EMERGENCE OF SOVEREIGN STATES FORM EXISTING NATION STATES
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 con-federal 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 con-federal
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.