Iraq–Saudi Arabia border

A boundary drawn around wells

Before the First World War there was no boundary here at all. The line agreed in 1922 was the first international boundary ever defined in the desert between Mesopotamia and the Arabian Peninsula.^[3] It came out of the war: Britain held the mandate for Iraq, and Abd al-Aziz Al Saud (Ibn Saud), ruler of Najd, was expanding his lands north toward Iraq and Trans-Jordan.^[3]

The first attempt was the Treaty of Muhammarah (Khorramshahr) of 5 May 1922, between the British High Commissioner for Iraq and Ibn Saud. It assigned groups of herders rather than land. The Muntafiq, Dhafir and Amarat belonged to Iraq and the Shammar of Najd to Najd, and each side would keep the wells and pastures its people had used “from old times”.^[3] A committee was supposed to turn that principle into a line, but no definite boundary was agreed.^[3]

Ibn Saud objected to trying “to curb, by an imaginary line in the open desert, the movement of tribes who are accustomed to roam widely in search of pasturage and water”. He agreed to a line in the Protocol of Uqair, signed on 2 December 1922, on conditions. Neither side would fortify wells or mass troops near them, and Najdi herders could still water at wells on the Iraqi side.^[3]

“The two Governments mutually agree not to use the watering places and wells situated in the vicinity of the border for any military purpose, such as building forts on them, and not to concentrate troops in their vicinity.”^[3]

The Neutral Zone

The protocol traced the line from well to well, from Bir Ansab north-west to Jabal ʿAnazah near where 32°N meets 39°E. At the eastern end it left a gap. The area between the junction of Wadi al-Aujah with Wadi al-Batin, Al-Wuqubah, Bir Ansab and Al-Amghar was to “remain neutral and common” to Iraq and Najd, with equal rights for both.^[3]

In 1971 the US State Department's Geographer reported that the line had never been marked on the ground, but that there were no known disputes over where it ran.^[3]

Splitting the zone and straightening the line

Iraqi and Saudi delegations met in Baghdad in April 1975 and pinned down each 1922 turning point precisely, for example a set distance from a named well, or the summit of a hill.^[1] At a second meeting in Riyadh, on 2 July 1975, they agreed to divide the Neutral Zone into two halves of equal area. The southern half went to Saudi Arabia and the northern half to Iraq.^[1]

The same meeting straightened the line further west. Between Bir Ansab and Judaydat Arʿar it now runs in straight lines that bypass several of the old turning points. The new line was placed so that the land each country gained was equal in area.^[1] A joint commission then surveyed the whole border and set up 265 markers, finishing its report in September 1980.^[1]

The International Frontier Treaty was signed in Baghdad on 26 December 1981 by the two interior ministers, Saʿdun Shakir Mahmud and Nayif bin Abdul-Aziz. It came into force on 24 February 1982 and replaced the 1922 agreements.^[1] Posts and water pumps that ended up on the other side of the new line changed hands: several control posts and an Iraqi water pump passed to Saudi Arabia, and a frontier force position and village at Maʿaniyah passed to Iraq.^[1] The treaty was published in the UN Treaty Series in 1991.^[1]

Herders, fences and a crossing

A 1982 protocol kept some of the old freedom to move. It closed a 10 km frontier zone on each side to grazing, but let herders from either country apply to graze and water their animals in a 30 km zone beyond it on the other side, from mid-February to mid-May.^[1]

Relations broke down after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, and the Arar crossing closed.^[4] In 2014 Saudi Arabia finished a border security system along about 559 miles (900 km) of the frontier, with a sand berm, three fence lines and 40 surveillance towers, built with Airbus.^[5] Arar reopened to goods and people on 18 November 2020, for the first time in 30 years.^[4]