I have to admit I am surprised, I always had the impression that you are rather well-informed about every region of the Earth and in particular Europe.

I am flattered, but at the same time embarrassed, by that impression, because my own ignorance is all too obvious to myself -- and grows the more so the longer I spend on EuroTrib.

On the contrary, that's one of the things I am really appreciative of on ET: it's a forum where you can learn a lot through dialectic, where assumptions, presumptions and expectations can be altered, corrected, enriched, etc., if you are open to that.  In particular, I am grateful to people like you and Miguel and so many others who are patient enough to inform and educate on matters which may seem elementary.  It's like getting admitted into a club full of PhD's and post-docs with only a (barely obtaine) undergrad degree.

So if you haven't heard of them, I must supplement my and Migeru's information in that most of the mentioned conflicts were armed conflicts at some stage or the other, and none were truly settled.

I'm not sure if other people who lived in the U.S. during the break-up of the Soviet Union would agree, but my impression from the public presentation in the U.S. of these independence movements was that they occurred with little significant violence.  I don't know if that is my own mistaken impression or if the U.S. mainstream media had an agenda in portraying things that way.  So it does come as a bit of surprise to learn about the extent of the violence of these secessions (though I guess in retrospect the bigger surprise -- mistaken, it turns out -- had been that so many countries could become independent in such a short period of time so peacefully.)

Truth unfolds in time through a communal process.