Walls between Cultures

Walls demarcate frontiers, deter predators, and protect people and their families and possessions. Stone walls punctuated by towers and gates have surrounded cities in the Middle East and North Africa since biblical times, when fortifications were often built in concentric rings and outlined by a ditch or a moat for added protection. Walls were a prominent feature of many medieval and early modern cities; from Baku to Delhi to York to San Juan, visitors still relive a past when constant vigilance and strong defenses were a feature of daily life by walking these walls.

In their empire-building days, the Romans erected walls to keep out barbarians. Much of one of their best-known efforts, Hadrian’s Wall, is still standing. Built across northern England at its narrowest point, the wall was intended to serve as a barrier to large, swift enemy troops and to block small parties of raiders. Protection was afforded by ditches on both sides of the wall and by troops garrisoned in forts at intervals along its length. It was briefly superceded as a boundary marker of Roman imperialism by the Antonine Wall 100 miles (160 km) to the north, across southern Scotland; this subsequent effort was abandoned, however, after a revolt by lowland tribes forced a withdrawal of Roman forces back to Hadrian’s Wall.

The longest and most famous defensive wall ever constructed, the Great Wall of China, was built in the 3d century B.C. along China’s northern boundary. Rubble, tamped earth, and masonry sections were intended to thwart Mongol and Tatar raiders. In the succeeding century, China confirmed its supremacy in central Asia by extending the wall westward across the Gobi desert. The establishment of safe caravan routes, known as the Silk Road, soon followed, bringing Western traders to the market towns that grew up around the gates of the Great Wall and facilitating the exchange of cultural practices, knowledge, and ideas as well as material goods. Some historians contend that the Great Wall of China was also an indirect cause of the fall of Rome: the Mongol hordes repulsed by the Great Wall crowded the Visigoths, leading the latter to invade Roman-occupied lands.

Walls are still built to bolster security and effect segregation during times of political upheaval. Morocco, which has occupied Western Sahara since 1976, emphasized its intent to annex the former Spanish colony by constructing a 1,550-mile (2,500-km) wall of sand, barbed wire, and land mines along the length of the border with Algeria. Besides enclosing approximately 80% of Western Sahara, including most of its towns, mineral resources, and coastal fisheries, the wall isolated guerrillas pursuing self-determination for Western Sahara from their alleged constituency, the Saharan tribes now living inside the wall under de-facto Moroccan rule.

The summer of 2002 saw the beginning of yet another wall. Israel, a nation already set apart from its neighbors by religious and cultural differences, began construction on a proposed 215-mile-long (345-km-long) fence along its border with the Palestinian West Bank, the goal of which is to stop suicide bombers from entering Israel. This unilaterally determined border, if completed, may reduce the number of terrorist incidents, but its impact on long-term peace in the Middle East remains to be seen.

Modern-day warfare has made fortifications such as walls considerably less effective at keeping out intruders; however, the issues of peace and security remain pressing. Attempting to achieve protection by building a wall may now be compared to living in the eye of a hurricane—that is, living under a transient and dangerous illusion of calm and tranquility. Perhaps today, a more effective strategy might involve tearing down barriers to understanding rather than building walls.