An Atlas of Countries That Don't Exist Read online

  This book is for John Ellis Middleton

  (1924–2013)

  CONTENTS

  Map symbols

  Introduction

  Europe

  Africa

  North America

  South America

  Asia

  Oceania

  Elsewhere

  Acknowledgements

  MAP SYMBOLS

  The maps within this Atlas make use of the following symbols:

  Existing international boundary

  International boundary of unrecognized country

  State boundary

  Capital city

  Major settlement

  River

  Body of water (sea, major lake)

  Road

  Railway

  Mountain

  Volcano

  A note on flags

  Each would-be country is presented with its national flag. In a few cases, two flags are presented, each representing a different separatist group.

  INTRODUCTION

  Leopold II, King of the Belgians, was known for his prodigious appetite. He frequently ordered another entrée after finishing an enormous meal, and once ate two entire roast pheasants at a Paris restaurant. It is not surprising, therefore, that he used a culinary metaphor when declaring his determination during the nineteenth-century scramble for African territory to obtain the largest possible slice of what he called the ‘magnificent African cake’.

  At the Berlin Conference on Africa in 1885, Leopold secured his own private colony seventy-five times larger than Belgium, as Europe’s leading powers carefully divided up the entire continent between themselves. Studying a 5-metre-high wall-map of Africa, the diplomats agreed the ground rules for taking possession of its territory, and began negotiating the boundaries between their various colonies. And so concluded the final phase of the global process of European colonization that had begun more than 300 years earlier with Spanish and Portuguese explorers.

  Everybody knows what today’s political map of the world looks like. The bold colours and sharp boundaries show the global land surface neatly divided between sovereign states. But it hasn’t always been like this. For most of human history, before the Europeans started exploring and colonizing, people lived in small cultural communities or larger civilizations that were hardly interlinked at all. With time, as more people moved more frequently and more quickly – exploring, conquering, trading and travelling – so the contemporary world of countries, tightly defined by their boundaries, developed.

  The final phase of this process is really quite recent. It is only after the end of World War II, with the creation of the United Nations and the process of decolonization, that we came anywhere near to the map of many colours we know today. A truly global international society of countries.

  Not that the political world map is static. Countries come and go. Towards the end of the twentieth century, the disintegration of the Soviet Union spawned no fewer than fifteen new states and East Germany joined its western counterpart to become a reunified country. These were quickly followed by Czechoslovakia undergoing a ‘Velvet Divorce’ to create the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Already in the twenty-first century we have seen more new states emerge in Asia (East Timor), Europe (Montenegro) and Africa (South Sudan).

  But at the same time, we are constantly being reminded that we live in an era of unprecedented global communication, a time when globalization is eroding the importance of the nation state. Our planet is becoming an increasingly borderless place, where national boundaries matter little to the movement of goods and investment (though the movement of migrants is another story). National governments have had their power diluted and usurped by some new actors on the global stage, including international organizations, transnational corporations and non-governmental organizations, or NGOs. A world of fixed spaces is giving way to a world of flows, and the idea of national territory is giving way to supra-national communities such as the European Union. With its echoes of Aldous Huxley, this is the ‘New World Order’.

  However, while the notion of fixed territories is in one sense under threat from globalization, the rise of the internet, virtual communities and the diffusion of ideas, there is no question that the national space itself remains of great importance. Individual countries still dominate all of our lives. Much as some might like to think of themselves as ‘Citizens of the World’ rather than citizens of any one nation state, they won’t get very far in seeing that world without a travel document issued by their national government. Granted, the European Union has, to a large extent, done away with its internal boundaries, but the EU is still a relatively small chunk of the world. An EU citizen who ventures outside the EU can only do so legally with a passport.

  Which brings us back to that political map of the world. Announcements of the end of the nation state may be premature. National territory still has an enduring allure. And nation states work hard to keep it that way, defending borders and encouraging many schemes to strengthen national cohesion.

  What most of us probably don’t realize about that world map is what it conceals: a multitude of unrecognized and largely unnoticed states whose claims to legitimacy are made invisible by the bold, self-assured slabs of colour. This is the shadowy, surprisingly large, and literally unofficial world of countries that don’t exist.

  This Atlas presents fifty of these wannabe nation states. Each has its own flag and legitimate claim to some territory but, for a variety of reasons, none has quite made the grade, to join the exclusive club of internationally recognized countries.

  WHAT IS A COUNTRY?

  Selecting which non-countries to include in this book was complicated by a lack of consensus on what exactly constitutes a country. The concept is old, but also notoriously slippery. As soon as you set out to find a clear definition you start running into discrepancies, exceptions and anomalies.

  An apparently straightforward answer might be that all ‘real’ countries have a seat at the General Assembly of the United Nations, the world’s most important and prestigious state-based international organization. That certainly covers most generally accepted countries of the world, but it is not a definitive solution. Israel became a member of the world body in 1949, but more than thirty other UN member states, from Cuba and Bangladesh to Morocco and Saudi Arabia, do not recognize Israel’s existence.

  To complicate matters further, the UN recognizes other countries that do not have full membership. In 2012, Palestine joined the Holy See to become a non-Member Observer State at the UN. However, when the UN recognized the state of Palestine, not all of its members agreed. Some still refuse to recognize Palestine as a country at all. Interestingly, the Holy See is not actually a country either. The Holy See is, in effect, the pope, or at least his office – the papacy – and not the Vatican, the small state where it is based.

  Even full UN membership is not necessarily a guarantee of country status. A case in point is TAIWAN (here in capitals, indicating that the state appears in this Atlas as one of the ‘countries that don’t exist’). In the early years of the United Nations, most countries recognized the Chinese regime in Taiwan (also known then as ‘Free China’) while the mainland communists (or ‘Red China’) were isolated diplomatically. Abruptly, in 1971, this absurd situation was reversed. Since then, Taiwan has been forced to operate in the diplomatic twilight, running numerous ‘trade offices’ around the world, but very few official embassies.

  And then there are the countries that only have UN membership when considered as a group. The type example here is the United Kingdom, or the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, to give it its full title
. This is the collective name of four countries: England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. These four separate countries are united under a single parliament through a series of legal ‘Acts of Union’. So when it comes to international relations, England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland are all represented by the UK government.

  In many international sporting events, however, it is a different matter. Through a quirk of history, all four have separate teams for football and rugby and several other sports. Unless the competition is the Olympics, in which case the British Olympic Association fields teams and individuals to represent the United Kingdom.

  Still more confusion is introduced by the more-or-less interchangeable use of the terms ‘country’ and ‘state’. Interestingly, the United Nations itself uses neither, but introduces another term – ‘nation’ – also frequently used to mean the same. Some authorities prefer to reserve the word nation for a social, ethnic or cultural group that might have its own country, also sometimes called a ‘nation state’. Hence, Israel is frequently referred to as the Jewish state or nation state, although in reality many non-Jewish people also live there.

  A widely accepted legal definition of a state was hammered out at a meeting in Uruguay in the 1930s. Article 1 of the Montevideo Convention sets out the four essential criteria for statehood: a permanent population; a defined territory; a government; and the capacity to enter into relations with other states.

  That sounds fine, although we have already seen that ‘the capacity to enter into relations with other states’ is by no means always enough. One territory, NORTHERN CYPRUS, has been recognized only by Turkey and no other states at all. For this reason, it has been included in this Atlas.

  Many authorities on the subject would also include the idea of power in their definition of a country. The German social and political scientist Max Weber defined statehood in blunt terms: as a monopoly of the legitimate use of violence over a given territory. Certainly violence has helped many countries gain and hold on to territory, and continues to be a potent symbol of national strength. But countries are also recognized as wielding other forms of power: by making and upholding the norms and rules that apply within their boundaries.

  Almost immediately, as usual, anomalies appear. The universally recognized sovereign state of Somalia has singularly failed to maintain control over most of its territory since descending into a chaotic civil war in 1990. Yet for most of that time, the northern part of the country – SOMALILAND – has managed to maintain law and order within its own borders. Since declaring independence in 1991, Somaliland has simply carried on regardless. It has all the hallmarks of a fully fledged country: its own parliament, currency, car registrations, even biometric passports. Yet unlike its chaotic neighbour, it has not been recognized by any other state.

  WHAT’S IN . . . WHAT’S NOT?

  This is not a definitive compendium. This Atlas could have been filled several times over with ‘nations in waiting’, but a selection of fifty has been made based on some rules of thumb. All of the ‘non-countries’ included have failed to secure a seat at the United Nations General Assembly and none has widespread international recognition as a sovereign state. All of these ‘non-countries’ have at least the outward trappings of national consciousness, including a flag, some form of government and a claim to territory, as well as a seriousness of purpose.

  Some of the entries have in fact established their exclusive control over territory for considerable lengths of time, despite their lack of international recognition. Taiwan and Somaliland fall into this category: both ‘de facto states’ that wait only for the rest of the world to come to terms with the reality of their existence.

  Many currently exist as partially autonomous regions of larger recognized states. Their claim to greater areas and greater levels of self-determination are frequently based on historical precedent, treaty or an ethnic/cultural distinctiveness that puts them apart from those who dominate the state in which they live. Their likelihood of gaining more territory, or greater autonomy, varies right across a spectrum from very unlikely (e.g. CABINDA, LAKOTAH, TIBET) to quite possible (e.g. GREENLAND).

  Others are territories that have been declared independent by individuals or small groups and have a minimal chance of being recognized as independent by any established nation state or international body. These so-called ‘microstates’ are usually small in either land area and/or population (e.g. PONTINHA). Some, such as FORVIK and HUTT RIVER, are deliberate parodies, designed to mimic the fully fledged state but with a serious personal, political and/or commercial ambition.

  Some would-be nation states included here owe their survival to the support of one major ally. Many splinters of the former Soviet Union fall into this category, including TRANSNISTRIA and ABKHAZIA, which are supported by Russia. Indeed, there are many other fragments of the former Soviet Union that could have been included in this Atlas, but their yearnings for self-rule are essentially similar in nature to those two examples.

  Some of those with few allies have joined forces with other unnoticed states to form their own parallel international community. Transnistria has made a link with Abkhazia and some other forgotten Soviet flashpoints, to create the Community for Democracy and Rights of Nations. A central aim of the organization, also dubbed the Commonwealth of Unrecognized States, appears to be recognition of each other’s independence. Other, larger bodies with similar agendas include the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO) and the Unrepresented United Nations (UUN).

  To balance the common theme of desire for independence, a few examples have been included of territories that chose to be subsumed by another (TUVA decided to join the USSR and remains a part of Russia), or regions that prefer to remain a colony rather than to go it alone as an independent entity (MAYOTTE).

  Many islands are represented in these pages, and this is no coincidence. Being physically separate by virtue of being an island makes life as a sovereign entity much easier. Indeed, some microstates have even set themselves up on newly created islands (e.g. MINERVA, SEALAND).

  All of these unrecognized countries are, to some degree, unique entities. This fact, when combined with the realization already mentioned that there is no one universally acknowledged definition of a country, means that this compendium of non-states is, to some extent, inherently arbitrary. Certain countries that some readers might expect to find in these pages have been excluded for a variety of reasons. Both Israel and Palestine, as mentioned above, do not exist in the eyes of a number of states. But likewise both have many more supporters who do recognize them, and therefore neither state appears in this book.

  Any one, or all of the four constituent countries of the United Kingdom could have found their way into this Atlas given their lack of a UN seat. But all have been omitted, simply because each is sufficiently recognizable as a country of its own standing, if not a fully independent one – as demonstrated by Scotland’s referendum on independence from the UK in 2014.

  Elsewhere, where pairs of would-be nations are present in similar (though admittedly not identical) circumstances, a decision has been made to include one but not the other. So CATALONIA is in, but Pais Vasco is not. Greenland is in, but Nunavut is not. RYUKYU is in, but Ho’aido is not.

  Another would-be country that is not included is the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS. At the time of writing, forces from this proto-state were fighting for control of large swathes of the Middle East. As it happens, this area is roughly coincident with Kurdistan, which declared independence in January 1946 but with little effect. It is impossible to say whether ISIS has a greater chance of enduring as a de facto sovereign entity, or whether it will meet a similar fate to that of AZAWAD, the Tuareg state in northern Mali that declared independence in 2012 but was dissolved within a year.

  Given this inherent uncertainty of sovereignty in some cases of would-be nation states, a small number of alternative approaches have been included. These cast a critical light on
the relationship between territory and sovereignty that holds good for most of the non-countries in these pages. ANTARCTICA has somehow avoided – or at least put on hold – the process of being carved up into national territories. It signposts one possible version of the future for certain parts of the world. Other, perhaps more fanciful cases, such as ATLANTIUM and ELGALAND-VARGALAND, indicate unconventional, thought-provoking alternatives. All raise the possibility that countries as we know them are not the only legitimate basis for ordering the planet.

  A FEW WORDS ABOUT BORDERS

  James McCarthy removed his sun helmet and scratched his head thoughtfully. His hair was slick with perspiration. The air was sticky and the grove of stunted papaya trees offered little in the way of shade. He was beginning to appreciate the magnitude of his assignment. Appointed by the King of Siam in 1880 to survey his dominion’s borders, McCarthy seemed to be the only person interested in the task. Except the king himself, of course. And a few of his courtiers.

  Here, local elders told Mr McCarthy, the border with British Burma was defined by two papaya trees, but they couldn’t remember which ones. To them it wasn’t important. They had left McCarthy in the hot sun to decide for himself.

  Nineteenth-century ideas of clearly drawn boundaries were novel in many parts of the world, as they had been once in Europe. At first, the King of Siam found the European obsession with precise borders baffling and rather irritating, but he realized their significance when the British started cutting down swathes of forest and planning railroads. Knowing exactly where his kingdom ended now had a meaning, so he hired Mr McCarthy.