Zimbabwe is the second most-failed state in the world, after Somalia
Would you plan a holiday to Somalia…?
I wouldn’t.
All I know of Somalia are the images I see on 24 hour news channels: gun-toting bandits shooting from the hip and spraying bullets down battered streets, looking as if their military training came via comic book villains.
Or pirates hijacking ships and holding sailors and cargo worth billions hostage.
The thought of a holiday there hardly fills me with anticipatory excitement … so no, I wouldn’t go there!
So imagine my shock when I saw the latest Failed States Index for 2009. The only state worse than Zimbabwe is Somalia. Our country is the second most failed state in the world. And it’s not even as if we’re trailing far behind Somalia either: we’re a mere 0.7 points below them.
Planning a holiday to Zimbabwe? Heaven help us; we live here! How easily we become used to unacceptable conditions.
Image via foreignpolicy.com
Foreign Policy magazine, who produce the annual failed states index in collaboration with The Fund for Peace, have an essay titled The Blame Game: Why do states fail, who’s helping out? on their site, which is worth reading in full. China has more than a few questions to answer! Do you remember the An Yue Jiang fiasco last year?
There is, however, something to the idea that foreign meddling contributes to state failure. A fresh influx of weapons, for instance, is one of the surest ways a conflict can reach new levels of violent intensity. As international negotiators flooded Kenya in early 2008, hoping to end post-election violence, 40,000 Kalashnikov rifles were reportedly entering the country via Ukraine in a legal transaction. Last year, Zimbabwe, Sudan, Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Yemen also purchased weapons from willing suppliers in China, Ukraine, Italy, and Belgium, despite strapped government budgets and pressing humanitarian concerns. China and Russia, which together represent 27 percent of the global conventional weapons market, made 40 percent of the major arms sales to the 60 worst-performing states in the index, according to data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Weapons designed in the West and licensed to manufacturers in countries such as Pakistan, Egypt, and China are a proliferating source of small arms worldwide. The numbers are already staggering, but they might well be an underestimate, experts say, because they include only officially recorded transactions. And weapons dealers are, of course, just some of failed states’ many enablers. There’s much more blame to go around.
Visit the Foreign Policy website to explore their interactive map and read more about the world’s failed states.
