ABSTRACT
Some regions of the world are considered to be particular hotbeds of reoccurring rebellion, instability, and insurgency throughout the eras. Currently, places such as Palestine, the Northern and Southern Caucasus, border regions of Sudan (including South Sudan) and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), as well as the Afghan-Pakistani border hold much of the discussion on contemporary border instability and nonstate actors seeking to or having succeeded in setting up de facto regional autonomy if not outright independence. History is also rife with such examples of regions that, in specic periods, either overthrew occupational governments after being conquered by an external power or established a new system from separating from a previously dominant state with which it had been integrated for some time. From Scotland under Robert the Bruce and the Pueblo and Mapuche Indians of the New World against the Spanish Empire, to the short-lived yet popular Ikko-Ikki religious movement in sixteenth century Japan, the American Revolution, or the Abkhaz struggle to evict Georgia following the collapse of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), varying degrees of regional autonomy were fought for (often asymmetrically) leading to a variety of outcomes in the long and short term.
