Man declares country in unclaimed pocket of land between Serbia and Croatia

Summary

On a video call, 20-year-old Daniel Jackson, the self-proclaimed president of the Free Republic of Verdis, looks the part: He is sitting at a desk with the country’s flag to his right and a banner sporting the name of his country behind him.Instead of a presidential palace, he is speaking from a humble house in Dover, a port city in the south of England. And the Free Republic of Verdis, the country he claims to have founded in 2019, is nothing more than a small strip of uninhabited forest on the border between Croatia and Serbia, more than 1,000 miles away.And yet, because of a historical border dispute, Jackson, who was born in Australia, claims to be the land’s rightful owner and ruler.Known as “Pocket 3,” the strip of forest roughly the size of the Vatican was among several left unclaimed by both countries after the Croatian war of independence ended in 1995.Jackson now envisions a country that could be a draw for humanitarian aid workers.“Verdis was an idea when I was about 14 but it came back, and actually, we actually properly created the state after I had turned 18,” he said. “The reason being is it was just an idea that initially came up with a lot of people that I know that did humanitarian work in Ukraine. And we wanted to do something that was a bit, a bit bigger than, you know, just doing aid to one country.”He added, “We want to be a neutral state. We want to be a hub for NGOs. We have a massive humanitarian background.”Those lofty goals may be tempered by the reality of neighboring countries who don’t recognize the existence of Verdis and may be hostile to its potential citizens.“In October 2023 is when we started a settlement, and a few days later Croatian authorities quickly destroyed that settlement,” Jackson said, noting that he was given a permanent ban from Croatia and the other settlers were banned for three months.He added, “I’ve been to Verdis a lot of times before Croatian authorities invaded Verdis. We did a lot of cadastral work, a lot of s...