that point.

From there, uncovering the truth becomes a tedious and messy business. Among the challenges is that while politics should not interfere in investigations, just about everything in the politics of Ukraine comes wrapped within that tragedy.

For a start, all three principals in eastern Ukraine’s bitter conflict – the Ukraine government, pro-Russia separatists and Russia – deny any responsibility for downing MH17. Yet one of these parties has to be directly responsible for it.

Shooting down the aircraft by whatever means is a deliberate act of murder and destruction. The question that follows is whether the perpetrator did so in ignorance, mistaking MH17 for an enemy aircraft, or as a terrorist in the knowledge that it was a civilian plane.

Denial is familiar and predictable, especially for such a dastardly act and an international tragedy on such a scale. It serves two immediate purposes: avoiding blame, and damning the enemy further by shifting blame there.

As reliable information trickles in or not at all, the effective knowledge vacuum sucks in more predictable allegations and denials.

The resulting mass of claims, counter-claims, assumptions, suppositions, conjectures and fabrications form yet another unwelcome barrier to investigations.

In the absence of a forthright and verifiable admission of guilt, all three parties should be suspect.

The lack of reliable information only complicates the task of investigation, particularly at a time when all who seek the truth must be particularly prudent and patient.

Each of the three parties has its own mix of deniability and culpability. That makes any investigation even more difficult.

Identifying the guilty party and building a case against it depend on the known facts of the tragedy. Investigations then proceed as more facts become available – known, then verified, and then established.

MH17 was attacked in Ukrainian airspace and crashed near the village of Grabovo and the town of Torez in the eastern province of Donetsk, some 50km from the Russian border.

Local eyewitnesses said they saw a plane falling and hearing two explosions before the aircraft crashed to the ground and broke into two. Some debris was strewn over a 700km radius, with the bulk of the wreckage found within a tight 100m radius of the crash spot.

Separatist rebels blame the Ukrainian government, the government blames the rebels, and some in Kiev even allege a Russian hand – acting independently, or more plausibly in assisting the rebels.

What are the known indications so far? These depend on the kind of attack or weapon system used.

To both Ukraine and the private Russian news agency Interfax from the start, MH 17 was downed by a BUK missile. How could they be so certain when everything about the crash was still murky?

BUK missiles come in a set of four laser-guided, medium-range surface-to-air projectiles mounted on a tank or truck, with an altitude range of 22km to 30km. They travel at up to four times the cruising speed of a civilian aircraft.


The BUK (also known as the SA-11) is a Russian-made missile system used by both Ukraine and Russia. The rebels’ “standard” shoulder-launched missiles do not have anywhere near that range.

However, that does not clear the rebels necessarily.

There have been reports in recent days that rebels had taken over a Ukrainian military base in the area that housed the BUK missile system.

Other reports tell of Ukrainian forces having lately pushed back the rebels in eastern Ukraine and limited their room for manoeuvre.

How strong the rebels actually were in the territory where MH17 was attacked on Thursday is still unclear, that itself being indicative of the uncertainties that prevail.

Another missile “of choice” alleged to have been used on MH17 is the SA-17 or “Grizzly”, which has an 11% greater altitude range. Both missile systems operate more independently than more sophisticated Russian missile systems which can distinguish between civilian and military aircraft.

A local resident who saw the crash however said MH17 could also have been downed by a jet fighter.

Two implications follow from that: the attacker must have known the target was a civilian aircraft, and a national air force would have been responsible.

If a fighter jet had been involved, it would explain the tight debris field that some observers had noted.

It would also be consistent with witness reports of the plane breaking up upon crashing rather than disintegrating in the air.

Another version of events, reportedly from a Russian source, is that a (Ukrainian) Sukhoi Su-25 fighter jet had shot down MH17 and the rebels then shot down the assailant.

While that may explain some rebels’ remarks about having downed an aircraft at the time, it is too convoluted – even convenient – to be credible.

Such a scenario would mean the Ukrainian air force had been responsible. Russian-made Sukhois are used by both Russia and Ukraine, since Ukraine had been a part of the former Soviet Union.

The closest thing to a “smoking gun” piece of evidence within hours of the tragedy was the SBU’s (Ukrainian intelligence service’s) claimed possession of a recorded phone intercept of a conversation between some rebels and Russians.

Allegedly, a group of local Cossacks near the Chernukhin checkpoint were said to be the perpetrators. MH17 was apparently mistaken for an AN-26 Ukrainian transport plane, which rebels in eastern Ukraine had downed before.

Amid all the speculation and finger-pointing however, the consensus is that a missile or missiles had hit MH17. And the most likely perpetrators were a group of rebels in the area.

Conventional wisdom also says that this makes it more difficult for Russia to handle the situation. The reality could well be the opposite.

After Crimea (the autonomous republic of Crimea and Sevastopol) left Ukraine to join Russia earlier this year, rebels in eastern Ukraine had agitated to do likewise.

However, they have proven to be a diplomatic headache and embarrassment for Russia. Unlike Crimea, eastern Ukraine is a contiguous part of Ukraine politically and historically, even if the area also has numerous ethnic Russians like Crimea.

Moscow has thus been loath to see any part of Ukraine take the Crimea route, much as that may please Russian ultra-nationalists. Thus the civil war in Ukraine, concentrated as it is in the eastern provinces. The rebels have since chafed at Moscow’s unwillingness to annex their territory. But if they are now seen to have committed a grave international crime in downing a civilian aircraft, the infamy presents Russia with the best opportunity yet to cut them off for good.

By Bunn Nagara Behind The Headlines The Star Columnists/Asia News Network
> Bunn Nagara is a Senior Fellow at the Institute of Strategic and International Studies (ISIS) Malaysia.

Related posts:

Photo taken on July 17, 2014 shows the debris at the crash site of a passenger plane near the village of Grabovo, Ukraine. A Malaysian...

Double standards on Ukraine and Crimea 


Related: 

flight mh17


Malaysia Airlines releases names of passengers on board ...


 Malaysia Airlines has released Flight MH17's passenger manifest, naming the 283 travelers who died in Thursday's horrific crash.

Saturday 19 July 2014

Be willing to embrace change


Trade and open markets power China ahead. By embracing openness, China has transformed itself and perhaps even the world.

Change is the essence of life. Be willing to surrender what you are for what you could become

MY first impression of China when I first visited in 1985 was one of backwardness. There were bicycles and Mao suits everywhere.

I was fortunate because my second visit was 22 years later, in 2007. Frankly, I was astounded by what I saw. People went about in the latest fashions and cars had replaced the bicycles.

Fast forward to 2014 – when I again visited in conjunction with the 40th anniversary of Malaysia and China’s bilateral ties, accompanying Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak – and we found that the pace of development was just as frenetic.

Incidentally, this was my second visit to China this year and I still have a couple more trips planned.

China is now the second biggest economy in the world and in Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) terms, the largest.

The World Bank estimates that the number of Chinese living under the international poverty line (US$1.25 a day) fell from 43% of the world’s total poor population in 1981 to 13% in 2010.

China’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita doubled to 38,354 yuan (RM19,672) from 2009 to 2012 alone.

Change, it seems, is the only constant in China. But how did this come about?

I would argue that it’s because they embraced reform and openness.

Under Deng Xiaoping, China sought “socialism with Chinese characteristics”: in effect, opening itself and its markets to the wider world.

One significant initiative which China embarked upon was joining the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in 2001.

This was a watershed and was not an easy decision for China.

Accession, especially in China’s case, is a lengthy and thorough pro­cess. Negotiations for China to join WTO took 15 years.

Countries often had to make significant concessions to the entire WTO membership and no exceptions were made for China.

However, the Chinese government proved willing to dismantle much of its restrictive institutional regime.

But WTO membership for China was not just to get better access to international markets.

It was also a defensive measure: to prevent unilateral actions from being taken against their goods by trading partners.

For instance, as a member of the WTO, China is protected from unilateral tariff hikes.

Other countries with grievances against it will have to bring their case to WTO’s tribunals.

Among the requirements for WTO entry, China also had to reduce its bound tariffs on industrial goods to an average of about 9% by 2005. Agricultural tariffs were cut to 15% while most quotas and licence requirements were eliminated.

All in all, China had to relax over 7,000 tariffs, quotas and other trade barriers.

Furthermore, it had to open up its markets to foreign firms and end state-controlled distribution of products.

China, significantly, made more market-opening commitments for services than most WTO members had.

From a centrally planned economy, China has now embraced capitalistic economic principles.

At the same time, China moved to strengthen its own capacities. It moved away from agro-based exports to manufacturing.

Also, the first of many Special Economic Zones were established in 1980, including today’s iconic Shenzen.

All of these were bold and unprecedented moves, all the more so given China’s strong nationalism and its traditional aversion to foreign entanglements. But open up it did and the results are clear for all to see.

In 2013, the WTO reported that China had overtaken the United States as the largest trading nation in the world, with total trade valued at US$4.16 trillion (RM13.23 trillion).

In that year, China’s total exports value was US$2.21 trillion (RM7.03 trillion) compared to US$1.58 trillion (RM5.02 trillion) for the US.

China, in fact, is now the largest trading partner for more than 120 countries, including Malaysia.

China is also the biggest market for automobiles, with 20 million cars sold in 2013. In comparison, the US sold only 14 million cars.

Indeed, from 2002 (after it joined the WTO) to 2013, the growth of its total trade rocketed to an annual average of more than 21%.

Its GDP for the corresponding period grew from US$1.3 trillion (RM4.13 trillion) to over US$9 trillion (RM28.6 trillion) in 2013.

Of course, China’s leaders had no way of knowing that all of these reforms would bear such remarkable fruit.

It was a risk they had to take, but it was one that paid off handsomely.

By embracing openness, China has transformed itself and perhaps even the world.

The lessons from China for Malaysia and other countries are clear: we have to be willing to embrace change.

Otherwise, the only other option is stagnation and decline.


By Datuk Seri Mustapa Mohamed

Datuk Seri Mustapa Mohamed is Minister of International Trade and Industry. The views expressed here are entirely the writer’s own. Fair and reasonable comments are most ­welcome at mustapa@miti.gov.my

Related posts:
 
 China will surpass US to become leading superpower - global survey finds it will or already has surpassed the US People the world ov... 
It is necessary for the nation to embrace Stem education in order to reach new heights. IT is imperative that schools and educational i... 
Malaysia is poised to escape the middle-income trap, but also ready to fall back into it. Normally the middle-income trap refers to count... 
Photo taken on July 17, 2014 shows the debris at the crash site of a passenger plane near the village of Grabovo, Ukraine. A Malaysian...

Rightways