Build that wall! Barriers back 30 years after Berlin Wall

Razor wire is again stretching across borders, dividing people and creating barriers: both physical and cultural

PARIS: When the Berlin Wall came tumbling down 30 years ago, many hoped its demise portended an end to barriers between borders and isolationism.

But with United States (US) President Donald Trump's planned wall on the border with Mexico, the West Bank "separation barrier" and Hungary's anti-migrant fence facing Serbia and Croatia, manmade partitions are going up again.

A photograph of a graffito reading: "Where's my file?" is seen at the entrance of the former headquarters of the Stasi (East German communist secret police), in Berlin (Photo: AFP)

"Edifices of fear, both real and imaginary, are being constructed everywhere," the Transnational Institute, an Amsterdam-based think-tank, wrote in its "Building Walls" report last year.

The fall of the Berlin Wall, a Cold War structure erected in 1961 to separate Soviet-allied East Berlin from the democratic West, was met with jubilation by Germans and millions of others dreaming of cooperation and openness in a more globalist and liberal world.

Torn Stasi documents earmarked for destruction after the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989 are seen in the former headquarters of the Stasi (East German communist secret police), in Berlin (Photo: AFP)

But the optimism and idealism of 1989 were "short-lived," said Alexandra Novosseloff, a senior researcher at the International Peace Institute in New York.

"Walls are still there and have multiplied. There are more today than 30 years ago," she told AFP.

Not only physical walls but also political and legislative ones are rising.

The United States and some European countries have been taking an ever-harder stance against migrants, and Brexit is the result of citizens choosing to leave a barrier-free European Union created exactly to put an end to the continent's recurrent, bloody conflicts - often over border disputes.

Torn or shredded Stasi documents earmarked for destruction after the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989 are seen in the former headquarters of the Stasi (East German communist secret police), in Berlin (Photo: AFP)

Bruno Tertrais, deputy director of the Foundation for Strategic Research in Paris, argues that globalisation has, somewhat ironically, fuelled a resurgence of nationalism.

After the initial rush of freedom, many people started worrying that too much openness was putting their national identity and values at risk.

Large photographs showing east Germans crossing into West Berlin through the Bornholmer Strasse/Boesebruecke checkpoint, the first border crossing to be opened during the fall of the Berlin Wall on the evening of November 9, 1989, are on permanent display as part of a memorial near the bridge (Photo: AFP)

Then everything changed on September 11, 2001.

It was really after the terror attacks on the United States, Tertrais said, that "barriers started to multiply."

Raphael Bossong of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs in Berlin said the post-9/11 war on terrorism "fuelled a sense of paranoia and erosion of political freedoms".

Andreas Falge, one of the sands of East Germans who crossed into West Berlin through the Bornholmer Strasse checkpoint on the evening of November 9, 1989, poses next to a photograph taken that very evening, which forms part of a memorial near the Boesebruecke (Boese bridge) which straddled the border (Photo: AFP)

"By the late 2000s, economic shocks, rising inequality and a growing political backlash against globalisation led to a resurgence of nationalism in the West," he wrote in a blog entitled "New Walls I: Militarizing Borders in Europe" for the Bertelsmann Stiftung research foundation.

"The resurrection of physical borders has taken on outsized symbolic importance."

In this file photo taken on April 29, 1984,West Berlin various graffiti are seen on the Berlin Wall (Photo: AFP)

Elisabeth Vallet, a political analyst at Canada's Universite du Quebec a Montreal (UQAM), said she had counted "70 to 75" border walls built or being built around the world, compared to 15 in 1989.

Placed end to end, the world's existing walls would stretch over 40,000 kilometres (25,000 miles), Vallet said - enough to cover the circumference of the Earth and divide our planet into two parts.



Former French diplomat Michel Foucher, author of "The Return of Borders," argues that the vulnerability many people feel in the face of globalisation has caused them to welcome more state protectionism, and by extension, more walls.

The wall serves as "a metaphor, it is supposed to calm our fears," Foucher said.

For Vallet, author of "Borders, Fences and Walls - State of Insecurity, "at a time when populism is growing fast, a wall is a quick solution that a populist government can quickly exploit."

In this file photo taken on November 11, 1989, WestBerliners crowd in front of the Berlin Wall early as they watch East German border guards demolishing a section of the wall in order to open a new crossing point between East and West Berlin, near the Potsdamer Square in Berlin (Photo: AFP)

As the migration flows from south to north continue, more and more walls are seeking to keep foreigners out.

"Member states of the European Union and Schengen Area have constructed almost 1,000 km of walls, the equivalent of more than six times the total length of the Berlin Wall, since the nineties to prevent displaced people migrating into Europe", according to the Transnational Institute.

This file photo taken on November 11, 1989 shows a West Berliner preparing to hand over a FRG flag to East German Vopo policemen through a portion of the fallen Berlin Wall near the Brandenburg Gate (Photo: AFP)

In spite of their growing popularity, however, there is little evidence of their efficiency, Vallet said.

"They do not, for example, halt the trafficking of drugs, most of which enter the United States through border crossings," he told AFP by email.

"What is clear is that the ever-changing role of borders serves as an indicator for the health of liberal democracy," Bossong said.