The UAE village inside Oman’s Madha exclave is Nahwa. It is part of the Emirate of Sharjah and is a counter-enclave, or second-order enclave, because it is UAE territory enclosed within Omani territory that is itself surrounded by the UAE.
Nahwa’s unusual border exists because the nearby communities made different allegiance choices in the late 1930s or early 1940s. Madha chose Oman, while Nahwa remained loyal to the Qawasim rulers of Sharjah. The borders were surveyed and later finalized in 1969, producing one of the world’s rare examples of a counter-enclave.
The village is reached by a road passing through Madha. New Nahwa includes an Emirati police outpost, a clinic, and roughly 40 buildings, while Old Nahwa lies farther along the road. The wider area is sometimes confused with other UAE border settlements such as Kalba or Hatta, but neither has Nahwa’s nested territorial arrangement.