See also:
Trans Sahara Highway

Over the span of some 2300km, two largely straight borders (below) radiate northwest to Tindouf and northeast to the Salvador-Anai border tripoint. They mark Algeria’s desert frontier with Mali and Niger. For decades as porous as a string vest, they’re crossed by the original trans Sahara routes established at the dawn of the motor car era a century ago: the Trans-Sahara Highway from Algiers via Tamanrasset to Agadez in Niger, and the more desolate Tanezrouft from Reggane via Tessalit to Gao in Mali (below).

In 2011 the already dangerous Sahara was further unsettled. As Gaddafi’s regime collapsed, militias raided arms depots across the country. Much of that weaponry flowed west across the desert to northern Mali, long controlled by Islamic insurgents (left) or Tuareg separatists.

The quickest way was to cut across southern Algeria, because south of the road between Tam and Djanet, the 200 kilometre band of desert to the unmarked Niger border was entirely unpopulated but easily navigable. Even when we did Route A14 (left) in the early 2000s, we were surprised how well developed and even corrugated this unknown track was. At that time Algeria had its own smuggling networks running between Mali and Niger, but come 2011 had nothing to gain and much to lose from the added instability and redistribution of Libyan arms.

The answer seems to have been an attempt to seal it’s southern borders with a series of double berms (car-blocking sand walls) integrated between impassable natural topography, just as Morocco has done in the Western Sahara. These berms (below, black) are backed up by border access and patrol roads (red, below), and scores of bases, some with huge runways (left). They run near continuously from the In Amenas area south of Ghadames in Libya all the way round to Bordj Moktar and beyond. West of there towards Tindouf the Erg Chech acts as a natural berm.