Ritu wrote:
...
I maintain that a peaceful partition is better than
a decade of civil war, followed by the same division.
...
I have been thinking about this, and have realised that I'd have less of
a problem with a Partition if the people involved decide they want one -
after trying to find a way to run their country without partitioning it.
What I seem to be strongly opposed to is the notion of some outsider
deciding that partition might be the best simply because they can't
control what is happening on the ground and aren't invested in the
country enough to want to figure out a solution. I wonder where I got
that from... ;)
Ritu
Ritu--
I'd even propose that partition into separate countries
should be the default for groups with separate languages.
Separate countries created this way could always decide
to merge; I'm sure the three or four parts of Switzerland
would. (In _On Mountains_, John Jerome proposes that
this is because the commonality of living in the mountains
is stronger than a mere difference of languages...)
Many countries exist for historical reasons, it's not
clear to me that one should expend much energy trying to
keep them together.
I do agree with you, the people involved should get to
decide. I'm not sure what the best mechanism for this
would be. One could start by giving every linguistically
(or however) distinct group its own homeland, ideally
a place where they made up most of the population.
(I'm not sure what to do with the Gypsies, for instance,
assuming they'd want a homeland.)
Then once we have a rough idea of what the countries
are, we get to negotiate their borders. Some people
would have to choose, then. If one was outside one's
homeland, one could either move there, or stay where
one was as a minority. There would have to be some
carefully designed laws to stop minorities from being
oppressed. Certainly they should always be able to
get fair compensation for property they leave behind,
and to then go to their homeland, or wherever.
---David
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