The three strangest border on earth

Intro
- I want to show you three
borders that are very peculiar.
Here they are.
(dramatic music)
One, two and three.
And not just because
they look weird on a map,
but because of how they look in real life.
(dramatic music)
Us map nerds love looking at things
that look weird on a map.
Like this town that is
cut up by a bunch of Dutch
and Belgian enclaves.
Looks really weird on
a map, but in reality,
the people living here
aren't deeply affected
right now by these strange borders.
I'm interested in borders
that look interesting on a map
and that are connected to real
world things, real people.
There are a lot of these
out there, trust me,
but there are three in particular
that I want to talk about today.
Three borders that blow my mind
and that help us learn about
how far countries will go
to control land and
water, so let's do this.
- [Announcer] ISIS continues
to lose ground in Syria.
- [Reporter] Artificial
islands under construction
could become military bases.
- [Australian Reporter]
Deal reached makes the US
the only Western country to
recognize Moroccan sovereignty
over Western Sahara.
(dramatic music)
Morocco
- [Johnny] The first border
is the Moroccan Berm Wall.
Morocco is this country in Northern Africa
that claims all of this land,
but if you look at Google Maps,
you'll see this dashed line
and that there's another
country underneath it
that isn't Morocco, it's Western Sahara.
This dash line is not the
border I want to talk about,
but let me explain.
The line is dashed because Morocco
doesn't want all of this to be a country,
doesn't want these people
to have independence.
Morocco thinks it's theirs,
so since 1975 when Spain left this land,
Morocco has been fighting
to keep the people down here
from controlling the land.
They took this pretty far.
In the 1980s, when they
got out the bulldozers
and started building a wall,
and after a decade of digging,
they created the border
that I want to talk about.
This is what it looks like on a map.
- [Reporter] You know Morocco's--
- [Annoucer] Build a wall--
- [Reporter] To 1700 mile Berm
in occupied Western Sahara.
- [Johnny] It is a nearly
3000 kilometer wall
of sand and dirt.
I mean, that's a huge, huge wall.
This wall is meant to
keep the local people
who want Western Sahara to be
a free and independent country
on this side of the
line and allows Morocco
to occupy the other 80% of
what would be Western Sahara,
and that 80%, by the way,
is the more resource
rich part of the country,
and it is not just a wall.
It is a bunch of Moroccan
troops who load it up
with weaponry, radar,
and underground bunkers.
Oh, and landmines.
Tons and tons of landmines.
(dramatic music)
This is widely accepted as
the longest landmine field on earth.
(dramatic music)
When I was in Morocco,
I learned that it is literally
illegal to show a map
that contains this border
or anything that is not this.
Many countries don't
recognize Morocco's claim
to all of this land.
In fact, the United States
didn't recognize the claim
until last year when the
Trump administration said
that they would recognize it in exchange
for Morocco becoming
friends with Israel again.
Sort of a weird love triangle.
It's just, it's so weird
how this stuff works.
It's like, you're not real,
but if you like my friend,
you're real now.
Meanwhile, the people who live
here in this little strip,
they run their own country,
but it's under the militant
eye of the Moroccan military
who patrol this wall to keep them out
of the rest of their country.
These locals have been in
a decades long struggle
to fight for the day
when they can break down
this sand barrier and actually
build their own country.
But the powers that be
aren't letting that happen
anytime soon.
Syria
Okay, okay, so that is
the Moroccan Berm Wall,
3000 kilometers of sand and dirt.
Crazy.
Next up, let's go over to Syria.
(dramatic music)
Sometimes borders can embody
history, religion, energy,
dictators, and modern day
guerrilla warfare all in one,
and that's what's happening
over here in Syria.
(dramatic music)
Okay, wait, before we get into this,
we need to pause and I need
to thank today's sponsor
who allows me to make these videos.
Thank you NordVPN for
sponsoring this video.
Okay, so if you don't know what a VPN is,
it is a thing that allows you
to connect to a secure server
sometimes outside of your country
so that you can browse the
internet anonymously and securely
and from whatever country you want.
I use this all of the time,
especially when I'm traveling.
NordVPN is like an industry
leader in the VPN space.
They have a very good product
that allows you to go in,
choose the country you
want to connect from,
and quickly have a secure,
anonymous connection
to the internet.
You can connect up to six devices
and on every major platform,
Windows, Android, iOS, Mac,
Linux, et cetera.
You could even do this
on like an Android TV.
I use Nord VPN for two reasons.
Number one is because when I'm traveling,
I'm often connecting to a
wifi router inside of like
a coffee shop or like a public area.
With a VPN, you can do this more securely,
and when I'm traveling my
computer kind of freaks out
and thinks that like, I'm someone else
so I get kicked out of my Gmail,
I can't watch like the
Netflix shows I'm used to.
With NordVPN, I can just
connect to an American server,
and now, as far as my computer
knows, I'm still in the US.
I have access to all my favorite content.
I can choose from over 5,000 servers
in 60 different countries and
all of this is lightning fast
so you don't notice any difference.
It is an incredibly helpful service.
You don't have to take my word for it.
There's a link in my description.
When you go click that link,
you will get a really good
price on a two year plan
that you can get your money
back if you don't like
after 30 days.
Plus this comes with a huge discount,
so that link is in my description.
It is NordVPN.com/JohnnyHarris.
Thank you NordVPN for sponsoring
my video and my channel
and allowing me to do this work.
We are now ready to get back to the maps.
Let's go to Syria.
(dramatic music)
Okay, so we're in this part
of the world, the Middle East.
We have Syria, and up
here, you have Turkey.
There's this one really
famous guy in Turkey.
He was like the grandpa of the guy
who started Turkey's big
empire the Ottoman Empire.
Anyway, this guy may or may
not have died by drowning
in the Euphrates river, like right here,
and so to honor him,
they decided to bury him
right on the banks of the Euphrates River,
right here on this like
really famous hill.
Sort of seems like an interesting decision
to bury the person like right
on the banks of the river
that killed them.
Anyway, not my decision.
They buried him on this famous hill,
and this again was like a long time ago.
This was back when this region
was just one big empire,
it was Turkey's big Ottoman Empire.
But of course the Europeans
wouldn't let this last for long,
so they show up in the early 1900s
and they cut this region up.
Like they literally like divvy it up,
it's like you Britain, you get this part,
France, you get this part,
Russia, you get this little bit up here,
Italy, you get this bit over here.
Like they just like cut the lines up.
It's just, it's madness,
and eventually France
took their little plot
of the Middle East, and like,
these are now two countries.
We have Turkey up here and
we have Syria down here,
and they drew this line
separating these two countries.
"Wait, wait, wait," said the new Turkey,
"The tomb of our really
important guy is like
now in the new Syria,"
and France was like, we're
not going to redraw the line
so like Turkey, you can control this
little circle of land where the tomb is.
That little bit of land
is officially Turkey,
but we're not going to
redraw the whole line.
Turkey was like, sweet, that works.
So it's the 1920s and
Turkey looks like this,
plus this little tiny dot in Syria
where the tomb of Suleyman is,
and like Turkish guards could
be there and guard the tomb,
and it was fine.
Fast forward 50 years and things
are going fine at the tomb.
Syria is now run by this
dictator, and he's like, Hey,
we want to build a dam
right here on the Euphrates.
You know, hydro electricity.
But then Turkey freaks
out because all they see
in all of this is a dam
that is going to fill
this whole valley full of water,
this valley where the hill
is where their guy is buried
is gonna be underwater soon
and their special grave could
soon be totally destroyed.
So what did they do?
They move the grave.
Meaning they move their
little bit of sovereignty
from right here all the way up here,
85 kilometers north, still inside Syria.
Why didn't they just move it into Turkey?
So this border, this
little conclave of Turkey
just moved up.
Okay, so now it has a new location.
It doesn't stop there,
so the dam is built,
the tomb is safe, there is
now a lake called Lake Assad
after the dictator.
Fast forward another half century,
and now the dictator's son is in power,
and guess what's happening in Syria?
- The Islamic state Now
controls more than half
of Syrian territory.
This morning that includes
some of the most important
cultural treasures.
- The ISIS fighters has now
entered the archeological ruins.
- We're talking the capital of ISIS.
- ISIS took over a lot of
Syria in 2014 and 2015,
including where the new Turkish tomb was,
where this little speck of Turkey was,
and if you don't know anything about ISIS,
you should know that in
addition to being awful
in every way, they also love
to destroy sacred old things.
- This morning ISIS
claimed to have destroyed
priceless pieces of history.
- [Reporter] What they didn't
blow up with explosives,
they literally tore apart by hand.
- So Turkey is freaking out now.
They're like, dude, ISIS is
going to destroy the tomb,
so they moved it again.
This time, right up to the Turkish border,
still in Syria though,
but like within a few
hundred meters of the border.
So now you have Turkey, Syria,
and a little bit of Turkey in Syria.
There's this clip of the
prime minister of Turkey
visiting the newly moved tomb.
He prays to it and then as he walks out,
you get a little reminder
that this dot on the map
is still a border.
It still has borders.
These fences separate this prime minister
from Turkish sovereign
territory on one side,
and then a fence, and then
Syria, where all these kids are.
No, but seriously, like why
didn't they move it into Turkey?
Like if you're going
to move it all that way
for the second time, like,
just move the thing into Turkey
where it's not surrounded
by a country that is
devolving into a civil war.
You know what I think it is?
I think it's that Turkey is like
one of the few big, powerful countries
that doesn't have an exclave
meaning a little island of themselves
in a different country.
I think they literally just
want to be like, oh yeah,
we have one of those.
Like, we've got one of those
weird things on the map.
It's 200 meters off our
border, but like, we have it.
We can move it whenever
we want, but whatever.
That is how this sacred site
exclave border thing moved around,
and eventually it's supposed to move back
to its second location,
but the details are fuzzy
on how that's going to happen.
Okay, so that's Turkey and Syria,
let's go to our final border,
which has to do with the ocean.
South China Sea
(dramatic music)
- [Reporter] China's military buildup
has angered the Obama administration.
- [Johnny] So we're over
here in Southeast Asia,
just under China.
This body of water, the South China sea.
This place is home to vital trade routes,
tons of oil and gas, tons of
fish, strategic military posts.
I mean, this sea has it all,
which is why everybody wants it.
Look at all of these lines.
These are the claims from all
of these different countries
on the South China sea.
It's like a total nightmare, right?
Okay, okay, hold on.
Let's unpack all of these.
First let's remember that every country
that borders an ocean
gets 200 nautical miles
into the ocean to be
their economic waters,
where they can fish and mine and whatever.
That's their economic waters.
So that's how you get
a lot of these borders.
So like Vietnam by default
can have all of this water.
It's their exclusive
economic zone, their EEZ.
Malaysia's looks like this,
and if you're going to claim
any more water than this
default EEZ, you sort of have
to like justify yourself.
You have to be like, we
claim more than our EEZ
because X, Y, and Z.
So yeah, it's looking a little bit messy,
but then wait till China, the
big dog in the neighborhood,
swoops in and says the UN, Shmoo-N,
I'm not into the UN and whatever.
We've been here for like
5,000 years on these waters.
Our claim to this ocean is this.
Like, they literally didn't do
any sort of scientific claim here.
It was literally guy with
map draws a dashed line
through 90% of the South China sea,
and is like, this is China's.
And everyone's like, whoa,
how, how does that make sense?
And they're like, 'cause
we're freaking China.
And everyone's like, okay?
And that is how you get
this, a total mess of lines,
and it's not just in the water.
There are islands down here.
Like this set of islands
down here is claimed by
like five countries.
So yeah, there's international
law for this stuff,
but in reality, it's a total free for all,
and guess who's winning
in the free for all.
You guessed it.
Chinas Plan
(dramatic music)
China's not waiting for a
diplomatic solution here.
What they do instead is just
like show up to these islands
and build military bases
and landing strips,
but then there's big parts
of this body of water
that have no islands
so what does China do?
They show up and dig up a bunch
of sand from under the ocean
and build islands and
then build military bases
and landing strips.
Like, look at these boats.
These boats are making islands.
They've created 1300
acres worth of new land
in the South China Sea.
- [Announcer] Overall China
is adding to its islands
at the rate of at least
three and a half acres a day.
- And they populate it
with military assets.
Okay so that's what it
looks like on a map.
It's wild.
So as always, we have the lines on the map
that look a certain way,
but then the facts on the ground often say
something totally different.
This whole sea is controlled by China.
In addition to building islands,
they also will chase down fishermen
from like the Philippines and Vietnam
who are fishing in their
own waters, totally legal,
and they will show up
and just attack them.
They'll capture them,
they'll intimidate them,
and they'll make sure
that they know who's boss,
and no one can really
do anything about it.
So all these lines can look all
complicated, but in reality,
it's pretty simple what
it should look like.