View of the Agua Negra border crossing, which connects Argentina and Chile in the Andes mountain range. It is not suitable for trucks and is closed for a good part of the year, because it is 4,800 m above sea level and is often covered in snow. Credit: Courtesy of Rodrigo Iribarren

By Daniel Gutman
BUENOS AIRES, Apr 13 2018 (IPS)

Visionaries imagined it more than 80 years ago, as a way to strengthen the integration between Argentina and Chile. Today it is considered a regional need to boost trade flows between the two oceans. Work on a binational tunnel, a giant engineering project in the Andes, is about to begin.

The tunnel will be built at more than 4,000 m above sea level, along the longest border in Latin America and one of the longest in the world. Argentina and Chile share more than 5,000 km of border in the majestic Andes mountain range, which has hindered but never impeded transit of people and merchandise.

In colonial times, products were transported by mule from one side of the Andes to the other.

By the end of this year or the beginning of next year, the allocation of the contract for the construction of the Agua Negra Pass will be announced. The tunnel will be built along the central area of the border, linking the Argentine province of San Juan with the Chilean region of Coquimbo.

The aim is to cut transit time and freight costs.

The cost has been set at 1.5 billion dollars and 23 companies from Argentina, Chile, China, France, Spain, Switzerland, and the United States, grouped in 10 consortia, expressed an interest in building the tunnel, and the envelopes were opened in May 2017.

During a special meeting in March, the Agua Negra Tunnel Binational Entity (Ebitan), created by the two governments, completed an evaulation of the background presented by the 10 consortia, and the next step will be to announce which ones may take part in the tender.

The tunnel will take about 10 years to build, and is presented as the largest road work project in Latin America.

“The tunnel will be key to easier traffic to and from the Pacific Ocean, which will give us access to the Asian market,” Maximiliano Mauvecin, a businessman based in Córdoba, the second largest city in Argentina, in the centre of the country, told IPS.

“For that reason, when the project seemed to be failing in 2014, we organised the Central Bi-oceanic Corridor Network, with members of the business community not only from Chile and Argentina, but also from Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay,” explained Mauvecin, director of the Forum of Business Entities of the Central Region of Argentina.

To that end, he explained, “we generated trade missions and business rounds, with which we sought to engage the interest of governments once again.”

Argentina and Chile have 26 border crossings, but most lack adequate infrastructure for truck traffic and are closed for long stretches of the year because of weather conditions, as is the case of Agua Negra.

Bumpy road

The Agua Negra tunnel project has had advances and setbacks.

Momentum seemed to surge in August 2009, during a summit of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), founded in 2004 as a regional forum for coordinating actions towards integrated development among the 12 countries of the region, which are home to a combined total of more than 400 million people.

On that occasion an understanding was reached to build the tunnel, signed by the then presidents of Argentina and Chile, Cristina Fernández (2007-2015) and Michelle Bachelet (2006-2010 and 2014- March 2018).

It was also signed by the then president of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003-2011), whose participation clearly reflected that it was a “regional integration project”, as the signatory governments described it.

The following year, the details of the initiative were formally shared at a summit of the Southern Common Market (Mercosur) with the then presidents of Uruguay, José Mujica (2010-2015), and of Paraguay, Fernando Lugo (2008-2012), which along with Argentina and Brazil make up the bloc, of which Chile is an associate.

The binational tunnel will be a key part of the Porto Alegre-Coquimbo Central Bi-oceanic Corridor, between the Brazilian city of Porto Alegre in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, and the Chilean port of Coquimbo, along more than 2,700 km of roads that are mainly paved already.

The Corridor crosses different provinces of central Argentina and can also be used by companies from other countries of the Atlantic Ocean basin keen on access to the Pacific Ocean.

In Chile there is so much anticipation for the arrival of goods to get into the Asian market, that at the beginning of this year a project was presented to upgrade and modernise the port of Coquimbo, to enable it to serve bigger ships, with an expected investment of 120 million dollars.

However, wine growers in the Elqui Valley, formerly known as the Coquimbo Valley, which is along the route after the Agua Negra Pass, have expressed concern about the increase in truck traffic that the tunnel will bring.

“There were always communication routes in the transverse valleys of the Andes mountain range. In the 19th century, cattle began to be brought in from San Juan and provinces of northern Argentina to Chile. And in 1932 or 1933, the government of Coquimbo asked an engineer to study the possibility of building a tunnel,” Chilean researcher Rodrigo Iribarren told IPS.

“Although it has a long history, it was not until the 1960s that it was opened as an international pass for vehicles,” added Iribarren, author of the book “Agua Negra; History of a Road” and head of the history museum of La Serena, the capital of Coquimbo, located on the Pacific coast about 470 km north of Santiago.

The pass was closed in 1978, when the dictators of Argentina, Jorge Videla (1976-1981), and Chile, Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990), brought to a point of extreme tension a border conflict at the southern tip of the continent and were about to lead the two countries to war.

Although it was reopened in the 1990s, after the two countries had returned to democracy, it is not suitable for trucks and is closed much of the year, because traffic is blocked due to snow.

After the agreement between Fernandez, Bachelet and Lula, Ebitan was formed in 2010, and in 2013 23 companies expressed an interest in building the tunnel.

Financial solution

The funding problem was solved in April 2016, when the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) announced to the two governments that it would finance the project.

In October 2017, the regional credit agency approved an initial disbursement of 130 million dollars to Chile and 150 million to Argentina, within a credit line expandable to 1.5 billion dollars as the work progresses.

“The objective is to reduce, through the construction of this infrastructure, the transaction costs at the borders, to increase the competitiveness of the countries involved and promote the economic development of the region,” said José Luis Lupo, manager of the IDB’s department of Southern Cone countries.

According to Ebitan, the tunnel will shorten the border crossing by 40 km and three hours. It will also make it possible to keep the pass open year-round.

The road climbs today to 4,780 m, but the tunnel will begin at 4,085 m above sea level on the Argentine side and will descend to 3,620 m on the Chilean side.

There will be two completely separate passages, for the sake of safety, one running in each direction, with two 7.5-m wide lanes each. Of the 13.9 km tunnel, 72 percent will be in Argentina.

Underground trade tunnels destroyed on the Egyptian side of the border with Gaza. Credit: Khaled Alashqar/IPS.

By Khaled Alashqar
GAZA CITY , Jan 10 2014 (IPS)

The border between Egypt and the Gaza Strip used to buzz with activity until a few months back as traders brought in an array of Egyptian goods – from food supplies to raw material – through hundreds of tunnels.

But these underground structures, located 40 km from here, between Rafah in Gaza and Sinai in Egypt, have fallen silent.

Things came to a grinding halt after the Egyptian army came to power in Cairo. Calling them a security threat, it launched a systematic military campaign against the tunnels, destroying them, along with the houses under which they were built on its side of the border.“Never before have we faced this kind of pressure from the Egyptian army."

For people in Gaza, home to 1.7 million people, the closure of the tunnels has choked a lifeline. Thousands of tunnel operators, traders and workers have been hard hit.

“Never before have we faced this kind of pressure from the Egyptian army and, it seems, things are going to get worse,” said Abu Nabil, a Gaza resident who gave only his nickname for security reasons. He had operated a tunnel on the Palestinian side since 2007.

Nabil said more than 90 percent of the passages, most of which are privately operated, have been destroyed by the Egyptian military, completely paralysing trade through the tunnels.

He used to employ 20 workers in his tunnel. They would transport goods, food supplies, electronic equipment and construction material from Egypt to Gaza. Now these employees – among an estimated 20,000 tunnel workers – are jobless.

The tunnel area stretches more than eight kilometres along the border. It’s not open to the public, except with permission from the ruling Hamas party in Gaza. It is monitored by Hamas security forces on the Palestinian side.

While the Egyptian army has established a buffer zone of 500 metres along the border and set up security checkpoints, operators are trying to find a way out. Nabil is trying to extend the length of his tunnel so that it can bypass the buffer zone.

But problems are set to persist as, for the Egyptian authorities, the tunnel trade is illegal.

Egyptian military spokesperson Colonel Ahmed Mohammad told IPS: “The tunnels are used to smuggle militants and radical groups that threaten Egyptian national security. They should be destroyed.”

The authorities in Egypt also point out that goods sent into Gaza through the tunnel do not carry a legal stamp or tax.

But it’s a different story in Gaza, where the Hamas government recognises the tunnel trade.

Alaa Alrafati, minister of economy in the Hamas government, told IPS that the closure of tunnels was causing a loss of 230 million dollars every month and suffocating around 1,000 factories and industrial units that were dependent on raw material coming through the tunnels.

Alrafati said the authorities in Egypt and Gaza needed to come to an understanding.

“The government in Gaza is prepared to close down all tunnels on the Palestinian side if an official alternative route can be made available with Egypt to address Gaza’s need for commercial goods and construction material,” he said.

He said Hamas government leaders “are interested in developing relations with Egypt.”

The tunnels flourished as they were free of restrictions and represented a way out of the Israeli siege on Gaza. Some studies indicate that the tunnel trade was worth one billion dollars a year.

Professor Sameer Abu-Mdalla, dean of the economics faculty at Al-Azhar University in Gaza, told IPS that the total number of tunnels before 2006 was 60, but following a blockade by Israel in 2007 and the closure of border crossings, the number mushroomed to about 1,000.

He said the tunnels helped meet 60 percent of Gaza’s needs for raw materials and other goods.

Abu-Mdalla said destruction of the tunnels could push the unemployment rate up in the Gaza Strip.

He said the Hamas government had legitimised the tunnel trade and introduced guidelines and taxes. Hence, 15 percent of the government budget came from the tunnels and other related sources.

He pointed out some negative aspects as well, however.

“For example, the tunnels did not generate development in Gaza and led to the emergence of around 800 millionaires who used the income from operating tunnels for money laundering.”

The tunnels were allegedly also a conduit for Palestinian militant groups to smuggle weapons into Gaza for use against Israel. Besides, illegal drugs were being smuggled into the small and crowded territory through them, it was alleged.

With the closure of the tunnels, however, it’s the common people of Gaza who are paying the price. Be it poverty, unemployment or isolation, it has worsened their life in every way.

Israeli's blockade of Gaza is crippling the territory. Above, selling yoghurt in Gaza in an attempt to make some sort of living. Credit: Eva Bartlett/IPS

By Mel Frykberg
RAMALLAH, Occupied West Bank, May 23 2013 (IPS)

Israel’s crippling blockade of the coastal territory of Gaza is pushing desperate young Palestinians to ever more extreme measures in the search for livelihoods, despite an agreement granting Gazans greater access to their agricultural land.

In search of work, some Gazans try to enter Israel by jumping the fence that separates it from Gaza. Others continue to be shot dead or are seriously injured by Israeli soldiers as they try to farm land bordering the fence, and still others who choose an underground path die when tunnels linking Gaza with Egypt collapse.

Yet an agreement between Hamas and Israel’s COGAT (Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories) following a ceasefire in November stated that Gazans would be able to access most of their agricultural land in Israel’s self-declared 300-metre buffer zone, which runs along the border, by reducing the zone to 100 metres.

The buffer zone is comprised of some of Gaza’s most fertile land in a territory desperately lacking space. Gaza is one of the most densely populated territories in the world, with more than 1.5 million people squashed into an area 41 kilometres long and six to 12 kilometres wide.

Despite the Hamas-COGAT agreement, “the situation remains volatile and unpredictable, and the farmers are extremely vulnerable,” Muhammad Suliman, from the Gaza-based human rights organisation Al Mezan, told IPS. “Palestinians continue to be shot and killed in and near the buffer zone at certain times, while at other times nothing happens.”

Meanwhile, fishermen at work within the Israeli-imposed fishing zone, which was three nautical miles until Israel announced on May 21 that it would extend the zone to six nautical miles, are also being shot at and arrested.

Forced to rely on aid

A bitter paradox is unfolding in that while Gaza’s economic desperation has been somewhat buffered by a rise in international aid and work by non-governmental organisations in the strip, unemployment has skyrocketed, and Gaza is now one of the world’s most aid-dependent territories.

“More than 85 percent of Gazans are dependent on aid to survive, while youth unemployment stands at over 55 percent,” Suliman said."Wouldn't it be better for Israel to lift its blockade and allow Gazans to be self-sufficient?"
-- Chris Gunness

“The UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) is going around begging the international community for donations to help Gazans survive economically,” a spokesperson for UNRWA, Chris Gunness, told IPS. “Wouldn’t it be better for Israel to lift its blockade and allow Gazans to be self-sufficient?”

“Unless the blockade is lifted and some of the world’s most entrepreneurial and business-minded people are allowed to leave Gaza in pursuit of business ventures, Gaza will remain increasingly desperate and dependent on international aid,” Gunness added.

Increasing attacks

According to Al Mezan, Israeli naval attacks on Gazan fishermen have escalated since the November ceasefire, including the sinking of six Palestinian fishing boats and damage to nine power generators and 41 lamplights used by fishermen at night during the first week of May. The Israeli navy also shot at Palestinian fishing boats in 13 separate incidents.

Al Mezan stated that last week Israelis shot with machine guns at a group of fishing boats off the coast of Beit Lahiya in the northern part of the Gaza Strip. Israeli military boats arrested two men, Mahmoud Zayid, 27, and his brother Khalid, 25, from a small fishing boat, which was about 400 meters off the coast and approximately 1.5 nautical miles south of the Northern Israeli restricted zone.

In another attack on May 19, Israeli naval vessels opened fire at Palestinian fishing boats off the coast of Deir Al-Balah in the Middle Gaza district. The boats were also within the Israeli-sanctioned fishing zone, about three nautical miles from shore, when they were attacked.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) states that under the 1993 Oslo Accords, Palestinian fishermen were permitted to go 20 nautical miles out to sea. Since Israel imposed the blockade in 2006, the area has been reduced to 6 nautical miles, to devastating effect. In 2006, 2,500 tonnes of sardine were caught, in comparison to 234 tonnes in 2012.

According to the international aid organisation Oxfam, such economic restrictions by Israel are pushing young Gazans to risk their lives by jumping the fence into Israel to seek employment or entering the tunnels linking Gaza with Egypt’s Sinai peninsula.

Working in conjunction with Oxfam, Al Mezan reported that in the last year 101 people attempted to climb the perimeter fence, with 53 of those younger than 18. And according to Al Mezan’s Suliman, 18 Palestinians were also killed and 26 injured in the tunnels.

In one case last year, a young man, Mahmoud, and two of his friends tried to climb the fence. Mahmoud’s two friends were shot dead by Israeli soldiers while Mahmoud escaped with a bullet injury to his leg. The young man had lost his previous part-time job at a café, where he earned 4 dollars a day. Desperate to help support his large family, Mahmoud had taken the risk of entering Israel.

90 Palestinians, including 11 children and three women, were killed in the buffer zone in the last three years, and as Suliman pointed out, “while some of these were fighters killed during Israel’s military assault on Gaza last November, most of those killed were civilians.”

With more restrictions placed on the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and Gaza, and access to the Palestinian territory’s smuggling tunnels increasingly blocked, human rights groups say Gaza’s 1.6 million residents are unfairly being punished for the attack on an Egyptian military base in Sinai.

“Until now, there are no names of anybody from Gaza that have been made public as having committed the crime,” Wael Al-Qarra from the Gaza-based Al Dameer Association for Human Rights, told IPS. “But on the other side, we have been immediately put under punishment. Immediately. We, the people, the civilians, the citizens of Gaza, are the ones who are punished for what is happening.”

On Aug. 5, an unknown armed group killed 16 Egyptian border guards in the northern Sinai peninsula, before storming the Israeli border. In response, hundreds of Egyptian troops have been deployed to the area to tackle militant groups. It is the largest Egyptian military presence in Sinai in decades.

Following the attack, the nearby Gaza Strip was almost entirely sealed, with the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt closed and many Palestinians stranded on either side.

Following the attack, the nearby Gaza Strip was almost entirely sealed, with the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt only briefly operating in one direction on Aug. 10 to allow Palestinians to return home.

“Many people came from outside for vacation and they have to get back to their work, but now the border is closed and they cannot go back. There are students who need to get back to their universities. So imagine the problem now that is being caused,” Al-Qarra said.

As the only entry and exit point for most Palestinians in Gaza, approximately 800 people normally cross the Rafah border each day. Egyptian authorities announced that the border would be opened for another three days starting Aug. 14, and that visa holders, students, medical patients and others with humanitarian concerns would be allowed to cross.

The Egyptian authorities opened the border in one direction for three days, from Aug. 10-13, and in both directions on Aug. 14.

Over 4,000 Palestinians were able to cross from Egypt back into Gaza, and almost 800 others – visa holders, students, medical patients and others with humanitarian concerns – were able to leave Gaza.

Hundreds of smuggling tunnels into Gaza were also closed as a means, according to the Egyptian authorities, to prevent anyone involved in the Sinai attack from sneaking in and out of the Strip.

But for Palestinians in Gaza, closing the tunnels – which act as the primary lifeline to the besieged territory and provide residents with necessary goods and services – proved just how reliant they are on this unstable system.

Egypt also said that the decision to close hundreds of smuggling tunnels into Gaza is meant to prevent anyone involved in the attack from sneaking in and out of the Strip.

But Palestinians in Gaza are concerned that closing the tunnels – which act as the primary lifeline to the besieged territory and provide residents with necessary goods and services – will soon re-ignite food shortages and the fuel crisis that has plagued their daily lives over the last year.

“There is no serious shortage of food items to date, but it could happen within the next week because 70 percent of the total needs are dependent on the smuggling procedure,” said Khalil Shaheen, director of the Economic and Social department at the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) in Gaza.

“This illegal procedure, the tunnels, was an urgent solution for an exceptional situation. But nowadays, we have become dependent on the tunnels, mainly on imports, and that has reflected in a negative way on the Gazan economy. We are dependent on the tunnels with a very bad quality of goods and with high prices, as well,” Shaheen told IPS.

The Gaza Strip has been under stringent Israeli-imposed restrictions since 2007, shortly after Hamas, an Islamic movement considered by the United States, Israel and the European Union to be a terrorist organisation, was elected.

Internal Israeli documents released that same year revealed that Israel uses mathematical formulas to determine the amount of goods and services allowed to enter Gaza, from canned tuna, rice and beans to gas, wood and other construction materials.

Israel justifies the strict restrictions as necessary in its fight against Hamas; in 2007, Dov Weisglass, advisor to then Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert reportedly said, “The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet but not make them die of hunger.”

The restrictions have caused a severe energy crisis in Gaza in recent months, with power cuts lasting up to 12 hours a day due to a shortage of fuel. In June, Qatar began shipping fuel to Gaza – 30 million litres of Qatari fuel was expected over a three-month period – through Egypt and Israel to ease the situation.

As a result, in early August, the Gaza power plant operated all four of its turbines for the first time since 2006. On Aug. 8, however, after the Sinai attack, the plant was forced to shut down one turbine, which once again led to electricity cuts. After the Sinai attack, however, the plant was forced to shut down two turbines, which caused electricity cuts lasting up to 16 hours per day.

The plant requires 3.5 million litres of fuel each week to operate at full capacity.

Shaheen said that while the smuggling tunnels into Gaza help provide for the needs of the local population, the international community must intervene in order to lift the Israeli siege and wean Gazans off their reliance on the unstable tunnel system.

“We are asking the international community to convince the Israeli occupation authorities to lift the siege and the illegal closure. That’s part of the legal obligations of the occupying power: to offer all the basic needs for the civilians that are under occupation. Israel must allow more supplies, mainly for construction materials, and basic needs like medical supplies, vaccinations and food items.”