Friday, July 24, 2015

Border walls rise across Mideast as jihad threat shakes nations

Border walls rise across Mideast as jihad threat shakes nations

tunisian-army
Will the UN denounce these security barriers as “apartheid walls”? Or does only Israel come in for such treatment?
“Border walls rise across Mideast as jihad threat shakes nations,” Bloomberg News, July 23, 2015:
CAIRO — As they confront the rising threat of modern jihadist violence, many of the nations most at risk are retreating behind one of the oldest forms of defense.
Tunisia became the latest to invest in a border barrier after dozens of foreign tourists were killed in two attacks by Islamist militants trained in neighboring Libya and armed by smugglers. The fence and watch towers ordered by Prime Minister Habib Essid will for now stretch 100 miles inland from the coast along the most vulnerable stretch of the shared frontier.
From Morocco to Saudi Arabia, boundaries are being fortified at a rate not seen since the months following the Sept. 11 attacks.
Most walled region
“The Middle East and North Africa is now the most walled region in the world,” said Said Saddiki, a professor of International Relations and International Law at Al-Ain University of Science and Technology in Abu Dhabi. They range from “fences inside cities to antimigrant walls and separation barriers to counterinsurgency” barricades, he said.
The builders have often been spurred by fear of Islamic State, after its conquests in Iraq and Syria and the group’s ability to inspire Muslim extremists elsewhere, or concern over failed or failing nations next door. The jihadist group has built its own walls to fend off attackers and keep people from escaping, including around the Iraqi cities of Tal Afar and Mosul. Syria’s embattled government has placed concrete shields around areas of government support in Homs….

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