Setting up a country is a tricky business. You
can have your own army, passports, territory,
head of state, and legal system and still not
count as a real nation. Just ask Kosovo, which
remains part of Serbia in the eyes of nearly
half the world , or Somaliland, which is
recognized by literally nobody despite having
a strong legal case for statehood.
These are just the big names, the ones that
get into the news. Step behind the headlines,
and you’ll uncover a whole host of nations-in-
waiting, crying out for recognition. Some exist
very far away. Others are closer to home than
you might think.
10 The Republic Of Lakotah
Imagine you could visit a brand new foreign
nation in North America. A country the size of
Syria, where non-European languages are
spoken; an ancient land that has been home
to a proud people for centuries. Well, we’ve
got news for you. Lakotah is real and you can
find it in the Midwest.
Stretching over 1,600 kilometers (1,000 mi)
across Montana, Nebraska, Wyoming, North
Dakota, and South Dakota, Lakotah is the
ancient tribal homeland of the Lakota Sioux,
who considered the Black Hills sacred. Back in
the day, the US government agreed. In 1868,
the tribe signed a deal with Washington that
gave it the right to the territory.
That Montanans aren’t now all speaking Sioux
is down to the Gold Rush. Faced with an
onslaught of prospectors rushing into the
Black Hills, the government quietly forgot all
about its own treaty and let the Lakota get
kicked off their land. Reviewing the evidence in
1998, the Supreme Court declared “a more ripe
and rank case of dishonest dealings may
never be found in our history.”
Although the Court offered the Lakota $600
million in compensation, they rejected the
money and instead announced they would
unilaterally withdraw from the United States.
In 2007, the tribe made a formal petition to
Washington, asking for its reservations to be
joined into a sovereign nation. As of 2015, the
Lakota still consider themselves an
independent state and are fighting to be
recognized internationally.
9 Balochistan
August 11, 1947 is an important day in the
Baloch region, a vast province that makes up
nearly 45 percent of Pakistan. It’s the day that
Balochistan became an independent nation .
At least, that’s the story according to Baloch
nationalists. They claim the British recognized
the territory as a state just before leaving, only
for Pakistan to illegally annex it less than a
year later. On the other side, Pakistan claims
the four provinces making up Balochistan
individually agreed to join their country.
Whatever the historical truth is, there’s no
doubting that relations between modern
Balochistan and its rulers are strained.
Following the rape of a local girl by a
Pakistani army captain in 2005, the province
exploded into unrest that has gripped it ever
since.
At the time of writing, the wannabe nation is
under de facto military control, but its
government in exile continues to push for
either full independence from Pakistan or at
least full autonomy. Although most Balochs
view Islamabad with suspicion and want to
break away, it seems unlikely they will ever
achieve this aim.
8 Northern Epirus
In 2008, Kosovo declared independence from
Serbia and, with the support of Albania, set up
its own functioning government. The move
outraged Belgrade for a number of reasons,
one of which may have been Albania’s
hypocrisy. Despite backing Kosovo’s move to
statehood, Albania has long ignored the
wannabe state in its own south: Northern
Epirus .
An enclave of 40,000 ethnic Greeks living in
Albania, the province has endured uneasy
relations with Tirana for decades. Between
1946 and 1986, Greece and Albania were
technically in a state of war over its status. As
late as 2013, Albania’s foreign minister was
complaining that Greece had yet to abolish a
law relating to the province that left the two
countries in a state of frozen conflict.
Although the goal of Greeks living in Northern
Epirus is to become part of Greece, the
province already functions as a kind of
autonomous state. During the Communist
years, the Albanian dictator Enver Hoxha
gifted the community control of 99 villages in
the area. Today, Greeks in the region claim
this means they’re now discriminated against
by Tirana.
7 Abkhazia
What makes a nation? Abkhazia has a distinct
ethnic population, borders based on historical
boundaries, its own military, a functioning
government, a national bank, its own
passports, and recognition from at least four
UN member nations (Russia, Nicaragua,
Venezuela, and Nauru). Yet, to over 90 percent
of the world, it remains a province of Georgia,
the country it broke away from in a
devastating 1992–1993 war.
Historically, Abkhazia is as much an
independent nation as somewhere like Wales.
Between the ninth century and 1008 AD, it
operated as a sovereign kingdom, before being
subsumed into Georgia and then into Russia.
When the USSR collapsed, the people of
Abkhazia declared a return to their medieval
borders, sparking off a ferocious war with
Georgia. As a result of large-scale ethnic
cleansing, most Georgians have now fled the
province, while most Abkhazians have fled
Georgia. Since 1999, it has claimed itself an
independent state.
That it hasn’t garnered greater recognition
may be due to Russia’s involvement. Since the
early 2000s, Russia has been using Abkhazia
as a way of irritating its enemy Georgia. Putin
even used the wannabe state to open up a
new front against Tbilisi in the 2008 Russia-
Georgia war. Speaking of which . . .
6 South Ossetia
A tiny stretch of land in the north of Georgia,
South Ossetia is barely 4,000 square
kilometers (1,500 mi ) of rugged, windswept,
mountainous terrain that houses a mere
50,000 people. Yet its citizens believe their
territory constitutes an independent nation.
They have their own distinct language and are
ethnically closer to Russia’s Ossetians than to
their fellow Georgians. Like Abkhazia, they
also responded to the breakup of the USSR by
declaring independence.
This time, however, the war wasn’t so
conclusive. At its end in 1992, South Ossetia
was still an uneasy part of Georgia, only now
patrolled by peacekeepers from both countries
plus Russia. For the next 14 years, the war’s
resentments simmered away, until a
referendum on autonomy brought them
boiling over in 2006. A mere two years later,
Georgia sent the tanks in to bring its restive
province to heel, only to be chased away when
Russia invaded.
Since then, South Ossetia has been de facto
independent, with its own government. This
state of affairs probably won’t last long. In
October 2015, president Leonid Tibilov
declared his intention to make the territory a
formal part of Russia .
5 Barotseland
A stretch of central African floodplain roughly
the size of England, Barotseland considers
itself the world’s youngest nation state. In
March 2012, the Barotse National Council
decided to unilaterally declare independence
from Zambia over a promise broken nearly 50
years earlier.
According to the Barotseland royal household,
its 1964 treaty to join Zambia was supposed
to give the kingdom complete autonomy within
the country. Up until that point, the region had
been an independent nation, recognized as
such by the colonial British administration.
However, the moment the treaty was signed,
Zambia incorporated Barotseland fully,
rendering it little more than a regular province
with no special status . In the decades since,
attempts to agitate for independence have
been broken up with beatings and bullets.
This is particularly galling, as Barotseland was
once the heart of an empire that stretched
from Angola to Namibia and up into the
modern Democratic Republic of the Congo, as
well as controlling most of Zambia. Although
the current royal household only wants a
small strip of 126,000 square kilometers
(50,000 mi ) returned to it (the whole western
province), the government in Lusaka has
chosen to ignore its pleas entirely.
4 Chinland
Comprising the western edge of Myanmar
along the border with India and Bangladesh,
Chinland is home to around 1.5 million people
and more tribes than you can shake a
proverbial stick at. There are at least six major
ethnic groups in the region, subdivided into 63
tribes that speak around 20 languages. The
one thing they all have in common is their
historical grievance against Myanmar.
Prior to the 18th century, Chinland’s borders
encompassed large tracts of both Myanmar
and Bangladesh, along with a chunk of
northeastern India. Then the British arrived
and conquered everything. Not only did they
screw up Chinland’s present, they screwed up
its future. When the empire pulled out of the
subcontinent in the late 1940s, it left the
fledgling nation at the mercy of its bigger
neighbors. In no time at all, Chinland was
swallowed up by what was then called Burma.
Since then, Chin nationalists have agitated for
either a separate state or for Myanmar to
become a full federation, granting them
exclusive rights . With the government in
Naypyidaw currently going through a once-in-
a-lifetime upheaval, it’s impossible to say
whether their wish might soon be granted.
3 Degar
Like many others on this list, the Degar were
screwed over by the collapse of colonialism. A
Christian people based in the central
mountains of Vietnam, they had long been
persecuted for their religion. That changed
with the arrival of the French, who knew them
as the Montagnard. The Degar formed an
alliance with their colonizers and in return
were rewarded with a state of their own .
Drawn up in 1946, the Pays Montagnard du Sud
would be ruled by an emperor and be separate
from the rest of Vietnam. For a few years, this
seemed on the verge of becoming a reality.
Then 1954 came, and the French abruptly
decided to abandon their ambitions in the
region. Before the Degar state could be
established, they’d pulled out, leaving a
vacuum in their wake.
With the French gone, the Degar allied
themselves with US special forces in the
region. Soon, they controlled their own bases
in the kingdom’s proposed territory, in return
for fighting against the Viet Cong. Again, they
had hopes of formalizing their nation. Again,
history intervened.
After the Vietnam War ended in a Communist
victory, the Degar lost everything. Many fled to
the US or Cambodia. Today, they consider
themselves a repressed minority in Vietnam,
still trying to regain the state that history
cruelly denied them.
2 Nagorno-Karabakh Republic
Nagorno-Karabakh is another post-Soviet state
frozen in time. Known by its inhabitants as
Artsakh, it has its own government,
constitution, and military. Yet not a single
other country recognizes it, not even Russia.
Instead, the world considers it a part of
Azerbaijan , the country it fought a brutal war
of independence against in 1991–1994.
Part of this may be to do with geography.
Nagorno-Karabakh is completely surrounded
by Azerbaijan. Trapped up in the mountains
and barely bigger than South Ossetia, it’s one
of the most awkwardly positioned wannabe
countries on Earth. A single corridor of
occupied Azeri land connects it to Armenia—
with whose people its citizens share ethnic
roots—like a narrow umbilical cord. The
likelihood of Armenia and Azerbaijan coming
to an agreement over Nagorno-Karabakh’s
status is unlikely. A shocking level of ethnic
cleansing on both sides took place during the
post-Soviet war, and fighting still claims
dozens of lives each year.
1 The Sovereign Military Order
Of Malta
Unlike nearly every other hidden nation on this
list, the Sovereign Military Order of Malta is
recognized across the world. It has bilateral
relations with 105 countries and diplomatic
relations with another six (plus Palestine). It
has a permanent observer status at the UN,
and its passports are accepted in many of the
world’s major nations. Yet it has literally no
territory. Not only that, it doesn’t even lay
claim to any.
This curious existence is down to the Order’s
extremely long history . A group of Catholic
knights that was founded in the 11th century,
it once occupied and owned the island of
Malta. Then, in 1798, Napoleon came to visit.
Kicked off its homeland, the Order relocated to
Italy, where Catholic nations continued to
recognize it as a legitimate nation. Somehow,
this state of affairs lasted the next 217 years.
Today, the Order has control over just two
buildings in Rome. It has no stated wish to
reclaim the island of Malta, and its 13,500
members mainly involve themselves in
humanitarian work. Yet to over half the
world’s countries, including most of the EU
and Canada, it remains a functioning state,
accorded the same privileges as many
nations.

Very informative post. Thank you OP.

Well I never knew

only knew of the military republic of Malta before now. am sure most of these countries will be living in stoneage

sammyhands:
only knew of the military republic of Malta before now. am sure most of these countries will be living in stoneage

No oo, they exist till today...

What about Biafria

laurel03:
What about Biafria

People have heard about that one na.... more than a million people is agitating for it, even though it's not a country...