In April 2006, Saudi Arabia began to call for tenders to construct a separation barrier in the form of a fence along its border with Iraq in an attempt to prevent the violence in Iraq spilling over into Saudi Arabia.
The proposed fence would run for approximately 900 kilometres (560 mi) along Saudi Arabia's isolated northern desert border with Iraq. It is part of a larger package of fence-building to secure all of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia's 6,500 kilometers of border. It would supplement the existing 7-meter-high sand berm that runs along the border, in front of which there is an 8-kilometer stretch of no-mans-land which is regularly swept smooth so that trespassers can be tracked.