5 Dihars Hawar islands

The Hawar Islands were the subject of one of the longest-running territorial disputes in the Persian Gulf, contested between Bahrain and Qatar for most of the twentieth century. The International Court of Justice finally awarded sovereignty to Bahrain in 2001, ending a dispute that had at points involved military posturing and broken diplomatic relations between the two neighbors.

Commemorative issues tied to the Hawar ruling have appeared periodically since, each one a quiet assertion of settled sovereignty over territory that was anything but settled for decades.