W

hen a visiting Westerner airily dismissed Asia as '€œa region of natural disasters and nasty leaders'€, I was really upset. The truth hurts, right?

A similar point was made in the shape of a request I received from a reader who did not want his name or address printed: '€œDear Mr Columnist Person, nobody likes our government. Can we form an enclave?'€

Yes, you can. Enclaves are hot right now.

Many people recommend the quick and easy Beijing system of territorial expansion, where you just build stuff in the sea and look outraged when anyone complains.

But be warned. Enclaves, city states and territories are often '€œsort-of-independent'€ bits of other people'€™s countries, so the whole issue can be very touchy.

Look at a map and you can see that Singapore is really just a teensy bit of Malaysia, but it is not polite to say that. Malaysia itself is half in Thailand and half in Borneo, but you must never say that, either. Hong Kong is part of China, but the residents think they are a separate city-state and no one has the heart to tell them the truth.

This year, sadly for folk who love micronations, some of the world'€™s most interesting enclaves are disappearing '€” including 162 of them around the India-Bangladesh border.

The legally Indian parts of Bangladesh and legally Bangladeshi parts of India are being swapped.

In this process, the strangest enclave on the planet has just disappeared. Dahala Khagrabari enclave was legally a piece of India, but it was inside an enclave of Bangladesh that was itself inside an enclave of India that was surrounded by land which was definitely Bangladeshi.

This is not a joke. Nor was it a joke for residents, who technically crossed numerous borders every time they took their bullock cart out for a spin. Child: '€œAre we nearly there, Daddy?'€ Dad: '€œWe'€™re in India, son. No, Bangladesh. No, India. No Bangladesh.'€ Etc.

A European colleague tells me that an odd enclave exists in his region: a bit of land inside The Netherlands that is legally part of Belgium.

The boundary runs right through lots of actual buildings. '€œIn the past, legal closing time for bars was earlier in the Netherlands, so when it got late, drinkers simply moved to tables on the Belgian side of the room and ordered another beer,'€ he said.

Homeowners hired builders to move their front doors to the country with the lower tax rate.

But back to the query of the reader who wants to start his own country. The Beijing system is to grab a bit of land and then announce that it has belonged to you since the earth formed from interstellar dust.

You don'€™t even need a particularly strong case.

When Beijing used this line in East Turkistan, the residents complained that they had lived there for centuries before it became a newly acquired territory for China.

Beijing officials denied this, but their argument was severely undermined by the fact that they renamed the area Xinjiang, which is Chinese for '€œnewly acquired territory'€ (this is also not a joke).

Column done: Time to vacate my desk or, as I prefer to call it, my personal enclave.
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The writer is a columnist and journalist.