From Basque to Abkhazia

Original: From Basque to Abkhazia

February 17, 2008 - seems like an ordinary date, right? well, not really...
"As jubilant Kosovars danced in front of the Newborn statue unveiled in the capital, Pristina, to commemorate their long-awaited independence on February 17, 2008, many political leaders around the world watched the events with different emotions," - Darko Duridanski, Macedonian journalist recalls this day. Yes, on this day Kosovo announced its independence.
When I last met Darko (a very good friend of mine) he was already planning his research about the reflections of kosovo precedent on other sesseccionist regions, such as Basque and Abkhazia. We have been in touch during his visit in Georgia, including Abkhazia. After visiting Tbilisi,  Sukhumi, Vitoria, Bilbao and Pristina Darko prepared an exellent work on current secessionist movements and the debate as a whole, giving a great opportunity t be a sui generis case, as Kosovo’s European backers have insisted.

The debate over the “Kosovo precedent” was revived in August 2008, when Russian forces poured into the breakaway Georgian regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. The conflict ended in Russia’s recognition of the enclaves’ independence, and the example of Kosovo as justification for this.

“We argued consistently that it would be impossible to tell the Abkhazians and Ossetians that what was good for the Kosovo Albanians was not good for them,” the Russian President, Dmitry Medvedev, wrote on August 27, 2008, in the Financial Times.
 
Advocates for the self-determination of various regions and provinces echo those sentiments. Some surveys estimate that there are over 200 secessionist movements worldwide.
 
Some of the most significant are in Europe. In Britain, there are Scottish and Welsh independence movements and the movement ntry, it seems for the time bein