Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (C) heads a weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem on Jan 13, 2018. Source: AFP
ISRAEL has slammed Malaysia’s decision to ban the participation of Israeli athletes in international sporting events hosted by the Southeast Asian nation, saying the decision was inspired by Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s “rabid anti-Semitism”.
The Jewish state’s complaint came after Malaysia’s banned Israeli citizens from competing in the World Para-Swimming championships this coming July.
Israel is the only country with which Malaysia does not maintain diplomatic relations.
Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon called on the organiser, International Paralympic Committee, to change the venue if Malaysia does not rescind the ban.
“This is shameful and totally opposes the Olympic spirit,” he said in a statement, as quoted by Reuters.
“Israel condemns the decision, inspired no doubt by Malaysia PM Mahathir’s rabid anti-Semitism.”
The 93-year-old Dr Mahathir has long been a vocal critic of Israel over the latter’s occupation of Palestinian territories, leading to claims he was an anti-semitic premier.
The swimming competition in the eastern state of Sarawak will be held between July 29 and Aug 4 and involves swimmers from 70 countries.
This picture taken on Jan 17, 2019 shows the controversial Israeli separation barrier separating the Palestinian West Bank village of Eizariya (foreground) and Jerusalem (background). Source: AFP
The event is seen as an important milestone in the run-up to the Tokyo Olympics next year.
In a statement, the International Paralympic Committee said it was “bitterly disappointed at the stance of the Malaysian government”, adding its governing board would discuss the matter at a meeting in London next week.
Last December, thousands of protestors in Malaysia and Indonesia took to the streets over Washington’s decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
Palestinians have been on a decades-long struggle to establish East Jerusalem as its capital, which was captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East War.
On Wednesday, Malaysian Foreign Minister Saifuddin Abdullah said Cabinet decided Malaysia will not host any programme or event which involved Israeli participation.
The decision also involved not allowing representatives from Israel to enter this country for any event, either of international level, sports or any other programme, according to the New Straits Times.
“Before the new government, it was learnt three cabinet meetings were held with important decisions made regarding Malaysia and Israel ties.
“In regards to the cabinet’s decision made two weeks ago, I can say it is the most firm (relating to Malaysia and Israel ties),” he said.
Locks of hair shorn from the heads of men and women have become a common sight on the streets of Sudan in the past month. They were cut by members of the security forces from the heads of protesters who have been taking to the streets to call for an end to the almost 30-year rule of President Omar al-Bashir.
Those crowds, often chanting their intention to march “peacefully”, have been met with tear gas and live fire that has killed more than 40 protesters, according to rights groups, but also with detentions and beatings - a pattern of harassment and humiliation many young Sudanese say has become widespread.
There have been more than 300 protests against the government since the unrest began on 19 December, according to human rights group Amnesty International, and there have been scores of arrests reported at many of them, with security forces often storming nearby homes to look for sheltered protesters.
Translation: Thank god, today I was released from jail
Abul Wahab Ahmed, 19, told MEE that he was one of those caught and detained by security forces at a protest in southern Khartoum.
“They beat me and many other protesters and then they shaved my head in a really humiliating and barbaric way,” Ahmed said.
“They released me after two hours of detention in their vehicles, dropping me off in the main streets of al-Kalakla where I live,” he said.
Sudanese journalist Bahram Abdul Moniem, who has been arrested twice since protests started, told MEE he has suffered and witnessed the beatings himself.
“I and other journalists were arrested together and beaten together by the security agents. I saw hundreds of young protesters being violently beaten by the security agents.”
The image of severed braids scattered on roads in the capital Khartoum last week has drawn attention to how the security forces have been targeting women.
Sara Daif Allah, 35, told MEE she was arrested in downtown Khartoum alongside 14 other women activists and only released after hours of being beaten and threatened.
“That was a bad experience for me and other colleagues; I was beaten and the security personnel intentionally harassed and abused the female protesters,” she said.
She said she believed women were being singled out to intimidate and discourage them from joining the demonstrations.
Sudanese American freelance editor Sara Elhassan, who has been closely following the protests, said the cutting of protesters’ hair is “a way to degrade and humiliate, and therefore make a person think twice before trying to dissent again.
“For women particularly, it’s dehumanizing because it also plays into societal concepts of femininity and womanhood - women’s hair is an integral part of their femininity, as society would have us believe, and so getting her hair cut off is stripping her of that which makes her womanly.”
She said some women detained by Sudanese intelligence agents have been physically and sexually abused.
“According to eyewitness reports, the women who were attacked by security forces were beaten and had their hair cut in the neighborhood square where the protests were originally taking place, and that’s where their hair was found and photographed.
“This, along with the vicious way that security forces handled the Burri protest, are proof that the NISS [National Intelligence and Security Service] regime wanted to make an example of them.”
Rallying around the dead
Sharifa Ahmed's home has become a rallying point for the protests, as her 25-year-old son, Dr Babikir Abdul Hamid, was one of three who died after being shot on Thursday while providing medical help to injured protesters in the flashpoint Burri neighbourhood of Khartoum.
“The last moment I saw Babikir was on Thursday morning, when he went to work to save people. I told him to take care of himself and he told me ‘don’t worry, the people are been targeted everywhere and we should work to save them’,” she said between tears. She has vowed not to accept mourning and consolation until Bashir leaves ofice.
A friend Abdul Hamid’s told MEE, on condition of anonymity, that he was killed while treating some of the injured.
“We were working in a house to rescue some wounded people and the security officers prevented us from taking them to the hospital. So my colleague Babikir went out of the house to negotiate with them, but one of the security agents shot him in the chest,” said the friend, who is also doctor.
Deaths in custody
Eyewitnesses and activists have told MEE that abuses against protesters and detainees are widespread and the African Centre for Justice and Peace Studies said emergency laws have been used to facilitate the crackdown.
It also raised suspicions about the circumstances of some of the deaths, which happened while in custody.
“Abdul Rahman Alsadiq Mohamed Alamin, an art student at the University of Khartoum, was found in the Nile River. It appeared that he had drowned. His family refused to receive his body until an autopsy was done. It is reported that his body showed clear signs of having been tortured or subjected to ill-treatment,” the centre said in a statement.
The Sudan Democracy First Group human rights organization chairman Anwar Alhaj has called for an independent investigation into the deaths of the protesters.
He said that an investigation already announced by the government was actually formed to cover up the abuses.
“The Sudanese people don’t trust such committees as they have long experience with these government institutions,” he said, pointing to a probe into the killing of 200 protesters during nationwide protests in 2013 that “produced nothing.”
“The Sudanese people don’t trust in the transparency of the justice system in Sudan,” he said.
“We call on the international community and international human rights organizations to impose the highest pressure it can in order to prevent the Sudanese government from committing more crimes against the protesters and to help Sudan to build a real democracy.”
Keith Maxwell, the self-declared “commodore” of the South African Institute for Maritime Research (SAIMR), liked to dress up on special occasions in the garish costume of a 18th-century admiral, with a three-cornered hat, brass buttons and a cutlass. Ordinary members of his organisation were expected to show up in crisp naval whites.
Gathered together in upmarket restaurants, or the quiet of the Wemmer Pan naval base in south-central Johannesburg, they had the air of eccentric history buffs. Maxwell talked about the group’s roots in a Napoleonic-era treasure-hunting syndicate, and told outsiders it was still focused on deep-sea exploration.
But appearances were deceptive. Beneath the bizarre trappings lurked a powerful mercenary outfit that members claim was entwined with the apartheid state and offered soldiers for hire across the continent.
“It was clandestine operations. We were involved in coups, taking over countries for other leaders,” said Alexander Jones, who has detailed his years as an intelligence officer with the group. SAIMR’s leaders described themselves as “anti-communist” to him at the time but the group was underpinned by racism, he said. “We were trying to retain the white supremacy on the African continent.”
And among its leaders’ most dramatic claims was that it was behind the mysterious 1961 plane crash that killed UN secretary general Dag Hammarskjöld and 15 other people.
It is not clear if Van Risseghem, who told a friend he had shot down Hammarskjöld’s plane without knowing who was on board, had any ties to the group. Any command could have come through an intermediary.
But Jones was clear that SAIMR liked to claim ultimate responsibility for killing the UN chief. Photos of the crash site and wreckage, with purported members of the group standing nearby,
featured in a presentation made to potential members when he joined three decades ago, he said.
“They didn’t tell us at that point in time that it was Hammarskjöld; they just said that they had taken out a very high-profile political opponent,” Jones told filmmakers investigating the crash.
Maxwell himself apparently also claimed SAIMR had brought down the plane, in a handwritten memoir about the group that ended up with the family of an SAIMR veteran.
Hammarskjöld’s death came amid a post-colonial race for resources in Africa. A champion of decolonisation, he made powerful enemies with his support for newly independent states and opposition to white minority rule.
On his final flight, he was heading for a secret meeting to try to broker peace in recently independent Congo. The country was on the brink of collapse after its Katanga province – key to national wealth because it held most of the country’s rich mineral deposits – declared independence. Western mining interests backed the rebels.
Jones claims he answered a SAIMR advertisement in a South African newspaper three decades ago and served for several years. He decided to speak out because he felt he needed closure and because young South Africans should know the truth.
“Anybody that resisted any white form of manipulation on the African continent, SAIMR was prepared to go and quell those for a price,” Jones said. “And that is one thing that Dag Hammarskjöld was totally against. He wanted every country for the people of that country. He was killed because he was going to change the way that Africa dealt with the rest of the world financially, and he was a threat.”
Jones was tracked down by the makers of a new documentary, Cold Case Hammarskjöld, who were looking into SAIMR because of documents handed to South Africa’s truth and reconciliation commission by the country’s National Intelligence Agency two decades ago.
Investigators have been working from poor quality photocopies of just eight documents, and for years there were questions about whether SAIMR even existed. In the UK, the Foreign Office suggested the papers were hoaxes planted by Soviet agents in a disinformation campaign, and added that British spies “do not go around bumping people off”.
But South Africa was a known recruiting ground for mercenaries who fought in coups and conflicts across much of Africa over the second half of the last century, from Congo and Sierra Leone to Angola and Mozambique.
And over the years growing evidence of SAIMR as a real, and dangerous, entity has emerged.
Investigative journalist De Wet Potgieter interviewed Maxwell for an article in the 1990s. He took the only known picture of the “commodore”, and also collected a cache of papers from Maxwell.
Those papers included a section of his autobiography and purported lists of recruits for several operations, which the filmmakers used to track down former members. They called dozens, but only two agreed to talk.
Clive Jansen van Vuuren said he spent two or three months training with the group, which he thought had ties to the security forces. “I know it’s linked to the intelligence bureau of South Africa, but we were never given specifics,” he said.
He had kept a certificate that names him as a petty officer and carries the same slightly bizarre emblem as all other SAIMR papers – the figurehead of the British ship the Cutty Sark. But he said he never went on operations.
Jones claims to have had a more senior role, over a much longer period, and describes the group as a powerful militia. “SAIMR was not a Mickey Mouse organisation. We were not just a group of guys that got together in the weekend and decided to go do some military exercises and stuff. That was a living, breathing body,” he said.
He was recruited as an intelligence officer, after serving in a similar position with the South African armed forces, and participated in several operations. “I was definitely in the frontline: operational frontline, hand-to-hand frontline, fighting frontline. Leading operations, if you want to call it that.” Asked by filmmakers if he had killed people himself, he said “yes”.
Jones says he left SAIMR shortly before the advent of majority rule, and destroyed all evidence of his membership.
Maxwell commanded SAIMR the whole time Jones served. A strange character, charismatic and idiosyncratic, he wore naval whites at all times unless he was in his admiral’s uniform, van Vuuren, Jones and Potgieter remember. But he was also extremely dangerous. “If he didn’t like you, and if you posed a threat, he would take you out,” Jones said.
The penchant for dressing up was confirmed by a doctor, Claude Newbury, who met him through anti-abortion advocacy. He told the filmmakers Maxwell invited him to join SAIMR, describing it as a group focused mostly on hunting for lost treasure. At a private dinner, they had something “a little bit like a ceremony – he had dressed up like an admiral in the British navy from 250 years ago, with a tricorn hat, and a cutlass, and a naval uniform with lots of buttons.”
He also confirmed that Maxwell was involved in violence in South Africa, forcing a doctor who was performing abortions to leave the country.
“He went down and visited this Dutch abortionist and said to him, you are not welcome here, and killing of babies is an unacceptable pastime, and for the sake of your health I advise you go back to the Netherlands. Which apparently the chap did.”
South Africa’s former head of military intelligence, Tienie Groenewald, appears in some of Maxwell’s papers. In an interview recorded before his death in 2015, he claimed he had never heard of SAIMR but remembered meeting the “commodore”.
He described Maxwell as an intelligence operative with suspected links to foreign spies, who wanted to meet him in the dying days of apartheid to discuss an armed uprising to block the advent of democratic rule. Maxwell offered both men and arms, claiming “he had resources, to use violence, and to supply weapons, and so on and so forth”.
Although Groenewald said he declined the offer, he described Maxwell as the credible leader of a mercenary group. “He appeared to be someone who was in authority … He obviously had a background in intelligence,” he told the filmmakers. “I couldn’t prove it but I was convinced that he was financed and directed by MI6.”
Groenewald, who had served as air attache at the South African embassy in London, added: “After spending three and a half years in Britain, you get to know some people involved in the intelligence field. And certain of the names which are mentioned in our discussions were familiar to him.”
Dag Hammarskjöld, photographed in 1953. Photograph: AP
Maxwell died in 2006, but a lurid account of his life and SAIMR ended up with relatives of an ex-recruit, who shared them with the filmmakers. The handwriting matches other documents written by Maxwell and its authenticity has been attested to by Jones. Maxwell had already handed a few dozen pages of a memoir to Potgieter around 1990, and they were repeated in the new cache, but it also included over 100 pages of new material.
Some sections on SAIMR included episodes that he may not have personally witnessed – by his own account he did not join the group until 1964 – and there are some names and details are altered. Still, the episodes are described vividly, from the perspective of an eyewitness.
And one details the alleged plot to bring down Hammarskjöld – an account which matches the plan laid out in the papers revealed by Tutu. “This operation has to be arranged as an accident or a heart attack,” the commodore of the time tells his team. “Without any pathologist throwing a spanner in the works and making Dag and his colleagues into martyrs.” He asks for three workable plans to take out the UN chief.
Maxwell does not say what these were, but details a technician loading a bomb into the wheel well of Hammarskjöld’s plane in the Congolese capital Léopoldville (now Kinshasa) with a beating heart, and his frustration at watching it take off without the bomb exploding.
The memoir switches back to SAIMR’s planners, sitting round a table later that evening, disappointed by the failure of the bomb. But according to the truth and reconciliation commission’s papers, SAIMR then dispatched an “eagle” to target Hammarskjöld.
In Maxwell’s account, just as the commodore tells them to get some rest, there is a knock at the door. “A lieutenant entered, saluted and handed a slip of paper to the commodore. ‘What’s this? Oh my God, it worked’.”
Göran Björkdahl and Calla Wahlquist contributed reporting
Europe has ended the careers of many a Tory prime minister. If Theresa May can’t forge a deal that carries a majority, she could send the party into the political wilderness.
A 'Leave Means Leave' sticker on Westminster Bridge near the Houses of Parliament on Jan. 18, in London, England. (Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)
BYVERNON BOGDANOR|
On June 23, 2016, British voters decided by a margin of 52 percent to 48 percent that the United Kingdom should leave the European Union. Since then, British politics has been convulsed by the referendum’s repercussions. Some Remainers do not accept the finality of the vote. The margin, they argue, was too narrow to provide a mandate for fundamental change, while some of the arguments that persuaded voters to support Leave were mendacious. The hope that Britain could, in the words of then-Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, have its cake and eat it has proved misplaced.
The hope that Britain could, in the words of then-Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, have its cake and eat it has proved misplaced.
If, to alter the metaphor, one leaves a tennis club because one does not wish to pay the subscription and does not like the rules, one will not be able to continue to use the tennis courts on the same basis as the members. Therefore, some Remainers conclude, there should be a second referendum, to discover whether the British people still wish to leave the European Union.
The European issue is difficult for Parliament to resolve for two reasons. The first is that May’s government holds only a minority of seats—317 out of the 650—in the House of Commons, meaning it must rely for its narrow majority on the 10 members of parliament from the vehemently pro-Brexit Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) of Northern Ireland. But, perhaps even more important, both the Conservatives and the opposition Labour Party are internally divided between Remainers and Brexiteers. That division reflects a geographical and cultural division in the country.
The large cities, together with Scotland and Northern Ireland, welcome globalization and are relaxed about the EU’s principle of freedom of movement. They voted to remain. But smaller towns and older manufacturing areas, in which many feel left behind, are hostile to globalization and freedom of movement, which, they argue, have kept wages down and put undue pressure on public services. These areas supported the Leave campaign.
Parliament has enacted that Britain will leave the EU on March 29. After long and tortuous negotiations, Prime Minister Theresa May in November 2018 secured a deal with the EU. That deal comprises a legally binding withdrawal agreement providing for a transition period until December 2020, during which Britain will remain bound by EU rules while negotiating the final relationship. The pattern of that relationship is outlined in a nonbinding political declaration that hints at an outcome in which Britain could negotiate independent trade agreements, while also providing it with some degree of frictionless trade with the EU.
May’s cabinet, despite internal tensions between Remainers and Brexiteers, accepted the deal. But the Tories’ DUP allies were fiercely opposed to it, as they claimed that it might separate Northern Ireland from the rest of the United Kingdom by preventing a hard border with the Irish Republic and potentially creating a customs border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom.
The deal was also opposed both by Brexiteers in the Conservative Party, who claimed that it tied Britain too closely to the EU, and by Remainers—primarily Labour, but also Liberal Democrats and Scottish Nationalists—who argued that it allowed for too many barriers to the export of goods and services to the EU. This coalition of incompatibles imposed a crushing defeat on the government motion to accept the deal on Jan. 15. Just 202 MPs supported it, while 432 rejected it.
A defeat of this magnitude is unparalleled in Britain’s parliamentary history. No fewer than 118 Conservatives, mostly hard Brexiteers, voted against the deal, with just 196 Conservatives supporting it. And many of those who voted for it had no choice. (Because approximately 100 Conservative MPs are ministers or on the government payroll, they were duty-bound to support May or resign. This means that a majority of Conservative backbenchers were opposed to the deal.) May’s defeat, in what was arguably the most important parliamentary vote in Britain since World War II, creates a moment of acute danger for the prime minister, the government, the Conservative Party, and the country.
A harder Brexit to placate Conservative rebels would alienate Conservative Remainers. Conversely, a softer Brexit to win support from the opposition parties would increase the number of Conservative rebels.
The hope was that the deal could unite Brexiteers and Remainers. Instead it has driven them further apart. A harder Brexit to placate Conservative rebels would alienate Conservative Remainers.
Conversely, a softer Brexit to win support from the opposition parties would increase the number of Conservative rebels. Indeed, there may be no deal that could hold the Conservative Party together; an alternative could end the cabinet truce and possibly lead to the disintegration of the minority government, with a general election to follow.
It has happened before. In 1979, the Labour minority government led by James Callaghan disintegrated in this way, in part because Labour was internally divided on the issue of devolving power to Scotland. Then, in 1951, Clement Attlee’s Labour government, which enjoyed a majority of only five, disintegrated because the party was internally divided between left and right. In both cases, long periods in the opposition followed.
The vote also creates a moment of danger for the country. Since Parliament has already approved a bill stating Brexit will occur on March 29, that is the default position. The exit date can, admittedly, be extended with the agreement of the other 27 members of the European Union. But those countries may be unwilling to agree if the only reason for extension is that MPs, 30 months after the referendum, still cannot make up their minds. In any case, an extension would only postpone the dilemma. It would not resolve it.
Unless Parliament passes new legislation—and there are now fewer than 40 sitting days before March 29—Britain will leave the EU without a deal. That is regarded by most commentators as disastrous, since it would mean that EU customs duties and, even more disadvantageously, an intimidating host of EU regulations would be imposed on British exports. It would no longer be as easy to send goods from London to Paris or Frankfurt as it is to send goods from London to Edinburgh.
The Jan. 15 vote showed what MPs are against. But there seems to be little agreement on what they are for. Theresa May is now seeking consensus through all-party talks, although she has not yet budged on her so-called red lines, namely that Britain should leave both the European customs union (in order to pursue an independent trade policy) and the single market (to avoid allowing free movement of people and the jurisdiction of EU courts). And the opposition parties see no reason to help her. Labour is unwilling to allow its deep internal divisions to be publicly exposed by articulating a clear alternative policy. It seeks not consensus but a general election to remove the Conservatives from power. The Liberal Democrats seek a second referendum, while the Scottish nationalists seek to exploit the government’s difficulties to further the case for independence. There is no obvious resolution of the problem that could secure majority support.
There is no obvious resolution of the problem that could secure majority support. Were Britain to remain in the EU’s customs union, it would be unable to sign independent trade agreements. Were it to remain in the EU’s internal market, it would have to accept freedom of movement. Yet control of immigration from the European Union was one of the main motivations behind the Brexit vote.
At this point, there seem to be just three alternatives. The first is May’s deal, perhaps in a slightly modified form. The second is for Britain to leave the EU without a deal; even though most MPs are against a no-deal Brexit, they find themselves unable to agree on an alternative. The third is for Parliament throw the issue back to the people in a second referendum, even though the prime minister has so far opposed such a move, and its advocates cannot agree on the question to be asked. Finally, given that the country remains almost evenly divided, a second referendum would not necessarily resolve the conflict.
The issue of Britain’s place in (or out of) Europe has arguably destroyed five of the last six Conservative prime ministers—Harold Macmillan, Edward Heath, Margaret Thatcher, John Major, and David Cameron. It may be about to bring down another.
Vernon Bogdanor is a professor of government at King’s College, London. His book Brexit and the Constitution will be published next year. In 2019, he will be giving the Stimson lecture at Yale University on the consequences of Brexit for Britain and the European Union.
20 Jan 2019
“Stealing brexit.” “Hijacking” the will of the people. There’s been fury about Remainer MPs’ attempts to allow parliament to dictate terms to the government over Brexit.
Remainer MP Dominic Grieve is one of those under fire for proposing an amendment that would allow rebels to take control of parliamentary business. If a motion for debate is backed by at least 300 MPs – just 46 per cent of the total – and those 300 MPs include ten Tories plus representatives from at least four other parties – then it would be the first item of business the next day in the Commons.
We speak to Dominic Grieve and the Labour MP about their plans to delay the UK’s departure, and we also speak to Brexiteer and Children’s Minister Nadhim Zahawi.
by Eric S. Margolis -
`Good fences make good neighbors,’ wrote American poet Robert Frost. But not according to President Donald Trump whose proposed Great Wall is supposed to protect the nation from hordes of rabid, murderous, drug crazed rapists and unwhites from south of the border.
I’m a life-long student of military architecture, with a particular passion for modern fortification, chief among which is France’s own Great Wall, the magnificent and unfairly reviled Maginot Line.
Given the heated debate in America over Trump’s proposed barrier along the Mexican border, it’s worth looking back to the Maginot Line. It was supposed to have been France’s savior after the bloodbath of World War I.
Proposed by Deputy André Maginot in the 1920’s, the Line was supposed to cover key parts of France’s frontiers with German and Italy. Due to the terrible losses of the Great War, France did not have enough soldiers to properly defend its long frontiers. So it made sense to erect fortifications to compensate for manpower weakness and to block surprise attacks from next door enemy forces.
The first large Maginot fort was built in the 1920’s north of Nice to protect the Cote d’Azur from possible Italian attacks. Mussolini was demanding France return the Riviera coast to its former Italian rulers. Work on the principal Line along the German and Luxembourg borders began soon after. Phase one covered 260 miles from near the Rhine to Longuyon, a rail junction south of the Belgian border.
The Line consisted of hundreds of steel and concrete machine gun and anti-tank casemates with interlocking flanking fire. They were surrounded by upright rails designed to halt tanks and dense belts of interwoven barbed wire covered by machine guns. Artillery casemates with 75mm, 81mm and 135mm guns covered the fort’s fronts and sides.
Within and behind the Maginot Line were based an army of specialized fortress troops and hundreds of field artillery guns. The era’s most advanced electronic communications systems meshed the defenses together. The big forts were mostly buried 90 feet underground, proof from any projectiles of the era.
But the problem was that a wall or barrier is only effective so long as there are adequate troops to man it.
In the spring of 1940, France had deployed nearly a third of its field army behind the Maginot Line. But then the Germans staged a brilliant breakthrough north of the Line across the supposedly impenetrable Ardennes forest region. In 1938, a French parliamentarian named Perrier (from the French water family) had toured the Ardennes area and warned the military that it was very vulnerable to a German breakthrough. The generals scoffed at ‘this civilian’ and ignored Perrier’s warning.
Sure enough, the German armored and infantry assault came right through this Ardennes weak point near Sedan, forcing a rapid retreat by French and British forces in the region that ended up at Dunkerque.
As outflanked Allied forces pulled back from the frontier, they exposed the northern flank of the Maginot Line. The French high command, fearing their armies around the Line would be encircled, ordered the interval forces to retreat towards the highlands of central France. The Line was thus denuded of its troops and artillery. These units, who were armed and trained for static defense, had to make their way cross country on foot. Most were captured en route by advancing German forces.
In spring 1940 the Line was unfinished with large gaps and open flanks due to budgetary constraints caused by the 1930’s depression. The Germans drove through them, wisely avoiding most of big forts, and attacked the Line from the rear. Ironically, in 1944/45, German troops ended up defending the Maginot Forts from the advancing US Army.
The Line worked as planned, protecting vulnerable areas. But it was never extended to the Channel due to Belgium’s high water table and reluctance to fortify behind the French ally. The Belgians believed their powerful forts near Liege would delay the Germans until the French Army could intervene. They were wrong.
The French public ascribed almost magical powers to the Line. It would keep them invulnerable they believed. Building the fortifications became a national works project during the Depression, rather like the US WPA labor program. But Adolf Hitler vowed he would go around the Line and chop it up. He did.
A Trump wall or barrier will cost far more than believed and be likely unfinished, with large gaps like the Maginot Line. Some better way of blocking the border must be found. If not, we may end up having to wall and garrison the Canadian border as well.
Dag Hammarskjöld, photographed in 1953. Photograph: AP
