[ccebook.cn]The World in 2010

Middle East and Africa
The worst country on Earth
Nov 13th 2009
Piracy, poverty and perdition: Somalia takes our unwanted prize
Just trying to improve
Reuters
Fed up with awards for the best? The World in 2010 asked the analysts at the Economist Intelligence Unit, a
sister company of The Economist, to identify the world’s worst country in the year ahead. Previous winners of
this dubious honour have included (pre-2001) Afghanistan and Turkmenistan. This time, the champion is in
Africa. Plagued by civil war, grinding poverty and rampant piracy, Somalia will be the world’s worst in 2010.
Calling Somalia a country is a stretch. It has a president, prime minister and parliament, but with little
influence outside a few strongholds in the capital, Mogadishu. What passes for a government is protected by
an African Union peacekeeping force guarding the presidential palace. Most of the country is controlled by two
armed, radical Islamist factions, al-Shabab (the Youth) and Hizbul Islam (Party of Islam), which regularly
battle forces loyal to the government. Both demand the imposition of strict Islamic law, in what would amount
to the Talibanisation of Somalia. Al-Shabab took responsibility for suicide-bombings in Mogadishu in
September that killed 17 peacekeepers; America considers the group an al-Qaeda ally.
Poor countries are often defined by their weak health, education and income measures, but conditions in
Somalia are mostly too wretched to record. What little data can be gleaned are truly awful: according to the
UN’s World Food Programme, more than 40% of the population need food aid to survive, and one in every five
children is acutely malnourished. The constant fighting has internally displaced more than 1.5m people, with a
third living in dire, makeshift camps. Aid workers have been able to supply them with less than half the daily
water needed.
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