Devoid of
Romulans, the neutral zone was a diamond shaped parcel of land of 7,000 square kilometres of
sand dunes on the border between
Saudi Arabia and
Iraq. Its most western point touched the border of
Kuwait.
In 1922 the British who had moved into the area after the Ottomans had left, found themselves negotiating with the dominant sheik of the central desert, Ibn Saud. The British wanted to deliniate national boundaries to keep the peace Ibn Saud had sway over most of the Bedu, who are nomadic, unaligned to any particular nation state and would not take kindly to having access to their water wells cut off. To get their cartographic chores completed and keep the Arabs happy, the British simply created a territory called the 'Neutral Zone', which was about where a particularly quarrelsome tribe called the Zadir dwelt. Under the Protocol of Uqayr, no government could build fortifications or move military assets in or near the zones. The Bedu could move in and out of the zone from either Iraq or Saudi Arabia. A similar zone existed between Saudi Arabia and Kuwait until 1969, when both countries decided to divide up the territory and exploit its oil reserves.
The Neutral Zone got its own two character ISO 3166 internet code - NT. However the zone was ultimately divvied up between these Iraq and Saudi Arabia on December 26 1981, partially attributed to both countries wanting to ease tensions between themselves when they faced a common foe in the form of Iran's Islamic revolution. Partition was finalised in 1983.