Bir Tawil

Two lines from one government

In 1899 Britain and Egypt agreed to run Sudan jointly, as a condominium. The Anglo-Egyptian Agreement of 19 January 1899 set the boundary with Egypt at the 22nd parallel.^[2] In 1962 the US Geographer reported that the line had been defined on paper but never marked on the ground.^[2]

Three years later a second line appeared. By an order of 25 July 1902 and a decree of 4 November 1902, Egypt’s Minister of the Interior drew an administrative boundary near the Red Sea.^[2] It was meant to keep nomadic groups and their wells under one administration: the Bisharin under Sudan’s government, the Ababda under Egypt’s.^[2] The new line put an area north of the 22nd parallel, by the Red Sea, under Sudan’s administration, and a smaller area south of the parallel under Egypt’s.^[2] The first is the Hala’ib Triangle; the second is Bir Tawil.^[1]

“The word ‘Soudan’ in this Agreement means all the territories south of the 22nd parallel of latitude…”^[2]

Why neither side wants it

After Sudan became independent in 1956, Egypt treated the 1899 line as the border and Sudan treated the 1902 line as the border.^[1] On 1 February 1958 Egypt asked Sudan to hand back everything north of the 22nd parallel. In return it offered to hand over the area it ran south of the parallel.^[2] Sudan answered that Egypt had not complained when two earlier Sudanese elections were held in the northern territories.^[2]

So both countries claim Hala’ib, and neither claims Bir Tawil. Claiming Bir Tawil would mean accepting the line the other side relies on, and with it giving up Hala’ib.^[1] Hala’ib is about ten times the size, has a coast, minerals and offshore resources, and about 27,000 people. Bir Tawil is desert with no permanent population.^[1]

In 2014 an American, Jeremiah Heaton, travelled to Bir Tawil, planted a flag, and named it the “Kingdom of North Sudan” so that his daughter could be a princess. He did not move there.^[1]

The Hala’ib Triangle

For decades after independence both countries sent administrators to Hala’ib, and they lived in an uneasy co-existence.^[3] In the early 1990s Sudan gave a Canadian oil company rights to explore off Hala’ib’s coast. Egypt objected strongly, and two years later the company pulled out until the question of sovereignty was settled.^[3]

In 1995 President Hosni Mubarak survived an assassination attempt in Addis Ababa, and Egypt partly blamed Sudan. He then ordered Egyptian troops into Hala’ib, and Sudan’s administrators were expelled.^[3][1] The Egyptian flag flies there today. Sudan has never accepted Egypt’s control and still counts the triangle as its own.^[3][1]