For several decades the international system has seen a concern about the so-called North-South divide. This divide encompassed a gap between the advanced industrial world and the so-called third-world that encompassed Latin America, Africa, and much of Asia. In more specific terms it was an economic gap, best indicated by a much lower standard of living outside of Europe and North America.

Even before the end of the Cold War, the Mediterranean saw increasing numbers of illegal immigrants, asylum seekers, and refugees from war zones coming from the Middle East, North Africa, the Indian subcontinent, and of course Sub-Saharan Africa. Hundreds of thousands of refugees began crossing the Mediterranean fleeing from war zones, civil wars, and of course last but not least economic conditions that were not acceptable anymore given the opportunities that people in Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America saw in the advanced industrial democratic world. This gap was compounded by the fact that the demographic growth in Africa, the Middle East and South Asia was not economically sustainable. Rising expectations saw then millions of people trying to move into Europe. In 2019 alone, 2.7 million immigrants from non-EU countries entered the EU.

As refugee and immigration crises in the European Union have shown neither national governments nor the European Union institutions have been able to develop a systematic or coherent approach in dealing with constant conflicts in the Middle East or Africa. The end of the cold war had welcomed the idea of peace in our time, but as Samuel P. Huntington prophetically outlined in his essay and eventual book The Clash if Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, the international system was going to see a constant conflict between the secular democratic Euro-American world and as it turned out, the Islamic and Chinese world. The wars in the Persian Gulf, the Near East and the rise of Islamic terrorism in Africa, Europe and Asia followed the traumatic attack by a handful of radical Islamic terrorists on New York. By 2021 the consequences could be seen through the American retreat from Afghanistan. That country had been the breeding ground for the attacks on New York. The United States, Britain and other Western countries came to be humiliated by the Taliban’s victory. 

The Taliban victory in Afghanistan saw hundreds of thousands more refugees trying to enter Europe principally through Turkey and Belarus. Radical Islam wrote a new chapter in the history of the Islamic world. 

The constant international crisis that precipitated a flow of immigrants and refugees to Europe demonstrated increasingly the inability of the European Union and the United Kingdom to resolve an issue that challenged in the final analysis European culture, European economic wellbeing and societal sustainability. The rise of political parties that articulated the apprehension, fears and anxiety of widespread strata of the European population accepting non-European and Islamic newcomers, legal and illegal in France, Spain, Italy, Belgium and Germany for example, were symptomatic of future political instability. The inability of European countries to agree on common policies of protecting European borders and even developing a defensive mechanism outside the framework of NATO speaks of structural deficiencies in European strategic decision making.

Immigration was in the final analyses fueled by demographic growth in   Africa, the Middle East and South Asia. Governments in Europe were unable to respond to the increasing expectations of the populations of those regimes. The population of Egypt had reached by 2020 102.3 million, Pakistan 220.9 million, Bangladesh 164 million, Ethiopia 115 million, and Nigeria 206.1 million; these are examples of what Europe was going to face. Increasing mass communications and transportation allowed millions of people to enter Europe. 

European governments seem unable to coordinate a policy that could cope with the increasing movement of people from the developing world towards Western Europe and North America. The issue of illegal immigration was of concern to many societies in Asia, Latin America, and Africa to the extent that economic concern lead many people to move from one nation to another. For example, the case of Bangladesh stands out, hundreds of thousands of Bangladeshis were moving into India generating social, economic and social conflicts. And in the case of Africa, millions of people were moving across the continent with spill over into North Africa and Libya. In turn, hundreds of thousands of Africans were trying to cross the Mediterranean into Italy, Spain and Greece to reach the promised land: the European Union.

The sustainability of such movements did not and does not seem to concern international organizations and NGOs that were and are interested in bringing refugees to Europe. Inevitably, the issue of settling refugees, providing employment and preventing cultural clashes was the subject of much debate but with no solution in sight.

Critical debates on sustainability and climate change did not necessarily address themselves to the catastrophic problem of population growth and food supplies. In fact, the reluctance of some countries such as India, Indonesia and China to comprehend the anxieties of industrial states and European and North American activists was to be expected. Beijing, Delhi and Jakarta were by far more concerned with their populations and their standard of living. Rising expectations could not be postponed because they could be a cause of political instability. The demand for fossil fuels was not decreasing as energy was crucial to the creation of a higher standard of living for hundreds of people in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

Immigration is bound to be the biggest challenge for the European Union and Britain. Illegal immigrants from the Middle East were coming to France to cross the channel as others were trying to come through the Italian peninsula to enter Switzerland and Germany. The soft underbellies of the European Union, Italy, Spain and Greece continue to be so. Countries such as Belarus and Turkey use the movement of immigrants into the European Union as a tool for gaining concessions from Brussels and individual European countries. The president of Turkey Erdogan had been successful earlier (in 2015) in gaining financial support from the European Union and Germany to stop the flow of Islamic immigrants into the continent. Hundreds and thousands of refugees from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan could become a great tool for gaining concessions from the European Union and single European states whose power is becoming ever more marginal. 

The trend in international conferences shaped by Western powers and NGOs on climate change, sustainability, energy and food security, and human rights should be understood in the context of an overwhelming demographic shift that does not seem to enter into the political calculus of Western decision makers and their constituents. 

Recent political events in the Maghreb with the so-called “Arab Spring” have had major consequences on the Sahel region. Popular uprisings began with Tunisia in December 2010, before spreading to Libya, Syria and Egypt. Most significantly for the Sahel region were the outcomes of the uprising in Libya which remove Muammar Gaddafi from power with the support of a NATO air campaign. In spite of its military success, the operation contributed to a certain extent to the further destabilization of the Sahel region through the proliferation of weapons and the influx of fighters. In fact, the fall of Gaddafi brought an increase in jihadist enlistment and weapons smuggling from Libya, reinforcing AQIM’s strength therefore favoring the Islamist destabilization of northern Mali. In fact one of the blatant outcomes in the region of the collapse of Gaddafi’s regime was the influx of combatants and of weapons in this already traffic prone area. Reports indicated that Tuareg tribesmen who served under Gaddafi’s rule returned to Mali loaded with weapons and desires of independence from Bamako.[2]

In January 2013 Islamist extremist groups including Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) took control of major towns in the north of Mali while ousting Tuaregs – their former allies- and managed to progress south. Responding to a Malian request, France intervened[3] to roll-back Islamist fighters to the north of the country. At present, the situation remains unstable with a weak agreement between Bamako and Tuaregs and report of violent incidents. The exclusively military strategy in the Libyan conflict failed to take into account the specificity of the country – which was a tribal system – and of the Sahel region –political vacuum and weak borders.

Separately, in Central African Republic, the governance, political, economic and social crisis ended up causing sectarian violence. In March 2013, a Muslim rebel alliance from the North, the Seleka feeling betrayed by the central government in Bangui ousted President François Bozizé. Although the conflict was not religious initially, attacks by Seleka forces on the Christian population have brought about a division between Muslims and the Christians. At this stage, France supported by an UN Security Council Resolution[4] launched a military intervention in CAR aiming at protecting population and stabilizing the country[5]. Following the French intervention, Seleka fighters were pushed back to the north but by that time the cycle of revenge and hatred was underway with the formation of anti-Balaka[6] militias to protect the Christians. Recent reports by the NGO Amnesty International expressed concerns about ethnic cleansing taking place.[7]A backlash is feared in the north-east while the Seleka might get support from Nigeria, Mali and Chad. An internationalization of the conflict in CAR is not to be ruled out as the Organization of Islamic Cooperation is sending fact-finding mission,[8] while, Al Qaeda is blaming France for the attacks on Muslims[9] and might use it as an excuse for further involvement in the country.

Due to transnational movement of terrorist, CAR can be now seen as belonging to the wider AQIM area of influence which stretches itself from Mauritania to the Horn of Africa. Facing the dilemma of being accused either of neo-colonialism or failing to protect population, on February 25, 2014, Paris voted the prolongation of the military operation in CAR. To recall, in 1994 France has been accused of playing a role in the Genocide of Tutsi in Rwanda. Some reports suggested that the French knew that a genocide was in preparation but did not react to protect the endanger population. Twenty years after the genocide, the trial of Pascal Simbikangwa who is suspected of being accomplice in the genocide[10] might shed the light on the role of France during the genocidal conflict.[11]The shadow of Rwanda has enshrined the Responsibility to Protect (R2P)[12] in the French military’s thinking as regard to its politics toward its former colonies.

In the light of recent events, both Mali and CAR are facing difficult security issues that in spite of different roots might split the country along religious lines. It is worth mentioning that Nigeria –the richest and most populous country in the region- is the symbol of actual division in Western Africa with the Jihadist group, Boko Haram[13]coming from the north and mostly targeting Christian populations. The weakness of their governments, their inability to fight poverty, secure control of its resources and borders has major consequences on the stability in the region. Restoring security then fall back into the hand of former colonial power, France, whose socialist government, while struggling with tight budget at home, has undertaken two major military operations in the region since it came to power in 2012. France has been, however accused of neo-colonialism especially in CAR which possesses important natural resources. As regard to Mali, France is blamed for being at the origin of the security crisis in Mali because of the military approach that was adopted in Libya. Aside, from the strictly military strategy, its alliances are pointed out. Indeed, Chad took part in the military intervention in Mali, while the country itself is subject to many tensions and while later in CAR, Muslim Chadians have been accused of supporting Seleka fighters against Christians.[14]France should also reevaluate its relations with states such as Qatar that is known for giving financial support to Islamist terrorist groups in the Sahel, groups that France is fighting on the ground.

To conclude, although, operation Serval in Mali was seen at first as a rapid military success, the international community is rather reluctant to invest in the stabilization of the country, peacekeeping forces is at the moment insufficient and France is already involved in another military operation in the CAR whose risk of sinking is much higher than in Mali. Military interventions are yet to be included in a wider strategy. Problems in Sahel are transnational and interlinked. Only a global strategy for the entire region encompassing the various actors could provide some progress in the security sector.

Rather, the limits of extra-territorial crisis management is demonstrated by the variance of the stated intent of the Alliance’s North African and Middle-Eastern partnerships and the results on the ground. Clearly, the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative and the Mediterranean Dialogue cannot have intended to trigger the current instability, where the flow of goods and natural resources through the Suez Canal and from Libya in particular are put into question. Yet, Allied Command Transformation’s (ACT) General Mieczyslaw Bieniek has not hesitated to qualify these partnership schemes as successes when he spoke at the Conference for Defence Association’s annual meeting in Ottawa, on 25 February 2011. On the other hand, if, like the NATO Secretary General has alluded to in a speech to the Georgia World Affairs Institute on May 9, this was the intention all along, and that Libya remains the “exception”, then the future of partnerships can be seriously be put in doubt when it comes to other venues. First, the “targeted” partners will feel ill at ease if the past experience has resulted in unwanted regime change. But I do not believe this is the actual intention from the part of the Alliance. One has to be careful with official rhetoric, and the desire to gloss over the inability of those partnership mechanisms to produce the required predictors for policy-makers. Second, and more likely, it is the members themselves who will be less attracted with the idea of rejuvenating partnerships, not because they have not produced the expected results (indeed, in many bureaucracies, the expected result is simply to pursue an activity regardless of whether it has the desired effects, or any effect at all).

Like a UN mission determines a NATO mission degree of effectiveness, the value of partnership schemes is wholly dependent upon the value perceived by the Allies, and depends on the enthusiasm displayed by members and partners alike in Committees and Board meetings. Absent this enthusiasm, the promises of partnership will remain hollow. If the North Atlantic Council and individual allies do not see a benefit, such initiatives are non-starters regardless of the rhetoric that gave them birth. There are reasons to doubt the validity of future partnership with countries geographically removed from NATO’s area of operations (such as Brazil or China) towards a “comprehensive partnership policy.”

First, there is the common fiscal pressure felt by all Allies, the very pressure that requires a “consolidation” alluded to in the Lisbon Summit Declaration (point 2). Also, many of the new Allies who had to compromise on the content of the actual Strategic Concept will not be keen on diverting the organization’s attention away from matters of crucial importance to them when the time will come to issue the sort of political guidance that makes the concept real in practice. Here, one can certainly read the Baltic States (and perhaps even Poland’s) insistence that the Alliance generate a real contingency plan reminiscent of the detailed documents aimed at preparing against and deterring the Soviet Union during the Cold War, and possibly elevating non-traditional security issues (such as cyber- and energy security) to the level of universal risks. This, the Alliance has already demonstrated it was not ready to do, but plans have been promised, and if anything, the States concerned are sure to provide their input within the Alliance structures. Hope springs eternal for small powers.

A third reason impeding enhanced partnerships has to do with organizational and bureaucratic change. There is a movement afoot set on rationalizing the organization’s manpower, and in addition, the current Secretary General has highlighted several transformation drivers; enlargement, France’s return to the integrated command structures, the standing up of new headquarters and the Secretary General’s own preference, that of a gender-balanced workforce. These drivers will significantly occupy the attention of the delegations, international and military staffs. With fewer spaces to fill, and with more stringent criteria to meet, the manning of the organization will represent a factor of contention, because multilateralism represents an opportunity for influence, if one is well represented in numbers and positions. The allotment of international and military staff positions, the negotiations over office space, all the while giving women their rightful presence in the HQ will create stress. A new trend will emerge where a greater balance will be achieved between the presence of founding member States and new member States, giving the former less influence. As several representatives of founding (or old) member States have lamented, some new members (especially the less powerful ones) are less interested in the good of the Alliance than in leveraging the organization and the more powerful allies for the benefit of their own national interests. This is at variance with the spirit of NATO which exists for the benefit of all members.

An example of this bureaucratic change is the creation of the Emerging Security Challenges Division (ESCD) stood up in August 2010. Its launching seems to codify the Alliance’s acceptance of new risks and challenges as given. This is not untrue, as the Lisbon Summit Declaration made clear, but this does not necessarily mean that the North Atlantic Council will allow operations to be carried out in defence of energy security. NATO is careful to limit consideration of energy security to the impact it has on the supply of internal NATO forces in petroleum, oil and lubricants (and not on the supply of individual member States).

The ESCD exists because some allies find value in it, but this does not mean that the issues discussed therein will become politicized or militarized. Although new challenges do exist, the Alliance is not necessarily willing to consider a more muscular posture automatically. For one, certain threats are not State-based, or appear not to be State-based. Second, the inter-connectivity of issues, and interdependence more generally means that vulnerability is not always situated within the Alliance’s geographical (or legal) area of operation, and third, intervention further afield may mean that the particular interests of a member are adversely affected. For example, it is well known that Canada does not want to see NATO in the Arctic. The politicization of energy security may mean that the Beaufort Sea could become a NATO lake, with detrimental effects on Canadian-Russian relations.

The efforts at consolidation and rationalization at NATO will likely impact future enlargement prospects. One can expect future enlargement to South East European countries (Bosnia and Macedonia) to be delayed if not resisted in the mid-term. For one, the dispute between Greece and Macedonia over the latter’s name is still not resolved, and Greece may be able to trade a resolution to this dispute for further European goodwill to bail it out of its disastrous financial situation. But one should not count on this to happen any time soon. There is clearly enlargement fatigue. This will not prevent Macedonia, for one from offering forces to the ISAF mission in proportions far greater than is reasonable even for greater powers. This is a recognized tactic to earn NATO’s good will; deploy lots of troops in tough places to legitimize the mission, and trade this presence for future membership. In this way, NATO has lost control over the enlargement agenda. This explains the recent members’ heavy participation, in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the approach is being reproduced by Macedonia in Afghanistan. Let us be clear then, that the deployment decisions of candidate countries have less to do with the desire to meet NATO’s mission objectives, and more to do with their own national objectives of NATO membership. This explains difficulties faced by the Alliance in Afghanistan; on the one hand certain countries offer caveats, and on the other, countries with limited capabilities, but with great enthusiasm, engage in theatre but for purely national reasons.

It would be logical then to expect the Alliance (especially founding members) to be hesitant to enlarge any further. Not only would this mean that they would lose more relative influence, but it would also dilute further the Alliance’s capabilities to respond, as a new batch of national interests is included in the planning and guidance of the organization.

In addition, the security and financial situation in Europe is conducive on the one hand to a certain degree of isolationism, and on the other to a desire to protect the European Union and the Eurozone’s integrity. In this light, any move to strengthen NATO’s part in a full spectrum of security activities (even disaster management) away from what the EU can support may meet with some measure of opposition. Enlargement fatigue is also attributable to the failure of integration (understood as the adoption of the norms of behaviour of the dominant group). Witness Hungary’s curbing of the freedom of the press, the Baltic States’ limitations of minority rights, Albania’s internal instability, and one sees that NATO has been unable to enforce the MAP conditions that were sine qua non to membership and shape the new membership’s “like-mindedness.”

Currently, the Alliance is a collection of countries negotiating their preferences and seeking agreement as to what proportion of effort will meet what category of threat, as if the failure to reach consensus was the biggest threat. If NATO is to maintain its relevance, it must not only establish its priorities straight, but they must be established against the commonly perceived and objectively perceived threats in evidence. It must furthermore re-open the debate on the funding of security guarantees and the Allies, old and new, must make their niche capabilities available to all.

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Lecturer, Ionian University
written by Dr.William Mallinson, May 24, 2011 

FYROM (not ‘Macedonia’, as the author calls it) has no right to statehood (particularly while it insists on stealing Greek history as part of its very shaky and partial identity), let alone membershiop of NATO. The only reason it is desperate for NATO membership is because it wants to be a US base and client state. Its politicians are even more corrupt than in Albania and the Greek neo-Ottoman cleptocracy. As for NATO enlargment, let us remember that the US’ and UK’s motive, apart from establishing themselves in the Balkans and making more billions for arms company shareholders, is to weaken putative European joint defence, i.e. the CFSP (not the NATO-dependent ESDP, or whatever the PR people are now calling it).Only a few years ago, the discredited UK Defence ‘minister’, Geoffrey Hoon, said that NATO would be the only defence organisation for Europe.Long live Dominique de Villepin’s plan to again leave the integrated military strufture of NATO!NATO is a big threat to world peace, because it CONSUMES security, rather than create it.

“But this is of course only half of the story. At least two other issues need to be addressed to do justice to the idea of walls. One of them is, who is making the decision why a wall is needed and secondly, what is it that is to be kept at bay.”

As is well known, there came a point in the history of humanity when humans moved from a nomadic lifestyle, giving only limited shelter, to a more settled one. This is known as the Neolithic Revolution. People settled down after having learnt the secrets of agriculture, which relieved them of the need to move to where the food was. At this point, house walls began to appear. But it soon did not become enough to secure only one house. Larger, collective areas begged for protection. The idea of a wall was consequently transplanted onto whole villages, then cities, then kingdoms. Even today, humans are fascinated by walls; witness only the masses of tourists visiting the Great Wall of China. Its length of over 1400 miles gives ample proof of how insistent this idea of walls had become already around the time of Christ.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/38/GreatWall_2004_Summer_4.jpg/800px-GreatWall_2004_Summer_4.jpg

A few centuries on, it was the Roman emperor Hadrian who built his wall as a part of the Roman border fortifications, also present in other countries under Roman rule.

Hadrian’s Wall

http://www.hadrians-wall.org/%5CUploads%5CGallery%5C23.jpg

Below a picture from the German fortifications known as Limes Germanicus which from 83 to 260 AD kept the German tribes out of Roman territory

© B. Efinger

(http://www.limesprojekt.de/bilder/limes5a.jpg)

With these walls at the latest, it is not the forces of nature the emperors feared, it is other humans, variously called Barbarians hordes, Mongols, and/or one or many Other(s).

In more recent times, and with further social differentiation, walls became more frank about their double edged meaning: to keep people inside (think prisons or indeed Pink Floyd’s The Wall (1980), which described pupils trapped inside an inhuman education system ) or to keep them out (think the walls of Jericho or Troy). They have also become familiar as memorials (e.g. the Vietnam War memorial in Washington DC) and in religious rituals (e.g. the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem). Other walls have taken on an even more metaphoric meaning, sometimes even against themselves. Who remembers that Wall Street, the bastion of Anglo-American capitalism, had originally been erected by the Dutch settlers of New Amsterdam against the British? (cf. www.crossculturedtraveler.com/archives/JUL2004/Lead_Story.htm)

The fascination with walls continues unabridged. Especially the older walls of human collective memory are being well preserved. Partly because of cultural reasons, partly because of tourist dollars. More recent walls still fueled by individual memories are also aging. Upon a recent business trip to Belfast, I was amazed at the peace walls and murals which I visited for the first time. Even there, work was carried out on the walls. They are a living memory and are being steadily rejuvenated. Here we find the uneasy connection between art, politics and security. Below a few pictures of the Shankill road wall, at once giving living proof of the continuation of protest and good wishes and giving witness to the fact that it might be in need of aesthetic improvement.

(© briel 2009)

(© briel 2009)

And indeed this is what is being done. Starting in April 2009, Belfast ‘peace walls’ gets a makeover,

Photo: PA

(http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2009/0422/breaking32.htm)

Other, “private” murals are in better shape, as the very famous one below.

(© briel 2009)

On the Republican side, a number of newer murals have also appeared, with older ones being redone.

(http://www.sapphiccentral.com/uploaded/image/Travel/IRA%20protest%20wall%20article1_ne

Several memorials have also been erected, as the one below.

The Falls Memorial Garden, Belfast

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/80/224380653_feffcc517e.jpg?v=0

What is not visible from this particular photograph is that the houses next to the Memorial garden and bordering on the wall, have cages over their gardens for fear of hand grenade attacks. And indeed it was the reality and possibility of such attacks which prompted the Belfast authorities to raise the height of the wall with a tall fence on top of it, thereby making it significantly higher than the Berlin Wall.

The Berlin Wall itself was a hotly contested wall. Built by the German Democratic Republic in 1961, it was hailed by its builders as “anti-fascist protection wall”. Conversely, the West viewed it rather as a prison wall and as part of the Iron Curtain. In 1989 it finally emerged from its notoriety when it fell and became a symbol of freedom and artistic expression.

http://p3.focus.de/img/gen/k/Z/HBkZauRo_Pxgen_r_467xA.jpg

But that was 20 years ago, and now it needs a facelift just like its Northern Irish pendant.

http://p3.focus.de/img/gen/q/9/HBq9Lu5l_Pxgen_r_700xA.jpg?http://p3.focus.de/img/gen/q/9/HBq9Lu5l_Pxgen_r_1100xA.jpg?

http://p3.focus.de/img/gen/q/9/HBq9Lu5l_Pxgen_r_1300xA.jpg

Especially the famous East Side Gallery, located on the Eastern side of the wall. While there had been murals and graffiti on the Western side of the wall practically from the beginning, it became an art object only after its fall.

True to German thoroughness, the individual pieces of the wall are being restored and then repainted by the original artists. It is hoped that this work will be finished by the 20th anniversary of the fall of the wall on 9 Nov. 2009.  In many ways, the focus has shifted in this instance from what the wall represented to the representation on the wall. Perhaps not the worst way to deal with it.

http://www.morgenpost.de/berlin/article1073183/Berliner_East_Side_Gallery_wird_aufpoliert.html

http://www.morgenpost.de/multimedia/archive/00208/sei_Mauer_Bohrer_BM_208030b.jpg

Returning once again to the Peace Wall of Belfast, there is a particular stretch at the end of it enlisting the following names: Israel, Palestine, Shankill, Falls, Berlin, Baghdad and Nicosia. This is of course the Who’s Who of recent walls. What interests me here in particular is the city of Nicosia, of which I have become a recent inhabitant.

(© briel 2009)

(© briel 2009)

Nicosia features its own walls and separations. Archeologically, it is most famous for the Venetian walls, a massive city wall built by the Venetians and defining its architectural circumference.

http://www.planetware.com/i/map/CY/nicosia-map.jpg

Here it can be seen from the ground in the difference between multilevel buildings and older single or at most two-storey buildings.

(© briel 2009)

More recently, it is its political partition which has grabbed the headlines, leaving it as the only remaining divided capital of the world. To ease matters somewhat, on 3 April 2008 the Ledra Street/Lokmaci border crossing was opened, after two walls on both sides had been demolished. This gave freer access to both Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots weighing to cross over to the other side.

Ledra Street

http://www.unficyp.org/cache/cfx_imagecr3/f047d9cf499ee8daed9497340c7e9ed6.jpg

Yet, it seems humans still can’t do without walls. And while we appreciate the historicities of fallen walls, e.g., Hadrian’s or that of the Great Wall, and while we celebrate the more recent fall of walls, such as the Berlin Wall, we know that the separation in people’s heads will take much longer than the demolition of the material construction. We have not ceased to fear and new walls are still going up. Take for instance the wall Israel is building on its borders with the West Bank and Gaza.

Abu Dis wall

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/64/AbuDisWall.jpg

Or think about the recent further fortifications of the Ceuta wall between the Spanish enclave and Morocco.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0d/Frontera_Espa%C3%B1a-Marruecos%2C_por_Ceuta.jpg

One can and should also think of the wall continuing to be built between the US and Mexico, in its length rivaling the Great Wall. A recent poll indicated that the majority of Americans is in favour of it http://www.globalsecurity.org/security/systems/mexico-wall.htm) and have not learnt to apply Ronald Reagan’s famous exhortation (“Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” (1987)) to their own country. Incidentally, Gorbachev did heed Reagan’s advice and much of Europe prospered because of it.

http://s.ngm.com/2007/05/us-mexican-border/img/border-wall-615.jpg

The aesthetics of these pictures might try but fail  to hide the abject human suffering encountered at these borders, with close to 5000 deaths on the US-Mexican border from 1996-2008 (according to the Mexican Comisión Nacional de los Derechos Humanos (CNDH) (http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/notas/463596.html), or the close to 1000 deaths along the German – German border with 267 deaths on the Berlin wall alone from 1949 to 1989 (http://www.13august.de) , or the 11 people killed in only one week in September 2005 on the Ceuta wall which is quickly becoming Europe’s new Wall of Shame (http://www.spectrezine.org/europe/Paley.htm). Or the thousands of people killed in the Cyprus conflict along newly created borders, including the disappeared (the disappeared is of course another group which are oftentimes impacted by such barriers. They are a global phenomenon happening at any and every wall, be it in Nicosia, in Belfast or elsewhere. (cf. “Timely words for Disappeared”, Belfast Telegraph, 6 April 2009 p. 24)

Walls then were and remain physical manifestations of psychological states, allegedly erected to keep the other at bay. But what they really are supposed to deter is not the other, but the Other in ourselves. Walls are not just archeological points of interest, but they are scars. As such, it seems quite schizophrenic to attempt to give such scars a facelift, since giving a scar a rejuvenational facelift means opening it up again. Yet these facelifts are still necessary. We just have to be aware of the fact that such facelifts also work against closure. They are a reminder of a particular conflict, but their meaning goes deeper. They remind us that we have still not learned to trust each other. And as long as humans do not recognize this fact, walls will continue to go up and will continue to separate us, from each other and from ourselves.

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International Relations Student

written by Albert Anderson, June 16, 2009 

A really deep and in the same time simple look which has covered one of the most interseting concepts in the world politic problems. Great pice of writing and amazing pictures.
Wish to read more of the same kind.

A.Anderson

The Trouble with Walls: Do They Enhance Security?
written by A. Fragkis, July 30, 2009 

Walls, by and large, are built not to enhance security. They are created to prevent the opressed from free ideas. History, as the author of this contribution graphically displays, is full of walls. Walls that are typically followed by the distruction of the means to get knowledge. The burning of books, the sensorship of the press, and the prevention or restriction of information is no more that the building of yet another wall….