Virginia Dad Crowns 7-Year-Old Daughter “Princess” of African No-Man’s-Land He Dubs “Kingdom of North Sudan”

This Bastille Day, the world awoke to news that a new independent nation had been declared.  No, not Kurdistan or Catalonia or Scotland, but something called, in what is one of the more bizarre “micronations” to be founded in recent years, the Kingdom of North Sudan.  Nor was it founded by any of the numerous rebel groups—Nubians, Darfuris, etc.—who are battling the genocidal regime that runs the Republic of Sudan.

Bir Tawil is now the “Kingdom of North Sudan.”

The declaration was made by one Jeremiah Heaton, a former Democratic Party Congressional hopeful from Abingdon (pop. ca. 8,000), in the Appalachian western reaches of Virginia, who last month made a 14-hour overland trek via desert caravan to a remote, disputed shard of territory between Sudan and Egypt, planted a flag, and declared it, provisionally, “the Heaton Kingdom” and later, officially, on a suggestion from his children, the Kingdom of North Sudan.

His children?  Yes, well, this is sort of all about his children.  The reason Heaton has made himself king of North Sudan is to fulfill a promise to his seven-year-old daughter, Emily Heaton. As the self-styled monarch told the press, “Over the winter, Emily and I were playing, and she has a fixation on princesses.  She asked me, in all seriousness, if she’d be a real princess someday.  And I said she would.”

“Someday, princess, all this will be yours.”

The piece of land in question is Bir Tawil, an 800-square-mile lozenge of desert.  Its special status is due to it having fallen between the cracks of two border agreements: first, the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium Agreement of 1899—which made the 22nd parallel the frontier between the United Kingdom’s newly conquered “Anglo-Egyptian Sudan” (with an emphasis on the Anglo) and what was then an Ottoman Empire puppet state called the Khedivate of Egypt—and, second, a British modification of the boundary in 1902, taking tribal territories into slight account.  For a time, Egypt ruled Bir Tawil while the British in Sudan ruled the larger, coastal wedge of land falling between the two borders, the so-called Hala’ib Triangle.  Today, the independent states of Egypt and Sudan both claim the far larger and more strategic and valuable Hala’ib Triangle.  But the Egyptians, as part of their insistence on using the 22nd parallel as the boundary (thus granting themselves the Hala’ib Triangle), have relinquished their claims on Bir Tawil, and the Sudanese have done the same as part of their position that only the 1902 line is valid.  Thus, today, Egypt de facto administers the Hala’ib Triangle, and no one administers Bir Tawil.

Bir Tawil has attracted the attention of micronation hobbyists before,
as in this image from a 2010 cybernation blog—but only King Jeremiah
has actually planted a flag there.

This is what made Heaton figure that no one would mind if he, you know, just took the territory.  As Heaton himself put it this week, “It’s beautiful there.  It’s an arid desert in northeastern Africa.  Bedouins roam the area; the population is actually zero.”  Whoa, wait, wait—what did he say again?  “Bedouins roam the area; the population is actually zero.”  Yes, that’s what he said.  So, let me get this straight: Bedouins don’t exist? or they aren’t people? or is it just that Bedouins, being nomadic, are presumed to have no rights in any territory whatsoever?  The same callous, dehumanizing logic that has been used to legitimize European colonialism not just in Africa but in the Americas, Australia, and elsewhere is on full display here: “You’re not doing anything with the land that I recognize as ‘ownership’ or ‘permanent residence.’  Thus, white people can take it.”  Oh, but, wait, no—it’s all about Daddy’s Little Princess!  Sorry, sorry, I forgot; didn’t mean to make it sound colonialist or anything.

Africans, sadly, are used to white monarchs—most often, admittedly, legitimate ones—using their land to hand out as party favors to ease family relationships.  One example is the Heligoland Treaty of 1890, in which Germany’s emperor, Kaiser Wilhelm II, swapped Zanzibar to Queen Victoria in exchange for the North Sea island of Heligoland and the Caprivi Strip territory (which, as discussed in an article on this blog, Germans could could use as a supply route between German South-West Africa, today’s Namibia, and German East Africa, today’s mainland Tanzania).  That treaty included a special clause which threw a dogleg into German East Africa’s otherwise ruler-straight border with British Kenya, leaving Mt. Kilimanjaro on the Tanganyika side.  This was done because Wilhelm, who was also Victoria’s grandson (yes, that eventually made things kind of awkward, oh, ’round about 1914), had been pouting about the fact that he didn’t own as many African mountains as his English cousins.  Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

But Jeremiah Heaton is hardly Kaiser Wilhelm II.  In fact, even though the Kaiser’s facial hair is considered much more hip in 2014 than Heaton’s evenly trimmed full beard, Heaton nonetheless very commendably refrained from using mustard gas as a campaign tactic when he sought the Democratic nomination to represent Virginia’s 9th District in 2012.

Kaiser Wilhelm’s facial hair:

hip in 1914, and in 2014

King Jeremiah’s facial hair:
so 1990s

As for Princess Emily, she seems determined to become a benevolent dictator (though with two brothers, she may never accede to the throne, at least under Salic Law).  True, she is as pampered as any well-off little American girl and sleeps in a princess-themed canopy bed.  But she has expressed concern that the people in and around her new realm have enough to eat.  “That’s definitely a concern in that part of the world,” King Jeremiah told an interviewer.  “We discussed what we could do as a nation to help.  If we can turn North Sudan into an agricultural hub for the area—a lot of technology has gone into agriculture and water.  These are the things [Emily and her brothers Prince Justin and Prince Caleb] are concerned with.”

“And next, I want an Oompa Loompa, Daddy—and I want one right now!”

Such magnanimity, unfortunately, may not mollify the brutal Islamist regime in the Republic of Sudan.  The country’s military dictator, Omar al-Bashir, rules through shari’a (Islamic law), something made easier after Western powers sheared off the predominantly-Christian, oil-rich southern half of his country away as an independent state, the Republic of South Sudan, in 2011.  Since then, Bashir has also faced Arab Spring uprisings challenging his rule, insurgencies in the southern regions of Nubia and Darfur, and a 2009 International Criminal Court (I.C.C.) arrest warrant on charges of crimes against humanity, including genocide, for his pitiless proxy war—using the dreaded Janjaweed militia—against the civilian population of Darfur.  Because of these international criminal charges, he is barely able to leave his country, and Sudan is excluded from participating as a full member of the international community.  Sudan was (as discussed at the time in this blog) also one of only 11 states—alongside pariah nations like Syria, Iran, and North Korea—to vote with Russia against a United Nations resolution recognizing Ukraine’s territorial integrity following the Russian invasion and annexation of Crimea.  To sum things up, Omar al-Bashir is a very, very grumpy man indeed.

The supposed “Kingdom of North Sudan” is highlighted in blue.

Nor does the official absence of a territorial interest in Bir Tawil mean that this piece of land is not an ideological and political flashpoint.  Sudan’s narrow Red Sea coastline is now its most important economic asset, that being the only route by which Bashir’s former captive nation and current arch-enemy, South Sudan, can bring its oil to market, via pipelines through Sudan proper to Port Sudan.  That interdependence between the two Sudans is probably the only thing keeping Sudan and South Sudan from destroying each other in all-out war (that and the fact that South Sudan is busily destroying itself in a civil war).  But South Sudan’s military, the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army (S.P.L.A.), a former rebel army, is, by most accounts, at least indirectly in league with rebel groups within the predominantly-Arab rump Sudan—not just the Justice and Equality Movement (J.E.M.) rebels in Darfur (a formerly quasi-independent region on border with Libya) but also something called the Eastern Front.

Flag of coastal Sudan’s
“Eastern Front” rebels

The Eastern Front, which draws support from the coastal area’s Cushitic-speaking Beja ethnic group and the Saudi-derived Rashaida Bedouin Arabs—and perhaps from the dictatorship in neighboring Eritrea—routinely demands more autonomy and is well aware of the strategic importance of the coastline.  In 2005, the Sudanese military killed 17 Beja rioters in Port Sudan, stoking anti-government feeling.  And one of their key demands is wresting the Hala’ib Triangle from Egyptian control—a demand which has become shriller as the new Egyptian dictatorship has cracked down harder on Islamists.  In short, the Eastern Front, with its preoccupation with the unsettled Egyptian border, is a potential mortal threat to the Bashir regime.  The question of who runs Bir Tawil and Hala’ib could conceivably be reopened at any time.

Omar al-Bashir, Princess Emily’s new enemy

King Jeremiah’s naïveté in the face of such realities is stunning.  As he told reporters this week regarding the question of diplomatic recognition, “I feel confident in the claim we’ve made. That’s the exact same process that has been done for thousands of years.  The exception is this nation was claimed for love.”  That’s right: he loves his little princess so much that he’s giving her the gift of a coveted spot on the target list of a terrorist Islamist régime.

Sudan’s pro-government Janjaweed militia
doesn’t like it when people get in their way.
Welcome to Africa, Emily!

[You can read more about separatist and new-nation movements, both famous and obscure, in my new book, a sort of encyclopedic atlas just published by Litwin Books under the title Let’s Split! A Complete Guide to Separatist Movements and Aspirant Nations, from Abkhazia to Zanzibar.  The book, which contains 46 maps and 554 flags (or, more accurately, 554 flag images), is available for order now on Amazon.  Meanwhile, please “like” the book (even if you haven’t read it yet) on Facebook and see this special announcement for more information on the book.]

As one might imagine, sometimes my friends and colleagues let me know about a news development before Google Alerts has a chance to.  In this case, thanks are due to Susan Abe, Tea Krulos (author of Heroes in the Night), and Emperor George II (Empire of Atlantium; like it on Facebook) for calling this story to my attention.

51st-State Fever! 9—Make That 11—Colorado Counties Put Split on Ballot, Maryland Panhandle Throws Hat in Ring

The eight core secessionist counties in Colorado in red, and two that are thinking about it in yellow

Last year, in the wake of Barack Obama’s reelection, politically conservative Americans were showing their outrage by flooding the White House’s “We the People” petition web-page with demands for each of the 50 states to secede from the United States (as reported at the time in this blog (and in a follow-up)).  (There was a racial component to this: the vast majority of secession demands came from the Old Confederacy.)  This year’s Tea Party symbolic-protest theme is 51st-state movements.  In addition to the existing pushes for statehood for an Orange County–based South California and a Chicago-less and largely-white Rest-of-Illinois, and in addition to a Democratic statehood push in District of Columbia and a mostly-nonpartisan one in Puerto Rico, 2013 has seen: a revival of the State of Jefferson idea in far-northern California and, most notably, a high-profile push for a State of Northern Colorado.  Now, the sparsely-populated western, Appalachian counties of Maryland want statehood too.

State of Jefferson supporters in northern California

But, wait—is it really just symbolic politics?  In Colorado at least, maybe not: the question of getting out from under the yoke of the liberal oppressors in Denver and Boulder is now going to be on the ballot in nine counties [actually, 11; see below] this November.

Nice logo—too bad nearly all the actual grizzlies in the area referred to have been killed.

In northeastern Colorado, the question of whether to form a State of North Colorado (or Northern Colorado, or New Colorado) will be put to voters in Cheyenne, Kit Carson, Logan, Phillips, Sedgwick, Washington, Weld, and Yuma counties, forming the rectangular state’s northeastern corner.  The slightly discontiguous Elbert County slipped in under the deadline, and it will be on the ballot there too.  (Morgan County decided to keep the question off the ballot, while Lincoln and Cheyenne counties also decided to sit this one out, after toying with the idea.  [Since this article was written, Lincoln County has reversed course and joined the other nine counties, and Moffatt County, in the northwest of the state, has joined as well.])  There has even been interest in a merger coming out of adjoining rural disaffected areas in Wyoming, Nebraska, and Kansas.

The insurgency started in Weld County, which includes the University of Northern Colorado, in Greeley, but also includes rural voters fed up with environmental regulation, gun control, and now legal marijuana in an increasingly urban and liberal state that used to be a swing state.  The eight core secessionist states had been getting support from other rural counties, not all of them in the northeast, but on August 27th commissioners of the separatist counties met with their counterparts in Las Animas and Herfano counties, in the south of the state, along the border with New Mexico.

One proposal for a North Colorado flag

Mack Louden, commissioner of Las Animas County, told media, “There’s a lot of frustration in rural Colorado—east to west, north to south—about how we’re being treated. We own 90% of the land mass, but we represent a very small part of the population.  All the votes are in Denver.  They’ve figured that out and don’t worry too much about rural Colorado.”

Tom Gilley, president of the Weld County–based organization 51st State Initiative, said that commissioners in Las Animas and Herfano might bring the question to voters too.  It wouldn’t be in time for the November 5th ballot, but it raises longer-term questions of just how, geographically, “New Colorado” (as they would now have to finally settle on calling it) would look.

As you might imagine, the parking lots at Boulder’s University of Colorado
have very few pick-up trucks with gun racks and fetus bumper stickers.

Louden added, “Right now, [secession] looks very appealing on the surface.  But once you start picking that scab down, you can get into some flesh that you don’t want to see.”  Perhaps one of the things he means is that any new admissions to the Union need to be cleared not only by the state legislature in Denver but by Capitol Hill in Washington.  And, with both houses of Congress being as evenly divided as they are, any new “red state” (i.e., one with two new Republican senators) would need to be balanced out by a blue (Democratic) one.  This is an old tradition in American expansion.  The Missouri Compromise of 1820 allowed Maine, a free state, and Missouri, a slave one, to balance each other out, while Republican Alaska and Democratic Hawaii had to be let in pretty much in tandem in 1959.  And even if someone could craft, say, a D.C.-statehood bill to balance a “New Colorado” one, that still doesn’t mean that doesn’t mean it would be a sure thing.

... and now Maryland

A possible proposal for a State of Western Maryland.
The current movement also includes Carroll County,
even though parts of it are almost suburban Baltimore.

Such considerations may not be dampening enthusiasm in western Maryland’s mountainous conservative far-west, where the idea of statehood has recently caught on as well.  Some residents in the Appalachian “panhandle” along the Pennsylvania border, are interested in seceding from the rest of the very-blue State of Maryland.  Scott Strzelczyk, who lives in New Windsor, in Maryland’s Carroll County, has founded an organization called Western Maryland: A New State Initiative.  Strzelczyk is host of a local AM radio show with a dissident, “constitutionalist” bent called The Forgotten Men.  He envisions Western Maryland to consist of Garrett, Allegany, Washington, Frederick, and Carroll counties—all of them Republican counties with tiny populations forming a geographically eccentric protrusion westward from a coastal stated that has two Democratic senators in Washington, includes heavily African-American Baltimore and the liberal northern suburbs of D.C., and voted for Obama by almost 62% in both 2008 and 2012.

Maryland’s counties, shown in shades of red or blue
based on their respective vote shares for Mitt Romney or Barack Obama, respectively, in 2012

Though far less organized and far less popular than the North Colorado movement, the idea of partitioning Maryland is not new.  Its sprawling eastern leg is just as geographically anomalous as its western one, and just as divorced from the concerns of the bulk of the population in Baltimore, Annapolis, and the D.C. suburbs.  This Eastern Shore region, along Chesapeake Bay, with its more Southern-style plantation culture and economy, used to be Maryland’s demographic and political anchor, until the rise of Baltimore in the 19th century.  In 1998, the nine easternmost counties proposed seceding as a new state to be called either Chesapeake, Eastshore, or—getting poetic now—Atlantis or Arcadia.  Others have wanted those nine counties to join Delaware, along with Virginia’s disconnected Accomack and Northampton counties, to form a State of Delmarva, though that makes no political sense: why would the Democrats who run Delaware with little opposition want to dilute their power in a more purplish state?

One vision of a partition of Maryland (and D.C.),
from a recent article in Michael Trinklein’s excellent and highly recommended Lost States blog

Names from the 1998 Eastern Shore movement like Chesapeake and Arcadia point up a singular failing of some of today’s 51st-state movements: unimaginative names.  The idea of Western Maryland would be much more likely to stir passions if it were called something like Allegania or Cumberland, while northeastern Colorado, though it has few remotely colorful county or town names, would benefit from being renamed something along the lines of Northern Front Range, which is what locals call the region.  The Platte River runs through the area, so maybe that could be used to form a name.  Anything but New Colorado or North Colorado, though—if only because North Carolina has already squatted on the postal abbreviation NC.

It seems unlikely Western Maryland would come up with a flag more impressive
than Maryland’s current one, based on the coat-of-arms of Lord Baltimore.

[Also, for those who are wondering, yes, this blog is tied in with a forthcoming book, a sort of encyclopedic atlas to be published by Auslander and Fox under the title Let’s Split! A Complete Guide to Separatist Movements, Independence Struggles, Breakaway Republics, Rebel Provinces, Pseudostates, Puppet States, Tribal Fiefdoms, Micronations, and Do-It-Yourself Countries, from Chiapas to Chechnya and Tibet to Texas.  Look for it some time in 2013.  I will be keeping readers posted of further publication news.]