Before I built a wall I’d ask to know/ What I was walling inor walling out,/ And to whom I was like to give offence./ Something there isthat doesn’t love a wall,/ That wants it down.
Over the past decade, some the world’s leading democraciesbuilt walls and fences on their borders. The United States, India and Israel “often respectively described as the world’s oldest democracy, the world’slargest democracy, and the most stable democracy in the Middle East “ built3,500 miles of walls and fences; enough to stretch all the way from New York toLos 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, supportersrepeatedly linked the fence to terrorism, as Rep. David Dreier said, “I hatethe idea of our having to put up a fence. The fact of the matter is we have nochoice. We have no choice because this week, as we marked the fifth anniversaryof Sept. 11, we are in the midst of a global war on terror. We face the threatof someone who would like to do us in coming across our border.”
In 2012, however, the war on terror is winding down. Osamabin Laden is dead. Many suspected al-Qaida leaders have been killed or capturedand are being held indefinitely in U.S. prisons. Suicide bombings in Israeleffectively stopped at the end of the Second Intifada in 2005. Although thesewalls 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 theDepartment of Homeland Security, stated in 2007, “I think the fence has come toassume a certain kind of symbolic significance which should not obscure thefact that it is a much more complicated problem than putting up a fence whichsomeone can climb over with a ladder or tunnel under with a shovel.” Thecurrent secretary, Janet Napolitano, made a similar observation in 2005 whenshe was the governor of Arizona: “Show me a 50-foot wall, and I’ll show you a51-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 barrierscost several billion dollars each. In all three countries, the barriers wereamong the largest infrastructure projects of the past decade.
Third, none of these three border security projectscompletely enclose the border. The US fence only covers one third of theMexican border, the Israeli project is two-thirds done, and the Indian fencesmark 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 aretens of thousands of settlers who live on the Palestinian side of the wall butdemand easy access back to Israel through checkpoints. India built hundreds ofgates in their fence on the Bangladesh border to allow farmers access to landson the other side. All of these legitimate cross-border movements provide coverfor 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 throughairports.
What, then, is the long-term impact of these expensive andapparently ineffective border walls? The answer lies in Frost’s concern aboutwhom the wall might offend. For those on the Palestinian side, the massiveconcrete wall, double the height of the Berlin Wall, symbolises the violence ofthe Israeli occupation of the West Bank. For the large Muslim minority inIndia, the barbed wire symbolises the scars of partition and marginalization.For Latinos in the United States, the fence in the desert symbolizes America’sdiscriminatory immigration laws. The walls have become emblematic of America’s,India’s and Israel’s exclusionary policies rather than their ideals of freedomand democracy.
Good fences make good neighbors? Maybe we should take adifferent line from Frost’s poem: “There where it is, we do not need the wall.”
Reece Jones is an associate professor ofgeography at the University of Hawaii and the author of ``Border Walls:Security and the War on Terror in the United States, India and Israel.''
