Barrier-building is back
Are
the world’s leaders putting the
“fence” back in “defence”? On Sept. 9, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf made an extraordinary suggestion: that a physical barrier could be constructed along his country’s porous, anarchic border with Afghanistan in order to stem the continual two-way flow of terrorist money, resources and personnel there. Musharraf repeated the offer in New York on Sept. 12, at the outset of a North American visit designed to reassure the Bush administration of his anti-terror credentials and to promote his brand of moderate Islam.
Much of the Canadian press has since lost interest in the pure geopolitics of Musharraf ’ s tour. Not long after his talks with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the President made some ill- considered remarks when asked about his country’s record on women’s rights, claiming that crying rape had become, amongst Pakistanis, a quick ticket to a Canadian visa and prosperity. The journalistic pack’s rush to condemn was justifiable, but then again, rapes and honour killings in Pakistan are not likely to explode any New York subway trains or Toronto streetcars. Musharraf ’ s control over his lawless northwest — the world’s top terrorism factory — might arguably be a matter of more compelling interest to us.
It was jarring to hear an Islamic national leader proposing an international security fence in such a context. It seems Musharraf, who is masterminding a careful thaw in his country’s relations with Israel, has decided to borrow from the Israeli playbook. The debate over the justice of Israel’s famous security fence in the West Bank is endless, but judged strictly by what it was meant to achieve, the barrier has been an astonishing success. It has virtually eliminated suicidebombing attacks from the Palestinian territories across from it, and all but ended the second intifada.
Along his country’s 2,400 kilometre Afghan border, Musharraf faces a problem analogous to Israel’s, if less tractable. Pakistan never has quite succeeded in imposing the rule of law on its mountain tribes, and the border zone provides a convenient redoubt for Taliban irregulars and Muslim travellers fighting Westerners and moderates in Afghanistan. Barbed wire alone isn’t likely to suppress this activity in a place the Pakistani state can’t police anyhow. Moreover, the actual border is technically in dispute. The line currently observed was drawn at the British Colonial Office in the 19th century by one of those clever imperial cartographers whose legacy has been so vexing.
Pakistan and Afghanistan have had nearly six decades to settle the boundary issue, and perhaps they could be persuaded, in their mutual interest, to fence the old Durand Line without formally calling it a border. After all, Israel’s security barrier hugs the “Green Line,” which has much the same nebulous diplomatic status. The real question is whether a better deterrent than barbed wire could be contemplated. Given the terrain, even an ineffective fence is likely to be a tendigit undertaking, far more than Pakistan can afford. But this is perhaps the sort of foreign aid that the industrial democracies might spend in the name of keeping their own cities safe, to say nothing of securing Afghanistan’s emerging democracy.
The United States, in particular, has the necessary treasury and engineering know-how. Which brings up another littlenoted world-news story. Last week the U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, signed a waiver that will allow the completion of the Border Infrastructure System south of San Diego County, along the American border with Mexico. The “System,” leaving aside some fancy lighting and a few filled-in canyons, is basically a tall corrugatedfence 14 miles long. Congress had ordered the construction of the barrier in 1996, and it crawled westward to within three and a half miles of the sea before lawsuits and environmentalists held up the project. Even with the existing gap, the fence is said to have reduced arrests of illegal immigrants in the region by 80%.
The REAL I.D. Act, passed earlier this year, gave Chertoff the executive authority to override the outstanding legal requirements on security grounds and proceed with construction. The Bush administration insists that the San Diego area is a special case, and emphasizes that the U.S. cannot hope to wall out ambitious Mexicans all along its southern border. But ever since the Israelis made a success of sealing off the West Bank, immigration reformers have been able to cite a powerful real-world example of a small, beleaguered country’s ability to take charge of its frontiers. You could almost call it the new muralism — a hardheaded recognition that there are limits to globalization’s power to efface borders, or erase the hatreds and yearnings they symbolize.
National Post
ColbyCosh@ gmail. com