in this massively globalized world millions of people travel from one
country to another on a daily basis to prove their identity and nationality on
foreign lands travelers are required to carry a traveling document usually a
passport issued by the government of their native country except when they're
travelling between nations that allow free flow of humans across borders in
order to get a passport you need to belong to a country which may seem like
a pretty normal thing but not everyone in the world enjoys this privilege
around 12 million people in the world are stateless which means they don't
belong to any country they can't cross international borders to travel to any
other country unless they obtain refugee travel documents furthermore just
because you hold a passport issued by a country doesn't automatically make you a
citizen of that nation Latvia issues non citizen passports to individuals who are
not citizens of Latvia but have families who have resided in the area since the
Soviet era people born in the outlying possession of the United States American
Samoa and the Swain Islands are United States nationals and not United States
citizens they carry US passports but are not allowed to vote in federal or any
state elections common people in North Korea aren't allowed to have passports
even though they are citizens of that nation among all rules and anomalies of
the colorful world of passports there are more than 200 government bodies from
195 recognized sovereign countries in the world they can issue passports to
their people apart from that the European Union has a list of 180
passports that are fictional mostly intended for fun and don't carry any
value this includes passport for Alaska passport for Texas and even world
passport on the same list there is also a section for camouflaged passport and
this is probably the strangest of them all unlike others this passport isn't
intended for fun and is designed to fool the holder into believing that the
passport is in fact a real one it looks pretty normal from the inside and
outside follows all basic guidelines but there is one faithful floor the country
it says it's issued from doesn't exist salon is the former name of sri lanka an
island nation south of india in the indian ocean the country changed its
name in 1972 after it became a republic and has been using this new name on all
official documents since then so clearly this passport can't be used
to cross borders but still hundreds of people around the world carries such
passports with them while traveling overseas the purpose is to hide the real
identity of the traveller and provide false identification to be used in
extreme emergency situations where revealing the real passport and hence
nationality could be imprudent dangerous or bring unwelcome attention the concept
of camouflaged passports originated in the 1980s where American travelers
became prime targets of hijacking and international violence on an ever
increasing scale in 1979 American citizens were held hostage by Iranians
because of their nationality and in 1985 a US citizen was murdered on the
hijacked plane TWA flight 847 because he carried an American passport these
incidents maidana Walker who was accredited for the creation of the
camouflaged passports realized the need for documents to help Americans fake
their nationality in emergency situations abroad she started by asking
the sri lankan embassy whether they still had rights to
the former lame salon and finding that they did not went on to design and
produce hundreds of passports in different country names trading as the
International document service she sold these passports to her clients around
the world for a couple of hundred dollars she would add additional pieces
of documentation such as a library card or driving license supposedly for use
inside the non-existent country to add authenticity to the travelers fake
nationality during the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990 a group of European oil
executives were able to use camouflaged passports to pass through Iraqi
checkpoints and escaped to Jordan after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1991
camouflage became popular among German businessman who wanted to avoid
lingering resentment when they traveled in Europe today camouflage passports are
mainly sold online in the name of more than two dozen little-known countries
that no longer exist or have changed their name mostly these are former
colonies that change their name on gaining independence or use the names of
places or political subdivisions that exist within a real country but have
never issued or cannot issue passports the motive is to sound familiar but not
too familiar in deceiving a customs immigration or police officer into
believing that a bearer is a person from a small unimportant and faraway country
that is not an enemy or in a terrorist situation that the bearer is not a
potentially high-value hostage in simple words are not very interesting man from
a not very interesting country camouflaged passports sound like a good
idea until the legalities come into the picture this is where things get cloudy
after 9/11 the US government restricted the selling and possession of such
passports despite no laws being broken if they are used for their intended
purpose only these passports fall in the category of fantasy passports which
means that they do not imitate a real passport in use summer in the world and
are technically a toy however reports suggest that these documents are also
used in criminal activity including terrorism and money laundering and the
majority of camouflaged passports are bought for these purposes camouflage
passports are still legal in Australia New Zealand and all of the European
Union even then a traveler can still get into trouble if a customs officer
considers it carrying two valid passports from two different countries
furthermore outsmarting a dangerous person by sharing a fake passport has
additional dangers of a turn it's actually a question of risk versus risk