Same old story is it not? The Congo has been riven with separatist rhetoric and activity for the entirety of its history, tensions that are caused in no small part by the large gulf in distance, language, culture and ethnicity between different regions in Africa's third largest nation.

Even as the Congolese rebels melted into the forests, complaining bitterly aboutt Kinshasa's partiality towards the Hutu rebels that were expelled from Rwanda in the wake of the 1994 genocide- and who continue ,it says, to terrorise the Eastern Congo; Baghdad was burning. Denied the ruthless order that buttressed the Saddam Hussein regime, Iraq is on a permanent wave of restless violence. What is an unending orgy that pits ancient nations against each other, the Kurds, the Sunni Arabs and the Shi'a Arabs, may only be brought to an end by the creation of new states in a partition much like the South Asian one of 1947.

Self-determination is the spirit of our times it seems. The tribes of men want to be free. Mankind seems everywhere eager to fall back into the ethnic nation-states that humanity seems most comfortable in. These rights, the rights of peoples have led to the break-up of the old Czechoslovakia, the break-up of the Soviet Union and the continued striving inside the Russian Federation like in Chechnya for the right to be free of external domination. In the Balkans has resulted in the creation of many more countries than existed when I was first confronted with a geographical map in class 3.

In Western Europe, the Spanish state has been obliged to offer up to the Basque nation and also to its Catalan people a high degree of autonomy in an effort to diminish the loud arguments for political separation. In the United Kingdom, Scotland's independence movement seems to be gathering steam. Under the leadership of Alex Hammond's Scottish National Party, the Parliament at Holyrood seems intent on asserting ever more its separateness from London. Devolution it seems has not been enough, not even the ascension of a Gordon Brown, a Scot to the premiership of the union.

Last week's Economist seems ,facetiously, to be partial to this spirit, asking if there is any reason at all for the continued existence of Belgium considering the fact that its constituent peoples are so opposed to each other they have completely failed to form a government. The only thing that keeps the country together it seems is the presence of the EU headquarters in Brussels, which is disputed territory. In keeping with the arguments for ethnically identifiable nation states, the Economist article makes the case for the Dutch speaking Flemish to join up with the Netherlands, and for the French-speaking Walloons to join up with the French to the south.

In the Middle and Near East, Turkey continues to press against her independence-seeking Kurdish peoples, as does Iran. Saudi Arabia continues to shove its boot down its Shi'a' peoples throats. Further east, Aghanistan's shaky government seems unable to hold the country together. Vast swathes of the country are under the control of local warlords and even in the national military, loyalties are not owed to the artificial state but to real cognate ties stretching back into the past. Pakistan's Western regions have proved intransigent and ungovernable, even under a heavily militarised state and even within the military there is resentment at the concentration of power among the sons of just three eastern districts.

The break-away of Eritrea from the Ethiopia Federation and the continued struggle by the Ogaden and the Oromo peoples for their free republics, as well as the break-up ,even though unacknowledged by the international community, of Somalia show that this spirit is not alien to our region either.

What inspires this yearning for national seperateness? Is it just ethnicity and the stupidity of too many patriots? Or is it that people want government to come closer to them, to be more responsible to them? Democracy and just government history proclaims, are hardly possible in large states where scarce resources have to be shared out among peoples with different histories, rivalries and cultures. But what makes these experiments at unity most difficult to accomplish is the fact that population numbers are hardly ever conducive to fairness in governance. The larger groups will always seek to dominate the smaller ones. Even with the best intentions, absent the steadying hand of the emotion that caused the initial effort at unity; a state of favouritism and nepotism soon creeps in and with it the resentments that start to gnaw at the bonds of the new state.

Here in Kenya, the sense of common identity that was forged in the furnace of the independence struggle has in the succeeeding years been transformed into a keen polarisation and political seperation as the fruits of that unity seem to benefit only parts of the whole. From the beginning, our new state was tested by the Shifta uprising. Since then, religion, distance and even physical difference have entrenched the marginalisation of Kenya's northern districts. Elsewhere, economic advantage and the powerful executive have made many regions, like the Maasai districts and the Coast, increasingly resentful of Nairobi's authority and of the influence of alien communities over their economic resources. This resentment and the competition for increasingly scarce resources is the reason behind the regular spurts of violence we call ethnic clashes.

Even worse, the nature of our 'democracy' decrees that only the largest and most ethnically unified communities have any influence on the national stage. As the election battle plans are drawn up, and the insignificant communities are bribed with promises in exchange for their loyalty, it becomes clear that our state is premised on very shaky grounds.

So it is that the quest for Federalism, Majimbo seems attractive in the provinces. Weary of decades of Nairobi's cold shoulder, and the poverty of their dreams, the smaller tribes seek a compromise. They know they cannot secede, they daren't even contemplate it. Still, they hope that they can tread a path between servility and independence.

Political federation, especially within the wider context of the East African state would serve to give us a greater chance at forging a common identity. It will allow us to develop better politics, an improvement from the present where the need for community unity is an excuse for tolerating corrupt leadership under the guise of protecting the community's own. In the same way, the focus of power in Central government serves as a disincentive to those willing to question tribal lords. Most of all however, autonomy for the regions, even within the structure of a weakened Kenyan state will compel the constituent peoples of the Kenyan state to a culture that demands from their leaders, accountability at every turn.

ODM says it can offer this to them and a new constitution, will it deliver? Or will the lure of power at the centre prove to attractive to resist?