In
discussing the acquisition of
sovereignty through successful wars of secession we are referring to the delinking
or excision of part of an existing sovereign state, declaring that part a sovereign state,
and getting a majority
of the members of the
international system to recognize it as
such. This process usually
involves armed struggle since territories inviolability is normally regarded as
an integral part of state
sovereignty. Besides, secession or any internal declaration of independent status by any
political cleavage within a sovereign nation –state is usually regarded, and treated as an act of rebellion, which must
need be suppressed by force of
arms. So the success or otherwise of most secessionist bids
is usually decided by the outcome of such armed struggles or wars of
secession.
While some examples of successful wars of secession
can be cited that had resulted to emergence of sovereign states form existing
nation states, other attempts had ended in
futility. For example in 1971.
East Pakistan broke away
from Bangladesh . With help of
Indian troops, it was able, after a brief war of secession, to defeat the
Pakistani army, and be recognized as a sovereign state by the
international community. Eritrean independence and Southern Sudan
sovereign status have also been
recognized by the international
community following a prolonged civil war of secession that ended
in 1991and 2011 respectively.
Following the
new world order, and the demise of state communism in the former soviet
union, the Baltic states
of Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania declared themselves
independent of the soviet union and resumed their somewhat “suspended sovereignty”. A sovereignty that had been suppressed by the revisionism of soviet power in the 1940s .
This precipitated as at yet, the only known instance of voluntary in
violation of a states territorial sovereignty with the dissolution of the
soviet state following the unsuccessful
coup d’etate of august 1990.
Closely related to this was the case of former
Yugoslavia which experienced the successful secession of two of its
Republics-Slovenia and Croatia in 1991 , and
the recognition of their sovereign status first by Germany, and then later by other members of the European
union on 15 January 1992.
Instances of unsuccessful secessionist bids abound as
we inferred earlier. In Nigeria, the
attempt by the erstwhile eastern region
to secede from Nigeria and assume sovereign
existence under the name Republic of
Biafra, suffered a devastating failure after a fratricidal civil war
that lasted for almost 3 (three) year (1967-70) . In post communist Russia, Chechnya’s
attempt to follow the example of the Baltic
republics has remained a mirage
after years of horrendous bloodletting that has recently degenerated
into terrorism by both Russia and
Chechnya.
In the Arab Middle-East South Yemen’s attempt to secede from Yemen in the 1980s
pitched to the two geographical
regions of the country’s North and
south in a fratricidal conflict that eventually ended in the defeat
of the
South by the North. This defeat put paid to the South’s bid for a sovereign existence. East Timor and
Tamil Tigers Elam are
yet to achieve their aims of sovereign statehood from
Indonesia and Srilanka
respectively, after decades of conflict
and bloodletting.
The
confederal states of the South in the Untied States engaged the
federalist new England northern states
in a five year war of attrition in
the 19th century of establish an independent sovereign existence for that
part of the United States of America, it however turned out a
forlone aspirations the north defeated the southern confederal
states in 1865. several other examples
could be cited, but the point must be
made: any successful war of secession will most certainly result in the
acquisition of sovereignty by the territory
concerned, though such sovereignty must await the formal recognition by a majority of the members of the
international system to become valid.