
Welcome to Bir Tawil, the land that no country wants - Turukawa
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/03/welcome-to-the-land-that-no-country-wants-bir-tawil
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steve19
Planting a flag is meaningless, as this article shows.

There are two ways to claim land.

The first is to conjure up some de jure rights (some way to justify legal
ownership, such as 500 years ago your ancestors owned the land until someone
illegally invaded or you inherited the title to the land from your great-
great-great-* grandfather). It can be flimsy (or outright forged), but it
needs to be recognized by other countries to be effective. Religious
significance was once recognized as basis for de jure claims, but it is not
anymore.

Then you have de facto control. If you can exert physical control of the
territory, it's pretty much yours. There are companies you can pay who will do
this. Reflex Responses might be one, but there are a number of them out there.

Of course having de jure rights without de facto control is pretty useless.
It's a long game strategy. Spain one day hopes they will be able to take de
facto control of the Gibraltar, but it won't be in the lifetime of anyone
alive today.

~~~
technotony
The interesting thing is that exerting physical control of this place might
not be that hard given the lack of anyone else trying to do the same. You'd
probably just need to build a runway to be able to bring in supplies etc (no
idea how hard that would be obviously).

Once you had control then maybe it would be possible to create a libertarian
fantasy land of the kind envisioned by the sea-steading folks. Feels like
controlling this desert will be easier than building a floating city.

~~~
aab0
From the long run perspective, this is worse than the floating city. As they
describe it, Sudan and Egypt only avoid regulating it as part of a legal
trick. Once that problem resolves, the special status evaporates. At least
when you are on the high seas, the high seas aren't going to stop being the
high seas in a few decades.

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Havoc
Its not a case of nobody wants it, but rather they both want something else
more. This wiki extract summarises it quite well:

>Egypt claims the original border from 1899, the 22nd parallel, which would
place the Hala'ib Triangle within Egypt and the Bir Tawil area within Sudan.
Sudan however claims the administrative border of 1902, which would put
Hala'ib within Sudan, and Bir Tawil within Egypt. As a result, both states
claim the Hala'ib Triangle and neither claims the much less valuable Bir Tawil
area

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sandworm101
>> But what he was not prepared for was an angry backlash by observers who
regarded him not as a devoted father or a heroic pioneer but rather as a 21st-
century imperialist.

Neither. The guy is just another adventure tourist. He didn't trek off into
noman's land for his daughter. He was out to do something extreme and found
something. It's like climbing Everest to "raise awareness" for some disease.
You wanted to climb Everest and, like any determined adventure tourist, will
adopt any cause that aids you in that quest. "For my Daughter" gets the
headlines, but in my book the better parent is the one that doesn’t disappear
on dangerous vacations under the guise of fulfilling princess fantasises.

The princess thing is basically what DisneyWorld is all about. The $$,$$$
spent on this trip could buy your daughter the entire princess vacation
package, castle included.

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caf
This is similar to the pockets on the Croatian side of the Danube which
Croatia says are Serbian and Serbia says are Croatian (with the exception that
in the European case, Croatia exercises effective control over them).

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ChristianGeek
Great read, thanks.

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f_allwein
Instead of enabling his daughter to become a princess, he could have put her
on a diet of Studio Ghibli films to teach her there are better things to do
with her life:

[http://www.wired.com/2012/01/disney-vs-
miyazaki/](http://www.wired.com/2012/01/disney-vs-miyazaki/)

------
kafkaesq
"No, I'm afraid you aren't quite beautiful and lovable enough, just the way
you are, my daughter. I need to take thousands of dollars out of your college
fund, traipse halfway through a country torn by decades of civil war and
genocide, and drag your name and photograph through the international media,
first -- for the sake of an abstraction I looked up on the internet. _Then_
you'll be my precious little princess."

~~~
keehun
From the article, I did not get a sense that his value-judgement of his
daughter depended on the success of this little endeavor. It read more to me
like he wanted a special experience with his daughter.

