Comment: The crisis Pakistan faces is indeed very serious - but it couldn't beat Afghanistan in this ranking! Thats a bit off the mark.
BBC: Pakistan 'is a top failed state'
Pakistan and Afghanistan are among the world's top 10 most vulnerable states, according to a new study.
The report - compiled by the US Foreign Policy magazine and the US-based Fund for Peace think-tank - ranked 146 nations according to their viability.
Judged according to 12 criteria, including human flight and economic decline, states range from the most failed, Sudan, to the least, Norway.
Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka are rated 19th, 20th and 25th respectively.
The top 60 positions in the list were occupied almost exclusively by African, Middle Eastern, and Asian countries.
India was ranked 93rd, Bhutan came 39th and the Maldives were not mentioned.
Internal conflicts
The second annual "failed states index" was based on "tens of thousands of articles" from different sources gathered over several months in 2005 and reviewed by experts, its authors said.
FAILED STATES 2006 - TOP 10
1. Sudan (3)*
2. DR Congo (2)*
3. Ivory Coast (1)*
4. Iraq (4)*
5. Zimbabwe (15)*
6. Chad (7)*
(Tie) Somalia(5)*
8. Haiti (10)*
9. Pakistan (34)*
10 Afghanistan (11)*
Position in 2005 report
Each nation was given an overall score based on the 12 criteria:
mounting demographic pressures
massive movement of refugees and internally displaced peoples
legacy of vengeance - seeking group grievance
chronic and sustained human flight
uneven economic development along group lines
sharp and/or severe economic decline
criminalisation and delegitimisation of the state
progressive deterioration of public services
widespread violation of human rights
security apparatus as "state within a state"
rise of factionalised elites
intervention of other states or external actors
Pakistan's 'plunge'
Pakistan moved from 34th last year to ninth in the new report - one of the sharpest changes in the overall score of any country on the list.
The contributing factors were Pakistan's inability to police the tribal areas near the Afghan border, the devastating earthquake last October in Kashmir and rising ethnic tensions, the report said.
Afghanistan, ranked 10th, faces different problems from Iraq, which despite the presence of US-led troops came fourth, the report said.
Educated exiled Afghans had been slow to go home following the ousting of the Taleban in 2001, but poor refugees had returned from Pakistan and Iran in large numbers, the study said.
"The result is a capital city busting at the seams but short of trained administrators."
The authors cite India as an example of a state which has pulled back from the brink, saying that in the 1970s analysts predicted dire consequences as a result of population growth, economic mismanagement, poverty and corruption.
Now, they say, India today has turned itself around and might have the edge over China (ranked 57) in the long run.
Pauline Baker, president of the Fund for Peace, told the Associated Press news agency that India had greater social mobility and was more decentralised than its more populous neighbour.
1 comment:
Take a closer look at how the score for Pakistan was calculated and you might burst out laughing.
Most of the difference from last year's score comes from 3 of the 12 indicators:
Indicator 1. Mounting Demographic Pressures. Went from 5.0 to 9.3 (higher means worse, for all the indicators)
Indicator 2. Massive Movement of Refugees or Internally Displaced Persons creating Complex Humanitarian Emergencies. This too went from 5.0 to 9.3
Indicator 6. Sharp and/or Severe Economic Decline. Went from 3.3 to 7.0.
The explanations given for the score changes:
Indicator 1. "Demographic pressures resulting from the earthquake, including the scarcity of food, water and shelter in the months following the
quake, resulted in the sharp increase in the indicator rating from a 5.0 on the FSI 2005 to a 9.3"
Indicator 2. "The earthquake, which resulted in the deaths of an estimated 88,000, also displaced millions in Pakistan-controlled
Kashmir and the North West Frontier Province, which accounts for the high score in indicator 2."
Indicator 6. "Pakistan’s economy, already suffering from low levels of foreign investment and a 2005 inflation rate of 9%, was
further damaged by the October earthquake. It is officially estimated that 32% of the population live below the
poverty line, although the real number is likely to be much higher. In Kashmir and the North West Frontier
Province, the earthquake completely destroyed several main towns and devastated the agricultural sector, which
accounts for the livelihoods of the majority of citizens in these areas. Pakistan’s economy is heavily reliant upon
worker remittances and that remained unchanged in 2005. Pakistan’s economy was artificially inflated in the months
following the earthquake, with billions of dollars of international aid and development assistance pouring in from
the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and other donors."
In each case, the explanations given for the score changes do not conform to their own definitions of what the indicators mean. Take indicator 2 for example, which is defined as "Massive Movement of Refugees or Internally Displaced Persons creating Complex Humanitarian Emergencies - Forced uprooting of large communities as a result of random or targeted violence and/or repression".
The term "Complex Humanitarian Emergency" is used by the UN and other relief agencies to mean something very different from a natural disaster.
A
CHE is essentially a man-made disaster. "The key feature of a complex emergency is the societal/institutional weakness that fails to accommodate competing identity groups, while the key characteristic of a natural disaster is the physical weakness of structures and processes that fail to compensate for extreme natural events." (Complex Emergencies versus Natural Disasters: An Analytical Comparison of Causes and Effects, J.M Abala-Bertrand, Oxford Development Studies)
It's very clear that the Kashmir earthquake was NOT a CHE but a natural disaster. It should not have affected the score on Indicator 2.
The claims made to justify the poor ranking on indicator 6 (the economy) are likewise flawed. Here is what they said:
"Pakistan’s economy, already suffering from low levels of foreign investment and a 2005 inflation rate of 9%, was
further damaged by the October earthquake. It is officially estimated that 32% of the population live below the
poverty line, although the real number is likely to be much higher. In Kashmir and the North West Frontier
Province, the earthquake completely destroyed several main towns and devastated the agricultural sector, which
accounts for the livelihoods of the majority of citizens in these areas. Pakistan’s economy is heavily reliant upon
worker remittances and that remained unchanged in 2005. Pakistan’s economy was artificially inflated in the months
following the earthquake, with billions of dollars of international aid and development assistance pouring in from
the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and other donors."
Contrary to what the report implies, foreign investment is up. According to official figures, the number of people living below the poverty line has gone down. It's also interesting how the report characterizes the remittances from Pakistanis working abroad - Pakistan is "heavily reliant", it says - as if remittances are a bad thing, rather than a vote of confidence in Pakistan's future by millions of people who know the country well and want to invest their hard-earned money in Pakistan, when they could just as easily stash it in foreign bank accounts, gold, or something else. As for being "artificially inflated" by "billions of dollars of international aid", do they know that Pakistan has a $384.9 billion economy, larger than that of Saudi Arabia, according to the CIA Factbook. At year's end, Pakistan had not even received the vast majority of the 5 billion or so in aid that was pledged. The cash received was a tiny fraction of the total. There is no mention of the stock market, which has soared every year for the past several years. Economists believe that markets are better at predicting the future than experts.
The numerical rankings of the "Failed States Index" look objective but in fact are highly misleading. How exactly did it arrive at some of these subscores? I'm guessing much of their information came from the internet. According to their website they have software that "analyzes tens of thousands of articles and reports" using - wait for it - "Boolean logic"(!) to "determine the relationship of the content to the indicators and to the core institutions." In other words, they're basically selling snake oil.
Syed N. Ali
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