Sub nation (unincorporated nation)

This article or section should be merged with separatism.

A Sub nation can be a group of people or a race that does not identify themselves with the citizenship given to them after birth.

Many of the so-called sub nations have nationalist groups that look for their specific area's independence from a country, often in pacifist ways, but also with civil war and by means of terrorism.

There are many areas of the world where a "sub nation" can be found. Spain, for example, has the Basque country, which has both pacifist groups and the infamous terrorist group, ETA. In the United States, an unincorporated territory, Puerto Rico, has the PIP party, which soughts for independence in a peaceful way, and Los Macheteros, a terrorist group that has been linked to many bombings. If the 2.5 percent Puerto Ricans that voted for the PIP at the 2004 Puerto Rican elections are combined with the 51 percent that voted for the PPD party, it could be said that about 54 percent of Puerto Ricans do not want Puerto Rico to be a state. Regardless of political ideology, most Puerto Ricans consider themselves Latin American, and Puerto Rico is considered to be a Latin American nation by most other Latin Americans.

Venezuela faces a similar situation, as many people from the state of Zulia do not consider themselves Venezuelan, but rather "Zulian". There have been large independence movements there, and the state even had an airline, Zuliana de Aviacion, that hinted that state's people's feelings. When a Latin American airline includes the words "de Aviacion" in their name, it usually means that the airline belongs to the country mentioned in the airline's name.

A similar case is going on in Canada, where people from Quebec often identify themselves as being Quebecuans by nationality, and an airline, Quebecair, operated "international flights" to several other parts of Canada for many years.

Ecuador also has a small group of people who want to become independent.

Perhaps the most famous cases of sub nations are Chechnya, Kurdistan, Northern Ireland and Palestine, because of the civil wars that have affected those areas in their fight to become independent, which many may also call "fight for freedom". Chechnya, Kurdistan, Northern Ireland and Palestine are Russian, Iraqi, United Kingdom and Israeli territories, respectively.

In 1988, many Kurdish were killed, presumably by Saddam Hussein and his revolutionary army.

Tibet, in China, is another area where many want it's independency.

It is questionable whether the Kashmir state and the Falkland Islands can be called "unincorporated nations", because, in Kashmir's case, a large population of that state want to be Pakistanis, and, in the Falkland Islands' case, most people identify themselves as British, not Argentine. England won a three month war against Argentina in 1982 to gain the Falkland Islands territory.

In an April, 2005, edition of The Wall Street Journal, the newspaper identified the Basque country as a sub nation, with at least one leader looking for a semi-autonomous status with Spain, which would make the Basque country, officially, an independent state.

See also

• Unincorporated territory

External links

• website of the Basque territory's government, in Basque language
• Puerto Rico's Independence Party's website
• PPD's page, in Spanish; the PPD wants Puerto Rico to remain a commonwealth, but not to become a state of, the United States
• Articles about Zulia's independence movement
• chronology of Quebec's independence movement
• Article on Chechnya's timeline
• Kurdistan Observer's views on independence
• Pro Northern Irish independence website
• PLO and Palestine independence website
• rangzen.org, a website about an organization dedicated to Tibet's independence