Try to think of countries that you practically never hear anything about. Obviously, this is completely subjective, as a country can’t be obscure to one of its own citizens, and living in the US is already in effect a partial news blackout concerning the rest of the world. Someone who regularly takes in BBC World Service news is going to be much better informed about other countries than someone who only pays attention to American news. What’s obscure to one person is probably plain as day to another person. Those caveats in mind, what is the biggest country you practically never hear anything about?
I’m thinking of Laos. I was just looking at a map in a news article about persecution of atheists in other countries, and saw to my surprise that Laos was included as a place where “atheists have reduced rights under law.” I went: Wait a minute! I thought Laos was Communist, last I heard? The Pathet Lao were Communist, right? But that was back in the 1970s. I must have missed a lot of Laotian developments since then. I mean, when was the last time you ever heard of Laos? But it’s 91,429 square miles in area, nearly the size of the UK, and its population is an estimated 6.5 million, nearly as much as Libya and more than Denmark. I read the BBC World Service web site frequently, but cannot remember the last time I heard anyone anywhere mention Laos.
Size-wise? Kazakhstan is roughly the size of Alaska, California, Montana, and Nebraska put together. Other than Borat and occasional news of a space launch from there, I never hear anything about Kazakhstan.
My mind first went to Mongolia, but as I looked at a list of countries arranged by area, it seems that Brazil, which is huge, doesn’t get all that much attention.
Mali’s been in the news quite a bit lately since radical Islamists and Al Queda affiliates have taken over most of the north part of the country and the US is trying to organize an African force to help the national government take it back. Neighboring Chad is much more obscure.
Going down the list, I feel that Kazakhstan (9), Niger (22), Mali (24) are all on the low side of recognizable, but Mauritania (29) is definitely more obscure than those.
I see news about Brazil all the time, though I subscribe to the Miami Herald, which pays a lot of attention to Latin America. Brazil will be hosting the World Cup and the Olympics over the next few years, and will be in the spotlight a lot. At any rate, nearly everyone knows something about Brazil, so I wouldn’t call it obscure.
Going by land-area seems less interesting. Most of what I care about is stuff that happens to or by people, so the fact that there isn’t much news about large empty countries isn’t that surprising. My entire knowledge of Mongolia, in chronlogical order consists of:
4 billion years ago -1162: Nothing
1162 - 1227 : Genghis Khan
1227 - 2012: Nothing
But the country only has two million people, and is overshadowed by powerful neighbors, so that’s not really surprising.