Agencies
Washington, June 28: Pakistan, split down the middle with terrorist attacks and facing an economic crisis, remains among the top 10 failed states, says an index prepared by the renowned Foreign Policy journal.
The country, placed ninth among all countries last year in terms of its overall achievement, has improved its position only by a notch - it is placed 10th in the index for 2009 published in the July-August issue of the journal.
The annual exercise, now in its fifth year, is carried out by the journal and Fund for Peace, an independent research organisation.
The ranking is done on the basis of the following factors: demographic pressure, refugees/internally displaced persons (IDPs), group grievance, uneven development, economic decline, delegitimisation of the state, public service, human rights, factionalised elites and external intervention.
The top 10 failed states in the latest list are: Somalia, Zimbabwe, Sudan, Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo, Iraq, Afghanistan, Central African Republic, Guinea and Pakistan.
India is placed 87th among the 177 countries under study, with its score showing an improvement over the previous year. But its neighbours fare badly in this ranking, with Sri Lanka placed 12th, Bangladesh 19th and Nepal 25th.
At the other end of the spectrum, the bottom 10 in the list are the top achievers: Norway, Finland, Sweden, Switzerland, Ireland, Denmark, New Zealand, Australia and the Netherlands.
Foreign Policy noted that it is "a sobering time" for the world's most fragile countries, what with the global financial meltdown, natural disasters, and government collapse.
"Yemen may not yet be front-page news, but it's being watched intently these days in capitals worldwide. A perfect storm of state failure is now brewing there... Many worry Yemen is the next Afghanistan: a global problem wrapped in a failed state.
"It's not just Yemen. The financial crisis was a near-death experience for insurgency-plagued Pakistan, which remains on IMF life support...All indications are that 2009 will bring little to no reprieve," the journal said.
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