ON THE DJIBOUTIAN-ERITREAN BORDER — The distance between the rival armies is shorter than the barrel of a gun. Hundreds of opposing troops are lined up on the border, staring each other down, from just inches away.
A Conflict’s Buffer Zone: Rocks, and Inches
What exactly is the big deal?
The disputed zone includes a hill called Gabla, or Ras Doumeira, and a small island called Doumeira, deserted except for the occasional fishermen who use it as a pit stop. It is all sand out here — miles of it, trimming a Windex-colored sea. The wind regularly whips the grit into your face, and temperatures routinely soar past 110 degrees.
Despite the fact that these two countries barely register on the map, it is the map itself that is part of the problem. Scholars say that the border area was never properly demarcated, and that the best guidance as to who owns what goes back to a vague communiqué between France and Italy more than 100 years ago. They were the colonial powers at the time, with France occupying what is now Djibouti and Italy controlling what is now Eritrea.
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