Malaysia’s Border Wall: A Monument to Policy Failure, Not Security
Walls aren’t built of brick and mortar. They’re built of anxieties, yes, but more precisely, of policy failures advertised as acts of nature. Of unaddressed systemic frailties, of a fundamental aversion to grappling with complex, interwoven problems except through blunt, physical instruments — instruments that offer the illusion of control. So when we read that the Kelantan police chief in Malaysia is again pushing for a wall along the border with Thailand, arguing it will combat crime and flooding, we aren’t just reading about a wall. We’re reading a desperate plea broadcast from a system at its breaking point.
According to a story published by Bernama news agency, “Sungai Golok is very narrow. Even with advanced technology, maintaining control remains difficult as it takes only a few minutes for someone to cross over to Thailand.” This isn’t simply a policing problem; it’s a symptom — a high-pitched whine — emanating from a deeper structural dissonance. It is, at its core, a failure to build resilient systems that address the conditions which give rise to the activity the police chief describes.
What kind of failure? Well, for starters, the Kelantan police chief, Mohd Yusoff Mamat, argues the wall would assist in the battle against smugglers. The Bangkok Post reports the state is also aware of human trafficking along the border. Some Malaysians illegally enter Thailand to obtain illicit drugs. But go a level deeper: this isn’t just about policing smuggling. This points to economic precarity, opportunity deserts, and, crucially, chronic underinvestment in the region. Investment not just in infrastructure, but in the very social fabric that makes stable communities possible. And that failure is then compounded by… what exactly? A lack of political will in Kuala Lumpur to challenge entrenched power structures that benefit from the status quo?
Zoom out, and we see the familiar patterns that drive so much of the world’s anxieties around borders. It is the simple math that underpins any economic transaction. The demand in Malaysia and Thailand, paired with a supply constrained by policy (or lack thereof) on either side of the border. So naturally, a market emerges to connect the two via unconventional means. It’s a classic supply-and-demand curve, bent and twisted by geopolitical forces. But it’s also an expression of human ingenuity, rerouted through a policy maze of our own making.
History provides context. Colonial powers drew lines across maps, often arbitrarily, creating borders that ignored existing ethnic, economic, and social ties. The Malaysian-Thai border is no exception. Thailand never became part of the British Empire but ceded territory in the early 20th century that now forms part of Malaysia, laying the foundation for potential cross-border issues, particularly regarding cultural identity and resource distribution. Consider the Pattani Malay people, straddling the border, their cultural and familial ties cleaved by a line on a map, their economic activities often shaped by its very existence. This echoes countless other border disputes around the world. Lines drawn in ink, etched in conflict, and perpetually redrawn by the realities of human connection.
The promise of a wall offers a superficial quick fix. As Reece Jones, author of “Border Walls: Security and the Global Divide” has documented, such infrastructure projects are rarely effective at stopping illegal activities, but almost always effective at hardening social divisions and diverting resources from root-cause solutions. “Walls,” Jones notes, “are often performative — they’re built to look like they’re doing something, even when the data suggests otherwise.”
The Malaysian government is wary. The project is still awaiting approval from Kuala Lumpur, despite a strong push by Kelantan officials. This is a wise caution. Solving illicit drug use through walls is like battling deforestation through increased axe production. We address the symptoms rather than the illness, a short-sighted solution that deepens long-term systemic fragility. It’s a classic example of mistaking correlation for causation, treating the symptom as the disease itself. And that’s the deepest anxiety of all: that we know walls don’t work, but we keep building them anyway, not because they solve problems, but because they obscure our failure to even try.
