More Wok end Fences Going Up Between International Neighbors
WASHINGTON - The Great
Wall snaking across Western
Sahara from Algeria to the
Atlantic Ocean? It has to be a
mirage.
But a 1,550-mile wall of sand and
stone, which took more than five
years to build along the brutal
desert frontier, was completed last
year to defend Morocco’s claim to
Western Sahara (formerly Spanish
Sahara).
“Something there is that doesn’t
love a wall, that wants it down,”
wrote Robert Frost.
Rather than coming down, more
walls - and fences - are going up
along once-open international
borders. And existing walls and
fences (the infamous Berlin Wall
will be 25 years old in August) are
being reinforced and equipped
with the most sophisticated
electronic sensors.
Headlines Tell
Trend
At the State Department, George
J. Demko, director of the Office of
the Geographer, monitors the
phenomenon in the headlines of the
1980 s:
Morocco Tries to Foil Rebels
with 1,550-Mile Wall of Sand
India is Planning to Fence Off Its
Border with Bangladesh
South Africa Building a Wall
Along the Zimbabwe Border
Malaysia-Thailand Border
Fence Cuts Smuggling
“It’s a sign of international
paranoia, an indicator of stress,"
Demko says. “There’s more
movement of people - 8.8 million
refugees crossed borders last year
- more illegal activity, famine,
political insurgency, hostility.
Situations seem to get worse, not
better, but I don’t buy that ‘Good
fences make good neighbors.’”
Indeed, along most of the hun
dreds of thousands of border miles,
there are no barriers between
countries. And where walls and
■vWf 1
BLACK
REP
iBUOW
BLUE
BROWM
uuemsß Birds #re
6/VBN THIS Name because
of m Wft'/THE'/ idem/e
THEIR NESTS TOOETHER.
IHBSB BIRDS TEAR THE
LB BOBS OF REEPS INTO
STRIPS PUD USETNEMTO
WEAVE A BOWL-SHAPED
nest. nay place fiber
ACROSS THE OPENING TO
KBEP TWO OR THREE GREEN
BOSS FROM ROLLING OUT.
fences exist, experts believe they
have been more effective when
erected to keep people in, not out.
Morocco, however, contends that
its great sand-wall strategy suc
ceeded in securing its hold on the
former Spanish colony by keeping
out guerrillas who have fought for
10 years to make it an independent
nation.
By making a movable wall nine
feet high and pushing it farther and
farther into the desert, Morocco
has brought at least two-thirds of
Nevada-sized Western Sahara
inside its massive barrier.
Ultimately the wall is to reach to
the national borders.
Guarded with command posts
every few miles, it is equipped with
electronic sensors and an
tipersonnel radar that can detect a
person more than 12 miles away.
Considered a colossal folly by
some observers when it was begun,
the wall is being studied by
military strategists for its success
in using high-tech tactics against a
guerrilla force armed with
sophisticated Soviet weapons.
Threat in
Subcontinent
India has threatened to seal off
Bangladesh with a barbed-wire
fence. Whether it woulit stop the
flow of impoverished Bangladeshis
is doubtful.
The controversial 2,300-mile
fence was first announced by
Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in
1983 and was to be erected in
stages over five years, starting
with the most troublesome sections
of the border, where violent
protests against illegal im
migration had erupted. Except for
its coastline on the Bay of Bengal
and a short border with Burma,
Bangladesh is surrounded by
India.
To Bangladesh, the idea of the
fence is a national insult. Only a
few symbolic posts have been set
- ' #
PEACH
-
'N.
GREENI
LTBROWKI
Lt BLUE
LT. GREEK!
up so far, and there is some hope
that Rajiv Gandhi’s India may
seek to build better relations in
stead of a fence.
South Africa’s electrified fence,
capped with coils of razor-sharp
wire, was put up last year along
strategic sections of the border to
keep illegal immigrants from
Zimbabwe from crossing over in
search of work.
On the Malay Peninsula, a chain
link fence with dozens of watch
towers stretches across at least 35
miles of Malaysia’s narrow nor
thern border. It is credited with
cutting down on gun and drug
v
»
"vT/Oi
g- 9- 84
The most infamous modern-day barrier dividing the world's peoples was begun 25
years ago to halt a mass exodus from East Germany into West Berlin. The 100-mile long
wail and heavily patrolled “death strip” turned West Berlin into an island inside East
Germany. Today, amid increased international tensions, along other once-open borders,
more walls and fences are going up, most erected to keep people out, not in.
/v«*^
smuggling and communist in- Syria-Israel border and for a few
filtration from Thailand. kilometers into the hinterland is a
One of the most high-tech- single strip...characterized by a
secured borders in the world lies large number of fences, mine
between Israel and Syria along the fields, roads, mounds of earth-fill,
Golan Heights. “The barbed-wire pillboxes, etc., placing the area
fences are so sensitized that a completely under the domination
single wandering sheep could trip of the military and creating an
the devices, and half the Israeli extreme security landscape,”
army would probably converge dn Minghi writes in the February 1986
that spot,” says Julian V. Minghi, issue of The Professional
professor of geography at the Geographer.
University of South Carolina and “By 1985, the security landscape
an authority on international of Israel had reached a peak; it
border regions. now covers more than 50 percent of
‘Security Landscape’ the country,” he reports.
“Along the entire length of the (Turn to Page B 12)
„^5
3
Qj
i
S’
\\
ram— 1
fig
%
I
sisa
'2&-
6