Op-Ed Contributor Something There Is That Doesn’t Love a Wall Tsafrir Abayov/Associated Press By REECE JONES Published: August 27, 2012 In his poem “Mending Wall,” Robert Frost challenges that truism that “Good fences make good neighbors.”
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know What I was walling in or walling out, And to whom I was like to give offence. Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, That wants it down. Over the past decade, some of the world’s leading democracies built walls and fences on their borders. The United States, India and Israel — often respectively described as the world’s oldest democracy, the world’s largest democracy, and the most stable democracy in the Middle East — built 3,500 miles of walls and fences; enough to stretch all the way from New York to Los Angeles. All three countries contend that they are walling out terrorists. The Israeli government officially calls their wall the “anti-terrorist fence.” In congressional debates about the U.S. Secure Fence Act of 2006, supporters repeatedly linked the fence to terrorism, as Representative David Dreier said, “I hate the idea of our having to put up a fence. The fact of the matter is we have no choice. We have no choice because this week, as we marked the fifth anniversary of Sept. 11th, we are in the midst of a global war on terror. We face the threat of someone who would like to do us in coming across our border.” In 2012, however, the war on terror is winding down. Osama bin Laden is dead. Many suspected Al Qaeda leaders have been killed or captured and are being held indefinitely in U.S. prisons. Suicide bombings in Israel effectively stopped at the end of the Second Intifada in 2005. Although these walls and fences are among the most visible remnants of the war on terror, whether they are effective at preventing terrorism is debatable. First, as Michael Chertoff, then the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, stated in 2007, “I think the fence has come to assume a certain kind of symbolic significance which should not obscure the fact that it is a much more complicated problem than putting up a fence which someone can climb over with a ladder or tunnel under with a shovel.” The current secretary, Janet Napolitano, made a similar observation in 2005 when she was the governor of Arizona: “Show me a 50-foot wall and I’ll show you a 51-foot ladder at the border. That’s the way the border works.” Second, walls are expensive to build and maintain. The U.S. government estimates that each mile of fencing on the Mexican border will cost $20 million over the fence’s 20-year life span. The Israeli and Indian barriers cost several billion dollars each. In all three countries, the barriers were among the largest infrastructure projects of the past decade. Third, none of these three border security projects completely enclose the border. The U.S. fence only covers one third of the Mexican border, the Israeli project is two thirds done, and the Indian fences mark approximately 80 percent of the Pakistan and Bangladesh borders. Finally, there is always legitimate cross-border traffic. The U.S.-Mexico border is the most crossed in the world. In Israel, there are tens of thousands of settlers who live on the Palestinian side of the wall but demand easy access back to Israel through checkpoints. India built hundreds of gates in their fence on the Bangladesh border to allow farmers access to lands on the other side. All of these legitimate cross-border movements provide cover for others who want to immigrate, smuggle contraband, or carry out an attack. Indeed, all of the Sept. 11 hijackers entered the U.S. with valid visas through airports. What, then, is the long-term impact of these expensive and apparently ineffective border walls? The answer lies in Frost’s concern about whom the wall might offend. For those on the Palestinian side, the massive concrete wall, double the height of the Berlin Wall, symbolizes the violence of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank. For the large Muslim minority in India, the barbed wire symbolizes the scars of partition and marginalization. For Latinos in the United States, the fence in the desert symbolizes America’s discriminatory immigration laws. The walls have become emblematic of America’s, India’s and Israel’s exclusionary policies rather than their ideals of freedom and democracy. Good fences make good neighbors? Maybe we should take a different line from Frost’s poem: “There where it is, we do not need the wall.” Reece Jones is an associate professor of geography at the University of Hawaii and the author of “Border Walls: Security and the War on Terror in the United States, India and Israel.” A version of this op-ed appeared in print on August 28, 2012, in The International Herald Tribune. _______________________________________________ assam mailing list [email protected] http://assamnet.org/mailman/listinfo/assam_assamnet.org
