An Eye For An Eye Will Only Make The Whole World Blind – Part Eight
Bir Tawil
We have seen before that drawing a straight line on a map may be a pretty neat solution for diplomats but it can cause unanticipated problems on the ground. Take the curious case of Bir Tawil, the land nobody wants.
It’s easy to see why. It amounts to 795 square miles of unforgiving, hostile desert and mountains with no permanent inhabitants, on the border between Sudan and Egypt. Neither country is keen to claim sovereignty over it. On the other hand the Hala’ib Triangle, about ten times larger in area and much more hospitable with extensive grazing lands and bordering the Red Sea, is a prize worth having.
The problems started in 1899 when the British, who controlled the area, established the 22nd parallel as the border between the two countries. The Anglo-Egyptian Condominium Agreement for Sudan established a nice straight line which placed the more desirable Hala’ib Triangle in Egypt and Bir Tawil in Sudan.
But in 1902 the Brits had another think and decided that the dividing line between the countries should better reflect the indigenous characteristics of the people on the ground. Bir Tawil was used by the Ababda tribe who were based near the Egyptian town of Aswan. So the Brits amended the border to put it into Egypt. The Hala’ib Triangle, though, was given to the British governor of Sudan because the population culturally were more aligned to the Sudanese of Khartoum.
Life in the area went on pretty much as normal until in 1956 Sudan gained its independence. Keen to assert its new independence the Sudanese government defined its national borders in accordance with the 1902 agreement, laying claim to the Hala’ib Triangle and passing Bir Tawil to Egypt. They even planned to hold elections in the Triangle. The Egyptians, however, claimed that the 1902 agreement was only ever a temporary arrangement and that the 1899 agreement had established the borders once and for all. When he got wind of the forthcoming election General Nasser sent troops to the area to reaffirm Egyptian control of the Triangle.
Blows were not traded and whilst both countries maintained their claim to the Triangle, it was effectively under joint control. There were the occasional disputes and when relations between the two countries worsened in the mid 1990s the Egyptians expelled Sudanese police and officials from the area in an attempt to strengthen their control. By 2000, when relations had thawed somewhat, the Sudanese withdrew their officials from the area, effectively ceding control to Egypt, unofficially of course.
But what about Bir Tawil?
Technically, it remains a terra nullius, with neither country keen to absorb it within their borders. To do so formally would probably be tantamount to giving up their claims to the Triangle. And so it remains almost certainly the only part of the world which no country actually owns. It remains so to this day.
Where there is a void, someone will try to fill it and a couple of individuals have made trips to Bir Tawil to stake a claim. In a 2016 article in the Guardian Jack Shenker wrote an account of his trek to the area in 2011, planting a multi-coloured flag in the desert to legitimise his claim. In 2014 a farmer from Virginia, Jeremiah Horton, made a journey to the area, planted his flag, proclaiming it the Kingdom of North Sudan. He declared himself the sovereign and his daughter, Emily, princess, thus fulfilling her birthday wish to be a princess.
Needless to say, neither of these claims has been recognised internationally. Some time, I expect, the Sudanese and Egyptians will get round to resolving the issue. But maybe they won’t.
