Bir Tawil

Most border disputes are fights over land both sides want. Bir Tawil is the reverse. This trapezoid of sand and rock on the Egypt–Sudan frontier is claimed by neither country, because claiming it would weaken each one's case for a far larger and more valuable piece of ground nearby, the Halaib Triangle on the Red Sea coast. The result is one of the very few places on Earth's habitable land that no recognized state says it owns. That status has drawn a steady stream of adventurers who plant homemade flags and announce new kingdoms online. None of these self-declared micronations has been recognized by any government or international body, and the land remains as it was, empty and unadministered.

Bir Tawil covers about 2,060 square kilometers of the Nubian Desert, in the empty country between the Nile and the Red Sea hills. Its northern edge follows the 22nd parallel, and its southern edge follows a stretch of the old British administrative line. The land is barren and almost waterless, a plain of gravel and sand broken by low ridges, with Jebel Hagar el Zarqa rising to 662 meters in the north. The name means tall or deep water well, after a seasonal well near Wadi Tawil in the south. There is no settled population, no government office, and no road network. Nomadic herders of the Ababda and Bishari peoples have long passed through, and informal gold-mining camps have appeared in recent years.

The puzzle dates to two British-era lines. An 1899 agreement between Britain and Egypt set the boundary of Anglo-Egyptian Sudan along the 22nd parallel. In 1902 Britain drew a separate administrative line that followed tribal grazing lands, placing Bir Tawil under Egypt and the larger Halaib Triangle under Sudan. After Sudan's independence in 1956, Egypt held to the 1899 line, which gives it Halaib, while Sudan held to the 1902 line, which gives it Halaib instead. Each country's preferred border leaves Bir Tawil to the other side. Egypt has administered Halaib in practice since the 1990s, and Sudan maintains its claim. So long as that larger dispute stands, Bir Tawil is likely to remain a piece of land that neither country claims.

• Western Sahara
  A desert territory divided by a 2,700-kilometer sand wall and half a century of dispute another unresolved Saharan territory
• Egypt
  The gift of the Nile and a bridge between Africa and Asia disclaimed by
• Sudan
  Land of the two Niles, where Arab and African Africa meet disclaimed by
• Northern Africa
  The Saharan tier of the continent, facing the Mediterranean located in
• Sahara
  The world's largest hot desert, an ocean of sand and stone across North Africa located in
• Red Sea
  A young ocean in the making, splitting Africa from Arabia near