Egyptian security experts suspect that a wall being constructed by Libya will be ineffective in stopping terrorists and arms smugglers at Libya's porous eastern border with Egypt.
Col. Miloud Jawad, the undersecretary general of the Interior Ministry of the Libyan Interim Government based in Tobruk, announced on Jan. 21 that the ministry had started building a wall at its eastern border crossing with Egypt, Mosaid, to preventing the infiltration of militants and combat drug trafficking and other smuggling operations across the border.
The Libyan security directorate announced in a Jan. 20 statement that it signed a contract with Libyan company Al Noor & Al Amal to construct a wall just one kilometer long on its eastern border with Egypt. There is no coordination with the Egyptian authorities on the project.
The chaos gripping Libya since the NATO-backed overthrow of its long-serving leader Moammar al-Gadhafi in November 2011, following an uprising against his regime, has posed a mounting threat to Egypt's national security. In the absence of a functioning Libyan state, Egypt's western border with Libya has become a hotspot for the smuggling of arms and the infiltration of militants across it. On Sept. 28, 2018, the Egyptian air force destroyed 10 vehicles loaded with arms and explosives that crossed into Egypt from Libya.
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