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| Yes | 63% | 146 votes | Total: 230 votes | |
| No | 37% | 84 votes |
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With the declaration of independence by Kosovo, other statelets that have been struggling for their independence for a long time will clamour for their independence.
After East Timor, this is the second instance when either the UN and / or the EU have been instrumental in bringing about the independence of statelets that were part of sovereign nations. East Timor comprises one portion of the island of Timor and was formerly, as is the rest of Timor, part of Indonesia. Kosovo was part of Serbia until its current declaration of independence.
Serbia itself was part of the former Yugoslavia, located in the Balkans region. Yugoslavia splintered into the nation states of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia, FYROM (Macedonia), Slovenia, and Montenegro.
The Balkanization (a term that has become synonymous with partitioning) of other nations where there are long-standing freedom movements will assume a greater priority and urgency. It will be more difficult for the USA, the European Union, the United Nations and other international and regional organizations to deny the claims of other aspirants for independence.
To provide just one likely candidate for Balkanization is the nation state of Sri Lanka. A long-standing struggle between the majority Sinhalese and the minority Tamils has afflicted Sri Lanka. Up to this point, most of the Tamils wanted their own state within a state combining areas in the North and in the East of Sri Lanka. The Tamil Tigers, a guerrilla force in conflict with the Sri Lankan armed forces, want an independent nation state and the Sri Lankan government is opposed to the idea of two separate nations on the island. With increasing levels of ruthless violence being perpetrated by both the antagonists, the international community will be forced to step in to separate the two feuding sides. At that time, the international community may come to the realization that the violence, anguish and bitterness unleashed by the decades of strife cannot be resolved within the context of a nation state. The Tamils speak a different language and are ethnically related to the Tamils in the neighbouring nation of India.
There are other regions in Asia where there have been long-standing rebel movements and that might qualify for independent statehood. For that matter, in South America, Africa, Europe and even in North America, there are people and movements that aspire for their own nation states.
The "Pandora's box" on independence has been opened. With the international community interceding and actively assisting in the independence of East Timor and Kosovo, it might be difficult to close the lid or deny the case for independence for other statelets around the globe.
Learn more about this author, Ravi Embar.
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No
The agreement on Kosovo's declaration of Independence from Serbia will no doubt provide encouragement for some separatist elements in self-ruling provinces in countries across the world. However it is highly unlikely that it will actually set in a trend for such provinces seeking total independence 'seriously' for a variety of reasons.
First, the Albanian separatists in Kosovo had substantial political support for their cause from Western democracies, particularly America and Britain. The reason for this support is not only the brutal ethnic violence that the Albanian pro-self-rule Kosovars had experienced under the former Yugoslav dictator Slobodan Milosevic, but also the fact that ethnic conflict has existed for centuries between the Serbs and Albanians. Such deep ethnic scars rarely heal, and particularly in the nascent East European democracies, peace might be a fragile concept. In the case of Kosovo, once the UN stepped in to stop the ethnic cleansing against the Albanians, it then had to step in again to reverse the process, this time perpetrated by the Albanians against Serbians in Kosovo. Even then, America had a hard time to convince its allies of their support. The US has mediated in very few separation processes of a similar type - Kosovo must be an exception.
Secondly, although the global powers would not openly admit it, the Kosovo movement had a deeper political significance in light of the fact that Serbia is actively pro-Russian, and the Albanian Kosovars played their anti-Russian card right with the Western democracies in the current climate of political rift between Putin's Russia and the West. In addition, the Albanians were actively aided and supported by the Arab lobby, in support of a pro-Islamic movement. Few other separatist movements are likely to have all this political advantage together in place, simultaneously.
Third ly, the vast majority of separatist movements across the world are 'mild' so-to-speak : they do not have popular support to a degree that might make their claims politically realistic. The ETA ( the main separatist basque group in Spain) typically get only 8-15 % of votes in the Basque Autonomous region, similar to the situation faced by Sinn Fin in Northern Ireland. The majority of the others across the world have even lesser political clout and often isolated - Zapatistas in Mexico, the Moro front in the Philipines, the Lega Nord in Italy. Some can even be considered hilarious due to the very fact they exist- the California Secessionist Party, the Savoy League in France (Savoy was annexed in 1860, but the movement started in 1994 !). The net effect of all these movements is that it dilutes the issue of independence for nearly everyone. Kosovo's independence in no way should imply that the West considers the crimes perpetrated against the Serbians by the Albanian Islamic separatists over the decades 'justified',but there are very few societies as steeped in violent hatred as the Serbians and Kosovars. Today, Kosovo's Albanians form 88% of the population compared to 6% Serbians, and although this is as a result of decades of ethnic cleansing, it war perhaps time to reconcile with the fact that a nearly 'total' Kosovar-Albanian province within Serbia does not make sense with the historic levels of animosity.
There are fears that Kosovo's independence might even encourage more violence amongst the various separatist groups using 'Kosovo' as a model, but for the three reasons mentioned above that is unlikely to materialize in reality. Even the separatists are rational people, they know fully well the difference between rhetoric and reality !
Learn more about this author, Sid Gribbin.
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