Portraits of Instability

Haunting images from the world's most fragile states.

BY ELIZABETH DICKINSON, ANNIE LOWREY, JOSHUA KEATING | JULY/AUG 2009

1. SOMALIA

A window into failure: Children peek through an artillery-battered wall of Mogadishu's Bakara Market, the country's largest open-air forum. Sellers and buyers used to be well-stocked with food staples and other daily essentials. Today, the strongest product line is weapons -- everything from handguns to rifles to rocket-propelled grenades. Such arms have been the quickest means to power and subsistence in Somalia since chaos erupted 18 years ago. As Somalia claimed the No. 1 slot on the Failed States Index for a second year in a row, militant attacks had forced the country's fledgling transitional government literally into a corner; by December 2008, it controlled merely a few blocks in a country of 627,000 square kilometers.

JOSE CENDON/AFP/Getty Images

 SUBJECTS:
 

Elizabeth Dickinson is an assistant editor at FP.

Annie Lowrey is an assistant editor at FP.

Joshua Keating is deputy Web editor at FP.

SAGHIR AHMED

12:29 AM ET

June 29, 2009

Pakistan No 10 Failed state

This is FALSE

this seems very funny for an average Pakistani like me that Pakistan is more failed state than Nigeria, Kenya, and stands near Iraq, Afghanistan etc. this is false and surely based of wrong perceptions. No Pakistani can believe it. Pakistan is still much better place than many countries present in the same list.

Saghir Ahmed
Islamabad