The makings of a Kurdish nation ?

Kurds in Iraq already enjoy a substantial degree of autonomy. In Turkey, the Kurds say that autonomy is the best way to solve the problem of Kurdish terrorism. Iran is also fighting a Kurdish secessionist movement. All this seems to point to a separate Kurdistan, carved out of these three countries in a bloody conflict..

Turkey's leading pro-Kurdish party called on the Turkish government on Thursday to grant autonomy to the mainly Kurdish southeast as a solution to the violence that has plagued the impoverished region for more than two decades, according to this report in Reuters.

A Kurdish nation may not be without precedent. New nations sprung up after the breakdown of the former Soviet Union. In Yugoslavia after the Balkan crisis, new nations sprung up there too based on a mix of religion and ethnicity. Kosovo has also been threatening to declare independence from Serbia.

What this means is that throughout the world, the old order is changing, and is changing on the basis of ethnic and religious aspirations.

Some of these groupings will try to be nations in a hurry without the political institutions and the maturity to run countries. They will be unstable and dangerous neighbors. Some of them will be born, not unexpectedly in violence, as majorities in their countries oppose the birth of new nations. The birth of some of these parvenu nations could also be accompanied by ethnic cleansing of new minorities in the new nations.

All in all a bloody outlook ahead. It is avoidable if the majorities in each country show some interest in accommodating their minorities, work on their economic betterment, and try to concede to some of the demands of their minorities. It is also avoidable if some of the big countries like the US and Russia do not play with the ethnic and religious tinderbox for their petty political ends.

Turkey may avoid Kurdish separatism by conceding some of the autonomy the Kurds in Turkey demand, and also invest in the development of this community. Serbia may still be able to hold Kosovo within the country if it offers the Albanians in Kosovo a large degree of autonomy.

In September, Serbia warned the UN of “unforeseeable consequences” that could destabilize the world if the breakaway province of Kosovo declares independence unilaterally later this year.

If we go by history, and a sense of justice, there should be no objection to an ethnic group declaring independence, I wrote in an earlier blog. This stand unfortunately only looks good in a treatise on nationalities, meant for academic discourse alone.

If we put it into practice, we could see a large part of the world “balkanized” because every ethnic group or group with nationalistic aspirations could demand independence regardless of its political and economic viability as an independent country. Many of them will likely emerge in haste and violence, without the institutions in place required to be nations.

This bloody situation can only be avoided if host countries try to accommodate their ethnic minorities.

Related article:

Kosovo dispute highlights the issue of nationalities

Kosovo dispute highlights the issue of nationalities

Serbia warned the UN on Thursday of "unforeseeable consequences" that could destabilize the world if the breakaway province of Kosovo declares independence unilaterally later this year, according to a report by Reuters.

Serbian President Boris Tadic was evidently self-serving when he warned the UN General Assembly of the consequences of the legal precedent of an unilateral declaration of independence by Kosovo. But he would have probably struck a sympathetic chord with a number of other countries, including many in Europe, that are fighting their own separatist movements.

Spain has to worry about Basque separatists, Russia about separatists in Chechnya and other rumblings of separation within the Russian federation, and Turkey about an undercurrent for a greater Kurdistan, spanning Kurd dominated areas in Iraq, Turkey, and Iran. Outside Europe, there are the Tamil separatists in Sri Lanka, Kashmiri separatists in India, and a large number of other smaller and maybe lesser known separatist movements which will may get some encouragement from an unilateral declaration of independence by Kosovo.

Nations have been built not only on shared ideological principles, shared culture and history, common language, or by a voluntary association of different groups. Some of them have also been built on the basis of shared ethnicity and/or religion. Pakistan, for example, was partitioned from India on religious grounds alone.

If we go by history, and a sense of justice, there should be no objection to an ethnic group declaring independence. This stand unfortunately only looks good in a treatise on nationalities, meant for academic discourse alone.

If we put it into practice, we could see a large part of the world “balkanized” because every ethnic group or group with nationalistic aspirations could demand independence regardless of its political and economic viability as an independent country. Many of them will likely emerge in haste and violence, without the institutions in place required to be nations.

The problem gets more complicated when we consider that every group with nationalistic aspirations is not the sole occupant of the land that it claims for its new nation. In Kosovo, for example, about 120,000 Serbs still live there, roughly half of them in isolated enclaves protected by a NATO peacekeeping force of 16,000, and the rest in a northern triangle that is closely tied to the Serbian hinterland, according to the Reuters report. Kashmir for example has a large number of Hindus who do not go along with the idea of the independence of the land.

Without the consent of these minority groups, many a newly independent nation will hence be born in bitterness, civil war, ethnic cleansing, and instability, apart from the hostility of the country they have broken from.

If Kosovo declares unilateral independence from Serbia, as it threatens, it could be the first of a large number of new flashpoints around the world.

There is also the danger that once a precedent is established, ethnic groups may consciously choose to populate an area, establish themselves as the majority population there, and then declare unilateral independence. That could mean, say 50 years from now, a slew of new nations that currently don’t exist.

The upshot is that a negotiated settlement between Serbia and Kosovo would in the best long-term interest of the world. Better perhaps that Kosovo gets autonomy with almost all powers over the territory transferred to it.

A solution in Kosovo, that avoids an unilateral declaration of independence, will not change the demands of the Tamils in Sri Lanka or the Basques in Spain. But the UN will avoid opening a Pandora’s box, that it is right now not equipped to handle.