Transdniestria, an autonomous enclave that is supported by Russia but is not recognised by the EU, UN or US, is a land apart in every sense, writes John Flemingin the capital, Tiraspol
BLOOD FIELDS OF poppies lilt and sway as your car stabs out into the shared overtaking lane. This is a game of chicken, as an oncoming truck pulls back in and leaves the middle stretch devoid of danger. Behind fades an industrial zone on the outskirts of Tiraspol, capital of the breakaway republic of Transdniestria, a country in the east of Europe that does not officially exist.
Headscarfed old women squat by the side of the potholed road with decomposing buckets of berries. A passenger spits a pip out through a rolled-down window into the country that lacks official recognition of its name. Do cherries and strawberries taste even better in an outlaw land? You know, sometimes they do.
A sundered part of Moldova, Transdniestria lies along the river Dniester and is bounded to the east by Ukraine. It has a population of some 700,000 and three main cities - capital Tiraspol, Bender and Rybnitsa. The enclave is Russian-speaking and has its own currency in the Transdniestrian rouble. Its central bank is a building with gleaming chrome panel wings that apes a scaled fragment of Gotham City.
A law enforcer's badge familiar from the Wild West hangs above the few petrol stations and supermarket outlets; it also brands the state-of-the-art blue-roofed football stadium on the way into Tiraspol. This is the logo for Sheriff, a powerful enterprise run by a group of former top cops that corrals trade at the heart of this outpost.
Transdniestria has its own constitution and it seems to ban the transaction of smiles. The locals look vanquished, beaten. Despite being landlocked, this place feels like a sealed-off zone. Like a special area contained for some special purpose.
On the other end of the main street, a tall statue of Lenin stands on a purple plinth outside the government buildings. Inside works president Igor Smirnov. Across the road, a Russian army tank is mounted as a war monument, its cannon pointing towards the border with Moldova. In its shadow, an eternal flame sputters to the memory of those Transdniestrians who fell shortly after the Berlin Wall did. Tired of Moldova's influence and its attempts to ban the Cyrillic alphabet while cosying up to Romania, Transdniestria declared its independence as far back as September 1990. Then, in the summer of 1992, some 500 to 1,500 died fighting to free their land from Moldova's political, cultural and linguistic yoke. But, amid the debris of a collapsing Soviet Union, they didn't want to get out: instead, they wanted to stay in.
The efforts of those paramilitary forces by the banks of the Dniester liberated this odd patch of the former USSR. The 14th Russian Army came to their assistance and remains there to this day. A ceasefire in July 1992 led to the creation of a 10km demilitarised zone. Its existence is unacknowledged by the UN, the EU or the US, but Transdniestria has soldiered on, drawn to Moscow and all things Soviet.
Although just a 90-minute drive from Chisinau, the capital of Moldova, all of Transdniestria's signage is in Russian. To enter this rogue state, you pass through three lines of border security: the first is controlled by the Moldovan authorities; the second is a peace zone controlled by the Russians; and the third is under Transdniestrian uniformed armed guard. Border officials issue you a thin scrap of paper as a visa; if they stamped your passport, you'd expect them to do so with invisible ink.
A narrow bridge spans the Dniester as its flows though the capital. Slow-moving pedestrians step in to the side as an occasional van trundles across it. Dozens of rusting padlocks are shackled to the railings, clanking symbols of happy local lovers on their wedding days. Down below, kids play by the dirty sandbank, dive-bombing into the swirling waters. On the opposite bank, a sewage pipe flows freely.
Europe is uneasy about Transdniestria. The frozen conflict zone is home to a considerable stockpile of weapons left over from the Soviet era. Transdniestria is a very real blight in the back garden of Europe, one that most international institutions would like to go away.
Just as Bulgaria and Romania dressed up in their Sunday best to appease EU door policy, West-looking Moldova would appear to want to follow. It is the poorest country in Europe, and faces the possibility of being subsumed into a Greater Romania.
And Transdniestria sits as a monkey on its back: in a referendum in 2006 the people voted overwhelmingly to stay separate from Moldova and to join Russia. The referendum was boycotted by most of the international community because the main players did not want to lend Transdniestria any legitimacy. However, election observers attended from such lights of democracy as Belarus, Russia and Uzbekistan. Today, the main Russian political parties are present in the region. And Russian investors are buying up property and factories in deals Moldova deems illegal - its government complains that Transdniestria has no right to conduct them.
Moldova faces a serious dilemma: while courting the EU, it has close trading ties with Russia. It knows that the former Soviet giant is the only agent capable of brokering a solution to the problem of its breakaway region. But the more Moldova moves towards Europe, the less co-operative Russia and Transdniestra are likely to be.
It is tempting to look beyond Transdniestria's apparent ideology. It is tempting to tarnish it by lending credence to consistent allegations of corruption. Perhaps the whole thing is a scam? Transdniestria is reputed to be a safe haven for criminals fleeing from elsewhere. Many of its top figures are allegedly wanted for crimes committed during the break-up of the Soviet Union. The lack of international recognition, and therefore of any international treaties, creates a situation where Interpol has no domain in Transdniestria, which may afford a certain freedom. The outlaw republic is said to be a smugglers' paradise - if a country does not officially exist, how can "traders" be expected to pay taxes and duties there?
It is also said to be a place of money-laundering. As in Moldova and Ukraine, the trafficking of people is rife. Despite repeated educational programmes in towns and villages, girls continue to fall for offers of well-paid work overseas, winding up sold to traders in Dubai and Istanbul for as little as €500. After several years they are sometimes freed to return home - on condition that they find not one but two replacements for themselves.
As a visitor spending a few days walking up and down the capital's streets, you feel anxious and hemmed in. You can sit in the Seven Fridays restaurant, eating its okay soup but disliking the meatless pancakes. You might complain that there's not that much to do and there's nothing you would want to buy, forgetting that the people are poor, earning an average of €60 a month.
On paper, even the word Transdniestria looks odd: mild dyslexia renders it Trans Sinister. All around you, the disputed nation becomes transitive: it turns into a verb alluding to transport and transgression.