Saturday, July 18, 2009

The Failed States Index 2009

Foreign Policy Magazine lists the countries with governments that are either collapsing or at risk of collapse.

Here's an interesting bit about Somalia:

A recent report by West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center, drawing on captured al Qaeda documents, revealed that Osama bin Laden’s outfit had an awful experience trying to operate out of Somalia, for all the same reasons that international peacekeepers found Somalia unmanageable in the 1990s: terrible infrastructure, excessive violence and criminality, and few basic services, among other factors. In short, Somalia was too failed even for al Qaeda.