Borders Permeable to Illicit Antiquities CAN be Exploited by Terrorists

It has now been confirmed that the Metrojet (Kogalymavia) A321 plane which fell out of the sky over  the Sinai Peninsula on October 31 killing all 224 people on board was caused by a bomb and lax security at the Egyptian airport where the plane took off ('Egypt detains 2 airport workers suspected of aiding bomb plant on Russian plane – Reuters sources' 17 Nov, 2015)

Egypt is holding two employees of Sharm el-Sheikh Airport on suspicion of assisting those who planted the explosive device on the Russian Metrojet plane on October 31, two security officials said, as cited by Reuters. "Seventeen people are being held, two of them are suspected of helping whoever planted the bomb on the plane at Sharm al-Sheikh Airport," one of the officials said. [...]  Seven officials involved in security at Sharm el-Sheikh Airport, several of more than a decade’s service, told the AP of the gaps, speaking on condition of anonymity. [...]  One of the officials claimed that many police officers in the airport were taking bribes. "I can't tell you how many times I have caught a bag full of drugs or weapons that they have let through for €10 or whatever," he said. 

This reinforces the point I made earlier, if antiquities are getting through border controls, there is scope for the passage of other more dangerous things too. This bomb was said to be about a kilogramme in weight. 

We recall that one of the (more feeble) arguments frequently used by the no-questions-asked market is that paperless artefacts surface on the market due to the corruption of government officials in the source countries (applying a wholly spurious two-wrongs argument,, that if one part of state administration is crooked and undermines the efforts of the good guys in the same state administration, it must be OK to buy them). If however they do not take steps to avoid buying the   artefacts involved the dealers and middlemen are facilitating, encouraging and perpetuating this corruption. Here, corruption in a favourite antiquities source country cost lives. We all of us should be concerned to stamp it out, not exploit it. 

Anyway, Egypt can now say goodbye to a good deal of its tourist revenues for a while. The present Egyptian government came to power declaring that this would stop terrorism. The problem seems to be escalating.