No man’s land, one man’s real estate, everyone’s dream?

August 17th, 2015 by Charles Cameron

Returning to Lieberland, or Gornja Siga as the locals call it, we learn:

Gornja Siga has come, over the last few months, to assume an outsize role in the imagination of many — not only in Europe, but also in the Middle East and in the United States. Its mere existence as a land unburdened by deed or ruler has become cause for great jubilation. There are few things more uplifting than the promise that we might start over, that we might live in the early days of a better nation. All the most recent states — South Sudan, East Timor, Eritrea — were carved from existing sovereignties in the wake of bitter civil wars. Here, by contrast, is a truly empty parcel. What novel society might be accomplished in a place like this, with no national claim or tenant?

Consider one sentence alone as the key to that “outsize role in the imagination”:

There are few things more uplifting than the promise that we might start over, that we might live in the early days of a better nation.

The apocalyptic yearning here and its kinship with the Amrican dream are hard to miss — it is like a conflation of Matthew 5.14:

A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid.

with Revelation 21.1-2:

And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea. And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

**

Plus:

By the way, the Republic of China (ie, Taiwan) still has territorial claims on part of Afghanistan: pic.twitter.com/txHSB4dhrK

— Christian Bleuer (@ChristianBleuer) August 10, 2015

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Posted in Afghanistan, anthropology, bateson, borders, Charles Cameron, china, definitions, Doublequotes, form, france, imagination, India, iraq, IS, ISIS, language, map, maps of war, pakistan, scriptures, spain, syria, twitter, Uncategorized | 4 comments

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  1. Cheryl Rofer:

    August 17th, 2015 at 3:05 am

    Great post, Charles!
    .
    Just a small historical note: Stalin made sure that the borders of the Central Asian Soviet Republics were drawn to split areas of ethnic homogeneity to make it more difficult for those republics to unite. Those were the borders that continued when the republics became countries when the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991.
    .
    Good times.

  2. zen:

    August 17th, 2015 at 3:52 am

    Hi Charles,
    .
    I agree with Cheryl on both counts, great post and Stalin was a divide and conquer drawer of borders
    .
    Stalin’s thankless tenure as Lenin’s Commissar of Nationalities taught him a loathing of would-be ethnic Bolshevik chieftains, starting with Sultan-Galiev whom he wished to curb by cultivating Soviet “nationalism” instead (which lightly papered over some nasty great Russian chauvinist roots). The Basmachi revolt didnt help much either.

  3. Grurray:

    August 17th, 2015 at 3:41 pm

    Stalin must have learned a lot because his diabolical manipulation of the borders is worst around the Ferghana Valley. The valley is the territory of Uzbekistan, the entrance of the valley is the territory of Tajikistan, and the mountain heights ringing the entire rim of the valley are controlled by Kyrgyzstan.
    https://goo.gl/imXAxd
    This patchwork now ensures constant instability over water and agriculture

  4. Charles Cameron:

    August 28th, 2015 at 4:04 am

    Coming soon, & relevant to borders & divisions:

    Dion Nissenbaum, A Street Divided: Stories From Jerusalem’s Alley of God
    .
    It has been the home to priests and prostitutes, poets and spies. It has been the stage for an improbable flirtation between an Israeli girl and a Palestinian boy living on opposite sides of the barbed wire that separated enemy nations. It has even been the scene of an unsolved international murder. This one-time shepherd’s path between Jerusalem and Bethlehem has been a dividing line for decades. Arab families called it “al Mantiqa Haram.” Jewish residents knew it as “shetach hefker.” In both languages, in both Israel and Jordan, it meant the same thing: “the Forbidden Area.” Peacekeepers that monitored the steep fault line dubbed it “Barbed Wire Alley.” To folks on either side of the border, it was the same thing: A dangerous no-man’s land separating warring nations and feuding cultures in the Middle East. The barbed wire came down in 1967. But it was soon supplanted by evermore formidable cultural, emotional and political barriers separating Arab and Jew.
    .
    For nearly two decades, coils of barbed wire ran right down the middle of what became Assael Street, marking the fissure between Israeli-controlled West Jerusalem and Jordanian-controlled East Jerusalem. In a beautiful narrative, Dion Nissenbaum’s A Street Divided offers a more intimate look at one road at the heart of the conflict, where inches really do matter.