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The Berlin Wall is the best example of a relic boundary. This video gives some historical context for those who don't know what the Berlin Wall is. To extend your learning, read the 4.5 Boundaries and Identity article.

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The rise and fall of the Berlin Wall - Konrad H. Jarausch

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An article talking about how the relic boundary of the Berlin Wall has continued to influence culture in Germany. For background, watch the 4.4 Berlin Wall video.

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Lesson of the Day: ‘Germany Has Been Unified for 30 Years. Its Identity Still Is Not.’ (Published 2019)

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In this lesson, students learn how historical, political and social changes in Germany since the fall of the Berlin Wall have shaped the sense of identity of today’s citizens, immigrants and expatriates.

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4.1 - Intro to Political Geography, Stateless Nation

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4.1 - Intro to Political Geography, Stateless Nation

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PODCAST AVAILABLE VIA SPOTIFY OR APPLE PODCASTS

A podcast from Throughline about the Kurds, the largest stateless nation.

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Over the decades the Kurds have been inspired by, allied with, relied upon and betrayed by the United States. This week we explore who the Kurds are, who they are to the United States and what, if anything, we owe to them.
If you would like to read more about the topic: We love to hear from our listeners! Tweet at us @throughlineNPR, send us an , or leave us a voicemail at (872) 588-8805.

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No Friend But The Mountains : Throughline

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Over the decades the Kurds have been inspired by, allied with, relied upon and betrayed by the United States. This week we explore who the Kurds are, who they are to the United States and what, if anything, we owe to them.

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An article from the BBC about the Kurds, the largest stateless nation.

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Between 25 and 35 million Kurds inhabit a mountainous region straddling the borders of Turkey, Iraq, Syria, Iran and Armenia. They make up the fourth-largest ethnic group in the Middle East, but they have never obtained a permanent nation state.

Where do they come from?

The Kurds are one of the indigenous peoples of the Mesopotamian plains and the highlands in what are now south-eastern Turkey, north-eastern Syria, northern Iraq, north-western Iran and south-western Armenia.

Today, they form a distinctive community, united through race, culture and language, even though they have no standard dialect. They also adhere to a number of different religions and creeds, although the majority are Sunni Muslims.

In the early 20th Century, many Kurds began to consider the creation of a homeland - generally referred to as "Kurdistan". After World War One and the defeat of the Ottoman Empire, the victorious Western allies made provision for a Kurdish state in the 1920 Treaty of Sevres.

Such hopes were dashed three years later, however, when the Treaty of Lausanne, which set the boundaries of modern Turkey, made no provision for a Kurdish state and left Kurds with minority status in their respective countries. Over the next 80 years, any move by Kurds to set up an independent state was brutally quashed.

In mid-2013, the jihadist group Islamic State (IS) turned its sights on three Kurdish enclaves that bordered territory under its control in northern Syria. It launched repeated attacks that until mid-2014 were repelled by the People's Protection Units (YPG) - the armed wing of the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD).

An IS advance in northern Iraq in June 2014 also drew that country's Kurds into the conflict. The government of Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan Region sent its Peshmerga forces to areas abandoned by the Iraqi army.

In August 2014, the jihadists launched a surprise offensive and the Peshmerga withdrew from several areas. A number of towns inhabited by religious minorities fell, notably Sinjar, where IS militants killed or captured thousands of Yazidis.

In September 2014, IS launched an assault on the enclave around the northern Syrian Kurdish town of Kobane, forcing tens of thousands of people to flee across the nearby Turkish border. Despite the proximity of the fighting, Turkey refused to attack IS positions or allow Turkish Kurds to cross to defend it.

In January 2015, after a battle that left at least 1,600 people dead, Kurdish forces regained control of Kobane.

The Kurds - fighting alongside several local Arab militias under the banner of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) alliance, and helped by US-led coalition air strikes, weapons and advisers - then steadily drove IS out of tens of thousands of square kilometres of territory in north-eastern Syria and established control over a large stretch of the border with Turkey.

In October 2017, SDF fighters captured the de facto IS capital of Raqqa and then advanced south-eastwards into the neighbouring province of Deir al-Zour - the jihadists' last major foothold in Syria.

The last pocket of territory held by IS in Syria - around the village of Baghouz - fell to the SDF in March 2019. The SDF hailed the "total elimination" of the IS "caliphate", but it warned that jihadist sleeper cells remained "a great threat".

The SDF was also left to deal with the thousands of suspected IS militants captured during the last two years of the battle, as well as tens of thousands of displaced women and children associated with IS fighters. The US called for the repatriation of foreign nationals among them, but most of their home countries refused.

In October 2019, US troops pulled back from the border with Turkey after the country's president said it was about to launch an operation to set up a 32km (20-mile) deep "safe zone" clear of YPG fighters and resettle up to 2 million Syrian refugees there. The SDF said it had been "stabbed in the back" by the US and warned that the offensive might reverse the defeat of IS, the fight against which it said it could no longer prioritise.

Turkish troops and allied Syrian rebels made steady gains in the first few days of the operation. In response, the SDF turned to the Syrian government for help and reached a deal for the Syrian army to deploy along the border.

The Syrian government has vowed to take back control of all of Syria.

There is deep-seated hostility between the Turkish state and the country's Kurds, who constitute 15% to 20% of the population.

Kurds received harsh treatment at the hands of the Turkish authorities for generations. In response to uprisings in the 1920s and 1930s, many Kurds were resettled, Kurdish names and costumes were banned, the use of the Kurdish language was restricted, and even the existence of a Kurdish ethnic identity was denied, with people designated "Mountain Turks".

In 1978, Abdullah Ocalan established the PKK, which called for an independent state within Turkey. Six years later, the group began an armed struggle. Since then, more than 40,000 people have been killed and hundreds of thousands displaced.

In the 1990s the PKK rolled back on its demand for independence, calling instead for greater cultural and political autonomy, but continued to fight. In 2013, a ceasefire was agreed after secret talks were held.

The ceasefire collapsed in July 2015, after a suicide bombing blamed on IS killed 33 young activists in the mainly Kurdish town of Suruc, near the Syrian border. The PKK accused the authorities of complicity and attacked Turkish soldiers and police. The Turkish government subsequently launched what it called a "synchronised war on terror" against the PKK and IS.

Since then, several thousand people - including hundreds of civilians - have been killed in clashes in south-eastern Turkey.

Turkey has maintained a military presence in northern Syria since August 2016, when it sent troops and tanks over the border to support a Syrian rebel offensive against IS. Those forces captured the key border town of Jarablus, preventing the YPG-led SDF from seizing the territory itself and linking up with the Kurdish enclave of Afrin to the west.

In 2018, Turkish troops and allied Syrian rebels launched an operation to expel YPG fighters from Afrin. Dozens of civilians were killed and tens of thousands displaced.

Turkey's government says the YPG and the PYD are extensions of the PKK, share its goal of secession through armed struggle, and are terrorist organisations that must be eliminated.

What do Syria's Kurds want?

Kurds make up between 7% and 10% of Syria's population. Before the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad began in 2011 most lived in the cities of Damascus and Aleppo, and in three, non-contiguous areas around Kobane, Afrin, and the north-eastern city of Qamishli.

Syria's Kurds have long been suppressed and denied basic rights. Some 300,000 have been denied citizenship since the 1960s, and Kurdish land has been confiscated and redistributed to Arabs in an attempt to "Arabize" Kurdish regions.

When the uprising evolved into a civil war, the main Kurdish parties publicly avoided taking sides. In mid-2012, government forces withdrew to concentrate on fighting the rebels elsewhere, and Kurdish groups took control in their wake.

In January 2014, Kurdish parties - including the dominant Democratic Union Party (PYD) - declared the creation of "autonomous administrations" in the three "cantons" of Afrin, Kobane and Jazira.

In March 2016, they announced the establishment of a "federal system" that included mainly Arab and Turkmen areas captured from IS.

The declaration was rejected by the Syrian government, the Syrian opposition, Turkey and the US.

The PYD says it is not seeking independence, but insists that any political settlement to end the conflict in Syria must include legal guarantees for Kurdish rights and recognition of Kurdish autonomy.

President Assad has vowed to retake "every inch" of Syrian territory, whether by negotiations or military force. His government has also rejected Kurdish demands for autonomy, saying that "nobody in Syria accepts talk about independent entities or federalism".

Will Iraq's Kurds gain independence?

Kurds make up an estimated 15% to 20% of Iraq's population. They have historically enjoyed more national rights than Kurds living in neighbouring states, but also faced brutal repression.

In 1946, Mustafa Barzani formed the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) to fight for autonomy in Iraq. But it was not until 1961 that he launched a full armed struggle.

In the late 1970s, the government began settling Arabs in areas with Kurdish majorities, particularly around the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, and forcibly relocating Kurds.

The policy was accelerated in the 1980s during the Iran-Iraq War, in which the Kurds backed the Islamic republic. In 1988, Saddam Hussein unleashed a campaign of vengeance on the Kurds that included the chemical attack on Halabja.

When Iraq was defeated in the 1991 Gulf War, Barzani's son Massoud and Jalal Talabani of the rival Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) led a Kurdish rebellion. Its violent suppression prompted the US and its allies to impose a no-fly zone in the north that allowed Kurds to enjoy self-rule. The KDP and PUK agreed to share power, but tensions rose and a four-year war erupted between them in 1994.

The parties co-operated with the US-led invasion in 2003 that toppled Saddam and governed in coalition in the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), created two years later to administer Dohuk, Irbil and Sulaimaniya provinces.

Massoud Barzani was appointed the region's president, while Jalal Talabani became Iraq's first non-Arab head of state.

In September 2017, a referendum on independence was held in both the Kurdistan Region and the disputed areas seized by the Peshmerga in 2014, including Kirkuk. The vote was opposed by the Iraqi central government, which insisted it was illegal.

More than 90% of the 3.3 million people who voted supported secession. KRG officials said the result gave them a mandate to start negotiations with Baghdad, but then Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi demanded that it be annulled.

The following month Iraqi pro-government forces retook the disputed territory held by the Kurds. The loss of Kirkuk and its oil revenue was a major blow to Kurdish aspirations for their own state.

After his gamble backfired, Mr Barzani stepped down as the Kurdistan Region's president. But disagreements between the main parties meant the post remained vacant until June 2019, when he was succeeded by his nephew Nechirvan.

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Kurds make up the Middle East's fourth-largest ethnic group, but they have never obtained statehood.

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4.1 - Stateless Nation, Sovereignty / 4.8 Ethnic Separatism

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4.1 - Stateless Nation, Sovereignty / 4.8 Ethnic Separatism

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A Vox video explaining the independence movement in Catalonia, the province of Spain where Barcelona is located.

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4.5 - Political boundaries/Law of the Sea / General Unit 4

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4.5 - Political boundaries/Law of the Sea / General Unit 4

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PODCAST AVAILABLE VIA SPOTIFY OR APPLE PODCASTS

A podcast episode from The Compass about territoriality (4.3), the function of political boundaries (4.5), the UN Law of the Sea (4.5), challenges to sovereignty (4.9) and the EU, NATO, and the Arctic Council (4.9).

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BBC World Service - The Compass, The New Arctic, The New Arctic: Power

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As tensions rise between Russia, Nato and China in the Arctic is a new cold war likely?

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A TedEd video explaining the colonization of India, and decolonization into India and Pakistan.

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Why was India split into two countries? - Haimanti Roy

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In 1947, the British viceroy announced that after 200 years of British rule, India would gain independence and be partitioned into Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan. What followed was one of the largest and bloodiest forced migrations in history: an estimated 1 million people lost their lives. What c…

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A TedEd video explaining colonization, decolonization, and genocide in Rwanda.

NOTE: If you're looking for a movie to watch while you're bored at home, follow this up with Hotel Rwanda, a GREAT movie that takes place in the midst of the Rwandan Genocide.

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Susanne Buckley-Zistel: What caused the Rwandan Genocide?

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For one hundred days in 1994, the African country of Rwanda suffered a horrific campaign of mass murder. Neighbor turned against neighbor as violence engulfed the region, resulting in the deaths of over one-tenth of the country's population. How did this happen? And why didn't international organizations intervene?

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Trevor Noah (a late night TV host born in South Africa) explains Chinese neocolonialism in Africa today.

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Why China Is in Africa - If You Don’t Know, Now You Know | The Daily Show

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Great background on the war in Ukraine which explains Ukraine's role as a shatterbelt nation.

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What most people miss about the war in Ukraine

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A podcast from How to Save a Planet (one of my favorites) which explains a contemporary reason that regulation of ownership of the sea is necessary - deep sea mining for minerals used in electric car batteries. *Does not specifically talk about UNCLOS, but does illustrate the "value of islands" idea

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In the coming years, we'll need millions of batteries: batteries to store renewable electricity and power a massive fleet of electric vehicles. But those batteries will require certain metals, and those metals have to be mined. And the mining industry can be a mess, sometimes associated with deforestation, child labor, and deadly floods of toxic waste. Is there a better way? Today we journey to the bottom of the ocean to find out. Along the way, we discover a massive government conspiracy and meet an adorable octopus.

Calls to Action:

Keep up to date on deep-sea mining news with the Deep-Sea Mining Observer.

Learn more about calls for a moratorium on deep-sea mining with the Deep-Sea Mining Science Statement.

Check out the Ocean Forum's Ocean Justice Platform (shout-out to our former co-host, Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson!)

Where to Listen

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Should We Mine the Deep-Sea? | How to Save a Planet

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In the coming years, we'll need millions of batteries: batteries to store renewable electricity and power a massive fleet of electric vehicles. But those batteries will require certain metals, and those metals have to be mined. And the mining industry can be a mess, sometimes associated with deforestation, child labor, and deadly floods of toxic waste.

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An article from the Washington Post about America's most gerrymandered Congressional districts.

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This election year we can expect to hear a lot about Congressional district gerrymandering, which is when political parties redraw district boundaries to give themselves an electoral advantage.

Gerrymandering is at least partly to blame for the lopsided Republican representation in the House. According to an analysis I did last year, the Democrats are under-represented by about 18 seats in the House, relative to their vote share in the 2012 election. The way Republicans pulled that off was to draw some really, really funky-looking Congressional districts.

Contrary to one popular misconception about the practice, the point of gerrymandering isn't to draw yourself a collection of overwhelmingly safe seats. Rather, it's to give your opponents a small number of safe seats, while drawing yourself a larger number of seats that are not quite as safe, but that you can expect to win comfortably. Considering this dynamic, John Sides of The Washington Post's Monkey Cage blog has argued convincingly that gerrymandering is not what's behind the rising polarization in Congress.

The process of redrawing district lines to give an advantage to one party over another is called "gerrymandering." Here's how it works. (Video: Daron Taylor/The Washington Post)

The compactness of a district -- a measure of how irregular its shape is, as determined by the ratio of the area of the district to the area of a circle with the same perimeter -- can serve as a useful proxy for how gerrymandered the district is. Districts that follow a generally regular shape tend to be compact, while those that have a lot of squiggles and offshoots and tentacle-looking protuberances tend to score poorly on this measure.

Using district boundary files from the Census, I calculated compactness scores for each of the districts of the 113th Congress and mapped them so you can see where the least compact -- and likely most-gerrymandered --districts are. Click through for an interactive map, along with detailed methodological notes for the brave.

Click through for interactive map "

There's a lot to say about these districts, about who drew them, the factors that went into their creation and the electoral consequences. Here's a straightforward run-down of where the most- and least-gerrymandered districts are.

1. Democrats won in nine of the 10 most-gerrymandered districts. But eight out of 10 of those districts were drawn by Republicans.

This speaks to the notion that the point of gerrymandering isn't to draw yourself a safe seat but to put your opponents in safe seats by cramming all of their supporters into a small number of districts. This lets you spread your own supporters over a larger number of districts. And the way to do this is to draw outlandishly-shaped districts that bring far-flung geographic areas together. North Carolina's 12th district, which holds the title of the nation's most-gerrymandered, is a textbook example of this: It snakes from north of Greensboro, to Winston-Salem, and then all the way down to Charlotte, spanning most of the state in the process.

2. Three of the 10 most-gerrymandered districts are in North Carolina.

North Carolina Republicans really outdid themselves in 2012. In addition to the 12th district, there's the 4th, which covers Raleigh and Burlington and snakes a narrow tentacle all the way south to pick up parts of Fayetteville. And then there's the 1st District, which covers a sprawling arbitrarily shaped region in the northeastern part of the state. All three of these seats were won by Democrats in 2012.

Overall, the North Carolina GOP's efforts paid off handsomely. Based on their statewide vote share you'd expect North Carolina Democrats to hold about seven seats. But they won only four. This is because an outsized share of the state's Democratic voters were shunted off into the three highly-gerrymandered districts above.

3. Indiana and Nevada stand out as states with the least amount of gerrymandering.

In contrast to North Carolina's Republicans, Indiana's did a remarkably good job of drawing sensible district boundaries. The same holds true for Nevada's Democrats, although with only four districts, the district boundaries in Nevada are dictated to a large degree by the state's borders.

4. Maryland and North Carolina are essentially tied for the honor of most-gerrymandered state.

With average gerrymander scores of about 88 out of a possible 100, Maryland and North Carolina are home to some of the ugliest districts in the nation among states with at least three Congressional districts. In fact, North Carolina is home to three out of the top 10 most-gerrymandered districts in the country. Maryland is proof that gerrymandering isn't just a Republican pastime, as the state's Democrats redrew those boundaries in 2012. The standout in that state is the 3rd Congressional district, which is the nation's second-most gerrymandered and home to Democratic congressman John Sarbanes.

5. Republicans drew Congressional boundaries in six of the 10 most-gerrymandered states.

In addition to North Carolina, Republicans drew district boundaries in Louisiana, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Alabama. Democrats drew districts in West Virginia and Illinois, in addition to Maryland. Boundaries in Kentucky were drawn up by that state's mixed legislature.

Again, the payoff for Republicans is in the makeup of the state's delegations: In those six states, Republicans picked up about 11 more seats than you'd expect from simply looking at the parties' vote shares.

6. Gerrymandering is easier to get away with in more densely-populated areas.

You'll notice that many of the highly irregular districts are clustered around cities and metro areas. When there are more people in a given area, partisans have more leeway in how to draw their districts.

7. This is what the 10 most-gerrymandered districts look like.

For a sense of just how ridiculous gerrymandered districts look, nothing beats a visual. I've listed the 10 most gerrymandered districts below.

NORTH CAROLINA'S 12TH DISTRICT

Gerrymander index score: 97.09

MARYLAND'S 3RD DISTRICT ("The praying mantis")

Gerrymander index score: 96.79

FLORIDA'S 5TH DISTRICT

Gerrymander index score: 96.15

PENNSYLVANIA'S 7TH DISTRICT ("Goofy kicking Donald Duck")

Gerrymander index score: 96.05

NORTH CAROLINA'S 1ST DISTRICT

Gerrymander index score: 96.01

TEXAS'S 33RD DISTRICT

Gerrymander index score: 95.60

NORTH CAROLINA'S 4TH DISTRICT

Gerrymander index score: 95.16

ILLINOIS'S 4TH DISTRICT

Gerrymander index score: 94.96

TEXAS'S 35TH DISTRICT ("The upside-down elephant")

Gerrymander index score: 94.63

LOUISIANA'S 2ND DISTRICT

Gerrymander index score: 94.41

Want more on gerrymandering? Check out this excellent video produced by PostTV last year.

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A brief overview of crimes against geography in the 113th Congress.

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Late night host John Oliver discusses gerrymandering in the United States. CONTENT WARNING: Oliver is a comedian who uses a lot of adult language and topics.

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Gerrymandering: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

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A Vox video about the world's most important chokepoint.

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Why the US and Iran are fighting over this tiny waterway

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4.3 - Political Power and Territoriality

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4.3 - Political Power and Territoriality

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PODCAST AVAILABLE VIA SPOTIFY OR APPLE PODCASTS

A podcast episode from Why It Matters about why countries still want to host the Olympics.

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Hosting the Olympics is a monumental undertaking that often leaves behind rusted stadiums and financial losses. So why do nations compete to do it? This episode examines the political history of the …

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1hr 20min documentary from ESPN's 30 for 30 about basketball players in Yugoslavia in the 1990s. You can watch it on Disney+ or ESPN+, or buy it for $2.99 on Amazon.

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Drazen Petrovic and Vlade Divac grew up sharing the common bond of basketball.

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An interactive article that explains a little bit about the history of race-based gerrymandering.

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Harry Stevens is a graphics reporter at The Washington Post. He was part of a team at The Post that won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting for the series "2C: Beyond the Limit."

Artur Galocha is a graphics reporter focusing on Sports. Before joining The Washington Post in December 2020, he was a graphics editor at El País (Spain).

Adrián Blanco Ramos is a graphic reporter in the graphics department at The Washington Post. He previously worked at Spanish newspaper El Confidencial focusing on data visualization, data analysis and investigative journalism. He participated in the International Consortium of Investigative Journalist's Paradise Papers investigation.

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Can computer simulations help fix democracy?

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How algorithmic redistricting detects gerrymandered congressional maps

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This video discusses the role of social media in the democratization of the Middle East during the massive 2011 uprising known as the "Arab Spring".

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The Arab Spring: A social media revolution?