9.
IRAQ
FSI
score: 104.3 
Although overall levels of violence in Iraq have declined substantially from the peak of sectarian strife in 2006-2007, deadly bombings and shootings have repeatedly undermined security. The country's brittle power-sharing arrangement was tested only days after the United States completed its troop withdrawal from Iraq in December 2011, when Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's Shiite-led government issued an arrest warrant for Sunni Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi on charges that he ran death squads. But Maliki, who recently sidestepped a no-confidence vote, has presided over some successes as well. Oil production is at its highest levels in decades, and Iraq's GDP more than doubled between 2010 and 2011.
Above, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki speaks during a news conference as a security guard stands by in the fortified Green Zone in Baghdad. Maliki denounced a U.S. raid against a Shia militia that was carried out in Sadr City.
Wathiq Khuzaie/Getty Images
