ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses that the separatists representing seventy-nine territorially-concentrated ethnopolitical groups waged armed conflicts for autonomy or independence at some time between the 1950s and 2006, the peoples of former European colonies. Some of the former European colonies continue to fight for greater self-determination in 2013 including Darfuri in Sudan, Ogadeni and Oromo in Ethiopia, Muslim Kashmiris and some Assamese in India, Turkish Kurds, Chechens in Russia, and Palestinians on the West Bank. But it remained a gross security threat to Russia's interests because of ransom kidnappings, international criminal networking, and the rise of militant Islam-all of which prompted the second Chechen war from 2000 to the present. Armed separatist conflicts spiked sharply upward at the end of the Cold War, but they had been building in frequency since the late 1950s, doubling between 1970 and the early 1980s. By 2013 seven internationally recognized states had been established as a result of violent separatist movements.
