Federations work

What complicates the search for a solution to the Ukrainian conflict is the fact that the country is divided not only politically or ideologically but also on ethnic and religious grounds.

The Ukrainians in the east of the country are for the most part Slavic and belong to the Orthodox Church, whereas the people in the west are mostly of Polish extraction and Catholic by faith.

This divides the country deeply on bases that are very difficult to surmount. 

In this time and age when most peoples are more assertive of their separate identities, countries composed of sizeable multireligious or ethnic groups are more prone to break up.

The international community has seen this happening in many parts of the world, including, most recently, in Sudan and in the distant past, India and Pakistan getting separated.

The same thing happened in the former Yugoslavia, where Serbs, Croats and Muslims finally went their separate ways, after committing atrocities and crimes against humanity against each other.

The 1994 massacres in Rwanda are another example of ethnic rivalry and bloodshed.

The Chechen rebellion, mercilessly crushed by the Russian military over 10 years ago, is yet another example of the determination of some minorities to assert their own identity.

In Iraq, Shiites and Sunnis are finding it difficult to coexist even though they are both Arab.

The same problem is present in Syria, where Alawites and Sunnis have been fighting for more than three years now. 

Against this backdrop, the most viable basis for a settlement of the Ukrainian crisis would be a federal form of government so that the two “peoples” in the country can coexist peacefully.

The newly elected president of Ukraine might think along such lines in his search for a workable solution to his country’s political quagmire.

Actually, federal forms of government could be the best solution to all multireligious, multiethnic countries in the world. Short of that, the world could witness more and more countries breaking up along religious, racial or ethnic grounds.