When Wilfred Thesiger visited Dikhil in May 1934, he was struck by "a most impregnable fort here" recently constructed by the French colonial authorities. "The walls are twenty feet high, loop-holed, and topped with broken glass and a barbed-wire entanglement. There are two large observation towers." He believed that garrison stationed there provided its only economic support, for had "the site any real value it would have been used before this by the natives.