*WIRED:* Do you ever go to a place and survey a disputed border?
*Dillon:* No, we don't do that. That's not our job. Instead we try to act
as a good faith broker between two parties, and we only do it if they both
ask us. That's what happened in Kosovo-Macedonia. We also helped out
in Azerbaijan-Armenia and Ethiopia-Eritrea.
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2014/01/state-department-maps/
How the U.S. Maps the World's Most Disputed Territories
- By Greg Miller
- 01.24.14
- 6:30 AM
- Edit<
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/wp-admin/post.php?post=497221&action=edit>
&lt;img class="size-large wp-image-497371" title="southsudan" alt=""
src="
http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/wiredscience/2014/01/southsudan-660x518.jpg"
width="660" height="518" /&gt;
A 2011 map of South Sudan made by the State Department's Office of the
Geographer. *Image: Library of Congress*
When the United States decides to recognize a new government, or an
existing country changes its name, Leo Dillon and his team at the State
Department spring into action.
Dillon heads the Geographical Information Unit, which is responsible for
ensuring the boundaries and names on government maps reflect U.S. policy.
The team also keeps an eye on border skirmishes and territorial disputes
throughout the world and makes maps that are used in negotiating treaties
and truces. These days, Dillon says, maritime borders are where much of the
action is. (The recent political squabbling and military posturing between
China and Japan over the tiny islands known as Diaoyu in China and Senkaku
in Japan is one potentially worrisome case in point.)
Dillon's been at the State Department since 1986, and he says his job
remains as fun as ever. "The landscape of political geography is constantly
changing," he said. "Every day I come in here and there's something new."
We spoke with Dillon to learn more about it.
*WIRED: *What's an example of an interesting border dispute you've worked
on?
<img class="size-full wp-image-497331" title="Leo" alt=""
src="
http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/wiredscience/2014/01/Leo.jpg"
width="375" height="396"
/><
http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/wiredscience/2014/01/Leo.jpg>
Leo Dillon.* Photo: courtesy of Leo Dillon*
*Leo Dillon:* One case I worked on that was kind of fun involves a tiny
island off the coast of Morocco. It's very close to shore and very, very
small. But about 11 years ago Morocco sent a few troops there and Spain
swooped in with helicopters and expelled them and it became a big deal.
[Then-Secretary of State] Colin Powell was asked to mediate the conflict.
[In Powell's plan] everyone was going to leave the island, with no
prejudice as to who it belonged to. They drew up an agreement but the
problem was the name. The Spanish wouldn't use the Moroccan name and the
Moroccans wouldn't use the Spanish name.
I was at a dinner party that Saturday night and I got a call from the
Secretary's staff saying that instead of a name they wanted to use the
coordinates for that island. So I showed them how to get on a database and
do that. I could hear the Secretary in the background saying, "Ask him how
accurate those coordinates are." They're not totally accurate, but there's
no island nearby with which it could possibly be confused. So the documents
he drew up for the mediations referred to "the island and such and such
coordinates" and those documents had to be signed by the prime minister of
Spain and the king of Morocco by midnight that same day.
The prime minister of Spain signed, no problem. But they had to send a high
speed car looking for the king of Morocco. This was in the days before
cellphones were prevalent. So they caught up to him and he basically had to
pull over at some house and say, "Excuse me, I'm your king, could I use
your phone?" He called up Powell and asked him to read the document, which
he immediately agreed to. So that was a big deal, and my small part in it
was to provide those coordinates. It's a great example of how geographic
names matter.
*WIRED:* Where do geographic names come from in more ordinary circumstances?
*Dillon:* What we're looking for is names that are used officially or names
that are used locally. Actually, officially usually trumps locally.
Ninety-five percent of the names in our huge database come from official
maps, and maybe five percent require special treatment. That's where I come
in quite often and investigate.
Especially in places like Asia or Africa it comes up because sometimes
there's a typo on a map or something doesn't look quite right. A good
example is a Syrian town near the border with Turkey. It's an important
town that's been in the news a lot. Most people call it A'zaz, but then I
noticed our staff had changed it to I'zaz because there's a large scale map
that spells it that way. And some local people apparently do call it I'zaz.
But almost everybody calls it A'zaz, and I had to build a case using
everything from Syrian websites, to reputable atlases like *National
Geographic* to internet sources.
&lt;img class="size-full wp-image-511481" alt="" src="
http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/wiredscience/2014/01/Guyanas.jpg"
width="660" height="531" /&gt;
A State Department map illustrating disputed borders in South America. *Image:
courtesy of Leo Dillon*
*WIRED:* What happens when a new country comes up? Does that trigger a lot
of work for you?
*Dillon:* It sure does. Every time a new country comes by it shakes up the
order. Usually you have a lot of advance notice, but it still gets
complicated. For instance, when we recognized Kosovo there were many sets
of boundaries. The peacekeeping forces there were using boundaries that
weren't really the legal boundaries at all. Their job was to keep peace in
a buffer zone, so they'd set up working boundaries in a way that made it
easier for them to keep people with guns apart. We were going with the
largest scale available map, in this case a series of Yugoslavian-made maps
in the Library of Congress. But it took a while to explain to people why we
had the boundary the way we had it and what we were basing it on.
The names were an issue too. Before, Serbian names were all we used, but
now the State Department said we can't do that, we have to use both Serbian
and Albanian names for each and every town and feature. We had to go chase
down an authoritative source of Albanian place names, which had never
really existed. The Kosovars did a reasonably good job of tracking them
down. But then we had to make a basic reference map, and I couldn't include
as many towns as I wanted to because I couldn't fit all the labels.
The other problem from our perspective is that a new country makes all the
old reference maps obsolete. The other day I was asked for a good
page-sized map of the Central African Republic because things are going on
there. We have one produced in 2004. Well, it's no good anymore because it
doesn't say South Sudan.
*WIRED: *What kinds of information do you use when you're working on a
border dispute?
*Dillon: *It's mostly whatever commercial satellite imagery we have
available. Honestly, these days it's a lot of good old Google Earth. We
prefer commercial because it's neutral. But we also use terrain data from
SRTM [the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission] or LIDAR or whatever else we
need.
In one case, my colleague went to the capitals of both Kosovo and
Macedonia. Formerly they were two states in Yugoslavia. Their borders
weren't all that properly defined, and they needed to normalize their
borders to have proper diplomatic relations. But they were very mistrustful
of each other. He showed up with some Google Earth and Landsat images and
showed them that there was this ridge line. He showed them that it's not a
big deal, you might have to give up an acre here or there, but if you just
follow the ridge line that's where the boundary should be. And they
agreed. So it was a kind of technical solution to a politically charged
situation. It worked out very quickly.
*WIRED:* Do you ever go to a place and survey a disputed border?
*Dillon:* No, we don't do that. That's not our job. Instead we try to act
as a good faith broker between two parties, and we only do it if they both
ask us. That's what happened in Kosovo-Macedonia. We also helped out
in Azerbaijan-Armenia and Ethiopia-Eritrea.
*WIRED:* Do you ever use historic maps?
*Dillon:* All the time. A good example is during the Iraq war. Our embassy
staff were trying to negotiate with the Kurds in the north, and the Kurds
were saying these lands used to belong to us, and our folks there had no
way of knowing if that was true. I got tasked with finding old maps that
would corroborate what these guys are saying. So I went to the Library of
Congress and found old maps of the area. I was able to make copies and
georectify them and put them up against Kurds' claims, and that was used as
a negotiating tool. Our folks were able to say look, you said this whole
area used to be in this particular province, but you can see here that only
half of it was. And they'd say, "Oh yeah, maybe you're right."
One of my colleagues is working hard now on India and China, which is one
of the few borders that never really had a solid treaty behind it. He's got
all these detailed maps from both sides, and he's trying to work through
the differences. He's found areas where the British surveyors on the Indian
side made mistakes. He's basically doing detective work, where he can say
it's obvious they had a guy on this ridge line and another guy on this
ridge line, but there was a valley in between they couldn't see, so they
basically drew a line where they shouldn't have.
&lt;img class="size-full wp-image-511451" alt="" src="
http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/wiredscience/2014/01/CostaRicaNicaragua1900.jpg"
width="660" height="437" /&gt;
Dillon and his team often use historic maps to research boundary claims.
This 1900 map depicts a (still) contentious region of the Costa
Rica-Nicaragua border as arbitrated by President Grover Cleveland. *Image:
courtesy of Leo Dillon*
*WIRED:* Do you work with a lot of classified maps?
*Dillon:* Most classified maps we deal with are something that's going on
at a given time. They show the movement of rebel groups or narcotics or
something like that. But they're ephemeral. I don't like to make them
because why make a map that only a small number of people will see and is
only useful for a short time?
*WIRED: *Where are some of the current hot spots in terms of border
disputes?
*Dillon:* Maritime borders are really where the hot spots are right
now. The South China Sea is huge right now. You've got all these tiny
islands there that are claimed by various actors. In the eastern
Mediterranean there's all these complicated maritime agreements that some
states recognize and other states don't.
As people are trying to exploit resources in the sea it's getting more and
more important for them to be able to delimit the areas of sovereign
rights. You have what's called your territorial seas, which is 12 nautical
miles [off the coast], then you have your exclusive economic zone which is
200 nautical miles, and you even have certain rights to what's called the
extended continental shelf which goes beyond 200 nautical miles -- if you
can define it. Some states are trying to do that responsibly using
international law, and some states are not doing it responsibly.
*WIRED:* How does defining maritime borders differ from defining land
borders?
*Dillon:* Maritime boundaries are actually simpler. Most people agree on a
principle of equidistance, so you just have to get together and agree on a
distance. You take an island or a coastline and start drawing concentric
circles out and find a midline between them. But there are disputes all the
time. Burma and Bangladesh took a case to the International Court of
Justice recently. Chile and Peru is another case we're really watching. A
decision could be out any day.
*WIRED:* Is climate change creating new areas of dispute?
*Dillon:* Sea level rise is going to play an enormous role in coastal
states. People who are trying right now to negotiate their maritime
boundaries with a neighboring state have to take that into account. If you
chose a spot right now that's the terminus of your land boundary and you
move it out 12 nautical miles, and your shoreline is very shallow, you may
find yourself in 100 years with your land terminus underwater.
*WIRED:* Have open access cartography tools like Open Street Maps impacted
your work?
*Dillon:* In a way, yes. Not so much with boundaries because boundaries are
legal instruments. Anybody can put down a boundary in OSM but nobody's
going to pay attention to it because there's nothing backing it up. But in
the realm of names, definitely so. People are putting down names in OSM
that are quasi-official or not official or local, and those are very
interesting. We look at them and we collect them.
Before the internet, we had a much easier time defending the names we used
because we were considered much more of an authority. Now, if you want to
find out how to spell a town in an Arabic country, if you go to Wikipedia
you may find a name that's more commonly used on the ground. It's something
we're having a hard time keeping up with. The democratization of
cartography, much like the internet as a whole, has opened up the world of
geographical knowledge to a much bigger degree.
Received on Fri Feb 28 2014 - 09:38:07 EST
