The Politics of Boundaries in North and West Africa

Problems created by boundaries are among the more frequent causes of war, and North and West Africa has some of the strangest boundary problems in the world. 1 Unlike many of the world's borders, the boundaries here are not the walls and moats of history, natural defence lines whose traces mark the military conflicts and diplomatic compromises of the nation's past. The only exceptions are one-sided and even ironic: the treaty of Lalla Maghnia of...