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Watertight Territorial Sovereignty or Interconnection of
The World
- Augustine Ohanwe
The male fiddler crab keeps his territorial sovereignty (nest) in check by frightening other male intruders away. He does this by means of ritual display of anger – waves his left claw as a red signal to ward off intruders and to delimit territorial sovereignty. He thinks that in doing so he has created his own world within the wider world. A world where nothing can impinge on his. However, he can not dam his nest from oxygen or flowing waters – elements that know no boundary. His doctrine of exclusive isolation or impervious sovereignty only exists in his own mind.
Recently I broke into a low chuckle of irrepressible laughter when my friend toed the same line of action by defining territorial sovereignty in an absolute, legal and concrete terms – a sort of watertight compartment. Recent global events have exposed the deformities inherent in such definition.
A celebrated Danish cartoonist may have committed abortion of the thoughts when he put his cartoon of prophet Mohammed to paper. Muslims inside and outside Denmark found the cartoon offensive because in their understandings, it stands as blasphemy. It also contained, in their perception much gall and no honey.
The meat of this little piece is that an act that took place in Denmark created ripples that enveloped many continents in a swirl of Hobbesian jungle. An orgy of destruction went beyond belief across the world. Killing spree, arson, mayhem and diplomatic ruptures were recorded in the Middle East, Africa, Asia and Latin America. In Nigeria, churches and mosques were touched; fatalities and casualties maintained a frightening figure. In areas of the world where violent outbreaks were assuaged, icy anger and tinder-box atmosphere pervaded. All these horrendous reactions happened in countries far away from Denmark. Those who perished in Nigeria as a result of the violence that ensued in the aftermath of the stated publication had no connection with the newspaper that published the cartoon. Many still may not have been able to locate the geographical position of Denmark on the map.
A remarkable fall out from the cartoon episode is the impact it has brought to bear on international relations. Bilateral trades and diplomatic relations between nations have been redifined or shaped by the flow of one event from Denmark. Unguided utterances or expressions perceived as blasphemous might constitute an unwritten constitution and one of the guideposts that will determine future cordial diplomatic and trade relationship between nations as evidenced in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia, where a few european countries’ products had been boycotted; many Danish contracts which had already been concluded before the cartoon publication were revoked and diplomatic relations soured culminating in the withdrawal of diplomats from their accredited countries.
On the ecological interconnection we have seen how the recent bird flu out break from a village poultry in Asia has, amongst other things, demonstrated to us that our territorial sovereignty is not all that impervious. An isolated event in Thailand had spelt the obituaries of many poultry farms in Europe, Africa and the Middle East, throwing many people out of job and unleashing psychological fear on whether H5N1 virus could be transmitted from human to human.
The outbreak of war in one state creates domino affect in the entire region and draws in multinational forces. Nigerian peacekeepers are in Somalia; European and American forces are in Afghanistan; some Asian forces are stationed in Haiti.
The economic interconnection is huge. Disruption of oil well in the Nigeria’s Niger Delta region by the militant groups and a close of oil wells in the Persian Gulf, ground many generating plants in the USA. No state has succeeded in proving that it exists on its own secluded island. Social upheaval and political changes in one country send out ramifications across boundaries. The doctrine of isolation and indifference should give way to global cooperation in removing the causes of disorder.
March
2006
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Augustine C. Ohanwe writes from England. He is a
Nigerian. Augustine is a researcher, and holds a PhD in international
politics. He is also a poet whose numerous poems could be seen at www.Poemsofsoul.com
under FEATURE POETS
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