DIVIDED THEY FALL: FRONTIERS, BORDERLANDS and STABILITY in NORTH AFRICA Introduction Smugglers and Migrants
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Divided they fall Frontiers, borderlands and stability in North Africa Matt Herbert and Max Gallien Smuggling has historically been a solution for Maghrebi states, ensuring stability in often marginalised areas. This has changed in recent years, with increasingly securitised policies being put in place. These policies have had a significantly negative impact on borderland communities, leading to heightened unemployment, crime and migration. NORTH AFRICA REPORT 6 | DECEMBER 2020 Key findings Historically, contraband commerce (the securitised, owing to rising transborder smuggling of food, fuel, clothes and people) violence and European efforts to buttress has been a solution for Maghrebi states, offering border security and limit migration. a means of enhancing stability in sometimes The Maghreb’s borderland communities face fractious borderlands. growing unemployment, crime and migration The security strategies of Maghrebi governments as a result of these policies. tacitly enabled contraband activities, as long as People living in border regions have sought these dealings remained under the observation of to adapt and respond, although the informal and control of the state. sector in the region’s border areas remains in In recent years, Maghrebi government approaches a state of crisis. have become increasingly zero-sum and Recommendations Maghreb states and partner countries should: Evaluate the border development and Understand the social and economic drivers security strategies applied so far, with the of smuggling in the COVID-19 environment. aim of building on successes and adjusting approaches that have proven inappropriate to Ensure that institutional reforms are put in place the specific context. and develop community policing capacity. Coordinate better on border security and Combine border security with bolstering civilian sustainable development issues. institutions to increase participatory local governance and state-sponsored, cross-border, Donor states should: people-to-people diplomacy and dialogue, Engage with borderland communities and rather than relying on security institutions other stakeholders in designing and assessing as the dominant state representatives border security and management initiatives. in borderlands. Routinely review and assess the success of Better combine security and development border security programmes. assistance. Economic development strategies for borderlands should be based on substantiative Endeavour to better coordinate aid efforts input from borderland communities. in Maghreb. 2 DIVIDED THEY FALL: FRONTIERS, BORDERLANDS AND STABILITY IN NORTH AFRICA Introduction smugglers and migrants. However, there has been far Times are bleak along the Algeria–Morocco border. The less discussion and analysis on whether the hardening region has long been economically marginalised, with of borders in the region have in fact enhanced the overall few livelihood options for youth on either side of the security of citizens and stability of states. frontier. For decades, however, Algerians and Moroccans This report analyses the complex and evolving issue. It leveraged the border itself as a resource, earning their begins by describing the nature of cross-border flows livelihoods by smuggling a variety of goods between the and movement in the region. Next, it details traditional two countries. strategies states have used to address border security, In 2014 this began to change. The governments in and how those strategies are changing. Finally, it Algiers and Rabat began to tighten border security, examines how changes in border security in the region erecting walls and deploying surveillance systems, as have impacted economic opportunity, social relations and smuggling came to be construed as a security threat. conflict in the borderlands. It looks at how borderland Since then smuggling has dropped dramatically, putting communities have adjusted to changing situations, how large numbers of smugglers out of work. ‘[State officials] this has impacted stability in those areas, and whether talk about security and sovereignty,’ lamented one the downsides outweigh the benefits. Moroccan youth, ‘but here [on the border] we are just This report forms part of an Institute for Security Studies under pressure.’1 (ISS) special project on migration and border security The general increase in border security over the last few issues in North Africa. It builds on reports published years has been magnified by the COVID-19 pandemic. In by the ISS in 2016 and 2020 on cross-border irregular the spring of 2020, the Algerian government reacted to migration and border security sector reform efforts. the spread of the virus by further securitising its borders The report is based on a large number of interviews with Morocco, Tunisia and the Sahelian countries to its conducted between 2016 and 2020 in Algeria, Morocco south.2 Border communities and small-scale smugglers and Tunisia with border community members, smugglers, again bore the brunt of the impact. civil society representatives, government officials and international observers. The Maghreb is, famously, one of the The field research was complemented with an least economically integrated regions analysis of existent literature and media reports on the phenomenon.3 Information released by the governments in the world of Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia was also analysed. It is important to note that such information – especially Dynamics on the Algeria–Morocco border are not unique. statistical information – is rarely an objective indicator Across the Maghreb (Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria) of change. Seizures in particular fluctuate substantially borders have hardened in recent years, and the informal based on changes in smuggling volume and the intensity movement of goods that long characterised these of law enforcement, or simply increased transparency by borders has increasingly collapsed. regional governments. These new approaches to border management differ substantially from the traditional border control strategies Connective borders and integrative flows employed by regional states. Maghrebi states largely The Maghreb is, famously, one of the least economically tolerated certain illicit flows in order to mitigate social integrated regions in the world. Official trade from frustration, head off unrest, and gather intelligence on Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia tends to flow north and more nefarious cross-border actors. south, with relatively little movement east or west.4 Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia have construed their This can be attributed, in part, to the politics of borders, hardened border security strategies as a success, with many of the region’s frontiers closed or movement regularly releasing information on the arrests of across them subject to significant restrictions. Algeria’s NORTH AFRICA REPORT 6 | DECEMBER 2020 3 border with Morocco, for example, has been shuttered over the last decade. The uprisings in Tunisia and Libya since the 1990s, while those with Libya and Mali, were in 2011, and the conflict in Mali in 2012, have played an closed in the wake of the attack on the Tiguentourine important role in shaping the regional smuggling patterns natural gas facility in 2013. While Tunisia’s borders with that define the present moment. Libya has never been permanently shut, security fears Economic drivers of cross-border contraband progressively compressed licit trade since 2011. At its core, for most of those involved, smuggling in the Yet this image of the region misses the robust, illicit Maghreb is an issue of livelihood.9 There is a wide variety cross-border commerce and contraband that flows lateral of participants in the contraband trade, from the leaders of across the Maghreb. Fuel from Algeria is sold in small large smuggling networks, to low-level drivers shuttling illicit shops in Tunisia; Algerian goods are readily available in fuel, to young women porting small amounts of contraband north-western Morocco; kitchenware from Morocco is by hand through official border crossings. What unites them common in the markets of western Algeria.5 is their use of the trade for income. This income stream is particularly central in the borderlands The situation here is catastrophic, with of Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia, precisely because a lack of development, employment these areas are often economically underdeveloped and and agricultural investment marginalised.10 This underdevelopment is, in part, a result of long-term national development policies, which have tended to focus on urban and littoral areas.11 Events at one node in the region’s contraband networks can generate impacts far afield. When in 2016 Islamic In Tunisia, for example, the country’s first two presidents, State raided the Tunisian border city of Ben Guerdane – Habib Bourguiba and Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, directed most which hosts important black market currency exchanges, development focus to the country’s coast, with only limited 12 smugglers and money changers – those involved in the assistance for the border areas or interior governorates. informal economy in Algiers reported impacts.6 ‘Going from border to coast, culturally, economically, socially, it’s a different world,’ explained one citizen in the Tunisian While localised disruptions can affect, and in some cases town of Le Kef. ‘There are jobs there, there is comfort.’13 impede, the region’s contraband economy for limited amounts of time, they underscore that Maghrebi states Historic underdevelopment remains salient today.