A Theory or Two on Flight 370

Projected flight path of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.
(Courtesy: CBS News).

Given the chaos and confusion already widespread, I avoided putting anything like this online until now, but as recently as the middle of last week a strong suspicion washed over me: the vanished Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 was hijacked. It was when I first saw the alleged flight path that the plane apparently took after the ground lost contact, a sudden turn sharp turn east from an original northern heading. Something about it reminded me of the flight path of American Airlines Flight 11 all those years ago, as it swerved over central New York from its easterly Boston-to-LA path southward towards its eventually collision with the north tower. They were too eerily similar, somehow. A plane doesn't just do that and not be heard from. There had to be something foul at play.

Then last night, Malaysian officials finally announced exactly that: "Someone deliberately diverted Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 and shut down communications with the ground, and the jetliner continued flying for six hours, Malaysia's prime minister said Saturday." But who did it?

I initially ruled out al Qaeda (and/or their ilk) as suspects; being as it is still missing, it seems as though Flight 370 never hit anything, and I struggle to think of a high-value target in the Indian ocean. But then I pondered further; that's immediate-post-9/11 thought, and it foolishly assumes that aQ has never evolved. Obviously, they have; it was barely three months after 9/11 that Richard Reid attempted the shoe bomb plot, and of course there was the Christmas Day Underwear Bomb plot of 2009. aQ has been angling at a soft target strike of this sort for years.

But that's only the foundation. Then, this week, two more stories appeared on the Drudge Report that now become what allows my theory to truly hold weight. First there is the testimony of captured British jihadi Saajid Badat, who claims to have passed a shoe bomb "to several Malaysian men who wanted to blow open a plane’s cockpit door and carry out a 9/11-style hijacking of their own" at some point in the past. Even if this wasn't the same bomb or the same hijackers who may have taken Flight 370, we can now establish that there were channels for moving ordinance into place for such an operation.

Then Drudge discovered an American Thinker piece tying "Muslim Turkic Uighur militants, who have been fighting an insurgency for years in the remote northwestern Chinese region of Xinjiang against Chinese rule" to al Qaeda and the familiar tactics associated with the organization; the same Uighur militants are behind the knife attack in a Kunming that killed twenty-nine. Just last week another such attack took place at a market in the Hunan Province, killing another five. 

Uighur jihadis are known to have fought alongside fellow radicals in the ongoing Syrian Civil War "After receiving orders from al-Qaida," further heightening their ties; and the Chinese have previously charged Turkey with "playing a role in recruiting and financing the Chinese fighters." So could they have possibly have collaborated on an operation in southeast Asia?

I can't speak with any certainty, nor can I even assign any accurate probability to my suspicions, but yet I still wonder: what if a Turkish al Qaada affiliate (or other radical cell) supplied Chinese radicals in Malaysia with an explosive device (or more), and set them off to due their work. For further consideration, the majority of the passengers on board were Chinese nationals, just as were the targets of every other recent Uighur attack. If I were correct (again, I have no way to tell until we learn much, much more), every angle would be covered: Uighur militants get their terror strike against the Chinese, aQ gets their high profile pubic scare-attack.

Countering my theories, now, is the revelation the the pilot was a "'fanatical' supporter of the country (Malaysia)'s opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim - jailed for homosexuality just hours before the jet disappeared." Could the disappearance be a revenge strike against the Malaysian ruling party? This theory admittedly has just as much weight as mine, with an even less convoluted plot required to carry out.

Was Flight 370 taken down in part of global terror strike, or a revenge stunt by a politically disgruntled pilots? The evidence is certainly there behind either story, yet what makes it so frustrating (doubly so for the overwhelmed Malaysian investigators) is that nothing can really be decided with any certainty. Anything, it seems, is possible now.

-Mitch Carter is an Illinois State Scholar and an Associate Member of the Kendall County Young Republicans.

carterscornerpr@gmail.com

Twitter @CartersCornerPR