3/29/2024
Today from Hiiraan Online:  _
advertisements
The Business of Walling the Borders

Ahmed Daahir
Saturday, October 24, 2015

 The 800 km border that Kenya wants to construct a concrete wall


advertisements
Walls that was built between the countries were not new, the Romans built in 2nd century, china built the great wall, During the cold war Berlin wall was built to divide between east and west Germany, now the federal republic of Germany, also the Israel, acting in the name of security, has built barriers to separate itself from the Palestinian territories in the West Bank and Gaza.

Recently the number of border walls started to grow up and flourish in the different corners of the world despite the emerging of the new area of globalization which is an era in which the global system undermined national borders and all borders were softened because of international financial interdependence.

They say that the world is now a global village but it seems that this world is becoming a walled world where barriers are separating neighbor from neighbor without existing mutual respect.

Below are some of the walls that are in place and those that are in the pipeline. This illustration will show that the world is no longer the world that Dr. Martin Luther king and all those peace loving people were dreaming.
-    Spain     –        Morocco
-    Israel        –     Palestinian
-    Hungry     –     Serbia
-    France     –     United kingdom
-    S.Korea      -    N.Korea
-    US         –         Mexico
-    Iran         –       Pakistan
-    India          -     Pakistan
-    India         –     Bangladeshi
-    Malaysia     –  Thailand
-    Brazil     –        Paraguay
-    Kenya     –       Somalia

Building a wall is not anoble idea and it’s mostly a domestic political reason but there are factors that are encouraging the construction of new partiers along the borders, the most common factors could be summarized as follows:-


Ø    Ethnic Tensions
Ø    Influx of Mass migration
Ø    Deterioration of the global security
Ø    National rivalries
Ø    Border disputes
Ø    Increase of human trafficking and other illegal issues
Ø    Land grapping


All those factors and others are the main ones that some of the Nations made an excuse, but the question is, does the idea of construction of walls work? According to the experience gained from the multiple fences and concrete walls it’s become clear that no barrier could hinder determined people who want to cross a border badly enough will find creative ways to circumvent a wall or fence.

Walling the Kenya – Somali Border

The focus of this paper is the wall that the government of Kenya is going to build at the border between Kenya and Somalia. According to the government officials say that the intention of walling the border is for Security but a lot people in the horn of Africa believe that the main intention is land grapping, invasion of Somali territory, Marginalizing and discriminating the ethnic Somalis, blocking the trade between border communities, disconnecting the family ties of certain homogeneous communities, Feeding of a nationalistic sentiment of “ US v Them” and at last taking advantage of the weakness of Somali Government due to the long internal conflict in Somalia, 

It’s also widely believe that the excuse of security reason is only a secondary thought in which the Kenyan government wants to divert the attention of its people by showing that:-


-    It’s winning the hearts and minds of the people showing that their government is doing something to prevent the intrusion of Al-Shabaab.
-    It’s doing an effective counter terrorism strategy
-    To prolong the life of Jubilee government in the next election
-    The wall will legitimize critical voices against government.
-    With this scheme the government wants to milk donors to have a lion’s share of the huge amount of Anti-terrorism money.
Building a wall at the border is not something that a country could dream in a night and erect it on the next day, it requires a lot a preliminary preparation and consensus with the neighboring country,it seems that the government of Kenya acted unilaterally and neglected all the following international procedures of doing such a sensitive barriers.
-    No joint feasibility study showing the negative or the positive impact of constructing a wall was done.
-    No consultations with the Somali government had been done
-    No debate of parliamentsof the concerned governments had taken place
-    Even there were no face to face meeting between the neighbor

 History has offered us an important lesson that building walls are expensive and we know where the economy of the Kenya is now, there are a lot other priorities to dumb this amount of money like enhancing the lives of those that reside in Kabira Slums instead of constructing an expensive 800 km wall that will not improve the lives of the Kenyans.
Previous walls, that of Israel’s – Palestinians and the demolished wall of Berlin had not solved their objectives and still the problems exists and intensified. So I will conclude that erecting a wall between Kenya and Somalia will only pour oil to the already troubled water of Kenya and Somalia and even will increase the cycle of Violence at the border areas.

Author: Ahmed Dahir ,He can be reached at [email protected]



 





Click here