‎Xan Smiley, From The World in 2006 print edition=

November 25, 2005

States of independence

When this publication first appeared in 1986 there were 159 countries in the United Nations. Now there are 191, thanks mainly to the break-up of federations in Europe (the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia), plus the adhesion of a colorful collection of microstates, newly independent territories and countries with a new-found interest in joining international clubs: Andorra, East Timor, Eritrea, Kiribati, North and South Korea, Liechtenstein, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Monaco, Namibia, Nauru, Palau, San Marino, Switzerland, Tonga and Tuvalu. Which new countries will emerge over the next 20 years?

Europe still has an ample supply of potential breakaway states, from Kosovo and Montenegro to Transdniestria and Chechnya . But not all would-be states will gain international recognition. The self-styled Turkish Republic of Cyprus (that is, Northern Cyprus ), for example, may eventually form a loose federation with the Greek-Cypriot part of the island. And most of the separatist bits of Europe are small.

In terms of space, the biggest emerging new countries are in Africa , albeit that several of them have a lot more sand and swamp than riches or people. Note, for example, the two bits of Somalia that are happier as separate statelets: Somaliland and Puntland. Somaliland, the once-British possession along the Red Sea coast, whose people seem happy to stay separate from their legal overlords in the wider Somalia, will win increasing support from the United States and perhaps the European Union to be recognized as at least de facto independent, though the African Union will be loth to follow suit.

The other leading would-be state in Africa is southern Sudan . Its people have six years in which to ponder whether, after a referendum, they will break free of the main body of Sudan and its capital, Khartoum , where the White and Blue Niles meet. Much can go wrong in those six years. But the southern Sudanese will start nudging, gradually, towards an agreed secession.

Other parts of Africa contain swathes of countries where the central government's writ no longer runs: think of northern Côte d'Ivoire (where rebel northerners are pitted against southerners), or Congo 's outlying regions that don't kowtow to the powers-that-claim-to-be in the capital, Kinshasa . The longest-lasting dispute is probably the one over Western Sahara , where Polisario, a guerrilla outfit, is battling on against the Moroccans, who grabbed this phosphate-rich slice of land abutting the Atlantic Ocean after Spain relinquished it in 1975. A deal to produce a new country is unlikely to come quickly, but time*and the pressures of democratization*could yet produce one.

The most prominent would-be state is, of course, Palestine . Its lesser part, the Gaza strip, recovered a less trammeled version of self-government in 2005, after Israeli troops and settlers left. The question now is whether Israel will let the West Bank , the Palestinians' main territory, evolve into the chief part of a viable Palestinian state.

And don't forget Iraqi Kurdistan. If things get worse in Iraq , the Kurds will start bidding for full-blooded independence. That will worry the neighbors ( Turkey , Syria , Iran ) with large Kurdish populations. But the Kurds are a populous people*some 25m of them*without a state. And the fashion for statehood will be a force to be reckoned with in the next 20 years, as it has been in the past two decades.

Xan Smiley: Middle East and Africa editor, The Economist

Article online at:
http://www.economist.com/theworldin/middleeastafrica/displayStory.cfm?story_id=5134862&d=2006