What about between Bahrain and Saudi Arabia (looks to be about 5 miles) and Bahrain and Qatar (looks like less than 2 miles from one of Bahrain's islands to Qatar).
Here is Middle Island which has Saudi customs on one side and Bahraini customs on the other - but try as I might, I just cannot find whether either country owns it, or if the border runs down its middle! Does anyone out there know?
I'll have to ask Jerry as he did me the favour of working out the data - this is also why India-Sri Lanka is present: I do consider a border between them in most (but not all) of my quizzes but he doesn't - thanks for your observations!
The quiz asks for the closest possible distance between countries, so any countries sharing a land border will be zero distance apart, and disqualified from the quiz, even if they have offshore islands separated by water.
UK territories do not form a part of the UK, even though they are under its jurisdiction (which is why Anguilla - Sint Maarten above has also been omitted).
And here is the closest non-bordering country pair in the world! The leaf-shaped island in the middle distance is Namibia, all of the green river-bank in the foreground is Zimbabwe, and between them, the strip of dry land with a road running across it, is Botswana (just) keeping them apart.
I'm going to be extra nit-picky here though: this should really still be classified as a "water border." Namibia owns no territory on the south side of the Chobe River, thus you must cross water in order to get from Namibia to Zimbabwe at this shortest distance. Plus if you look at the way the borders are drawn on Google Maps (admittedly not perfect), the narrowest they ever are is over water. I know that's not your criteria, but just added reference.
The only reason I got that was because I was on google earth and I saw Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe and Zambia and I wanted to see if they made a four corners.
Plus if you look at the way the borders are drawn on Google Maps (admittedly not perfect), the narrowest they ever are is over water. I know that's not your criteria, but just added reference.