Do you remember Baarle-Nassau and
Baarle-Hertog? That was fun, right? But sometimes those kind of situations can
lead to very serious situations.
Let’s look down to border there was between
India and Bangladesh few months ago. This border by itself had over 200
enclaves: 102 were Indian in Bangladesh, with 21 Bangladesh enclaves within
them, and the only one “enclave, within an enclave within an enclave” in the
world. India, in the other hand, had 71 Bangladesh enclaves, containing 3
Indian enclaves. And the worst of all: they were all planned, mapped… and
controlled!
What kind of evil mind planned all this mess?
Well, legends tell this enclaves were the result of card or chess games between
two regional kings centuries ago. But what History in fact says is that in
1713, the Mughals and a regional kingdom, Koch Bihar, the two countries did not
commonly agree a clear border between them, and so it became fuzzy. When
borders had to be set clear, in 1949, all this mess up of enclaves was born.
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| The Indian "third order" enclave |
This situation in fact led to a lot of trouble
to people who lived there. Differing from Belgium and the Netherlands, India
and Bangladesh don’t have open borders… so the minor enclaves’ residents were literally
trapped: they had no light, water, gas, or even public services. In total, over
51,549 people were in this pity situation. That led both countries to start
thinking to come to an agreement to unify that nasty border, and finally managed it in 7 May 2015.
Now, the border is (mostly) neat and clean. The
problem now is: what country are those over 50,000 people from? Well, at least
they can call the firemen if their houses set on fire…
Enclave:
A country or part of a country surrounded by
foreign territory –WordReference.com
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| Borders were, like any other, guarded every day |
Sources:
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtLxZiiuaXs – (main source of the series, go check it and his creator's channel out)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India%E2%80%93Bangladesh_enclaves#List_of_former_enclaves_and_exclaves - (list of all former enclaves)
- (google images)
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