Author: Times News Network
Publication: The Times of India
Date: August 19, 2005
URL: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1205049.cms
Wednesday's terror attack in Bangladesh
reinforced the fact that India is surrounded by failed states.
A recent study by Foreign Policy,
a journal of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and the Fund
for Peace ranked 60 states in the world that are in danger of going over
the edge.
Apart from Sri Lanka, India's neighbouring
countries are all failed or failing states. Bangladesh is in a critical
state and is ranked 17 by the study.
Pakistan occupies the 34th position,
while Nepal stands 35th on the list. Myanmar and Bhutan have been alloted
the 23rd and 26th positions respectively, with Afghanistan dangerously
placed at 11.
The failed states index ranks countries
on 12 economic, social and political parameters and include demographic
pressures, refugees and displaced people, group grievances, human exodus,
uneven development, economic decline, delegitimisation of states, public
services, human rights, security apparatus, factionalised elites and external
intervention.
The study argues that the danger
of failing or failed states is now at the centre of global politics. The
US National Security Strategy of 2002 clearly laid down the threats to
America's security. "America is less threatened by conquering states than
failing ones.''
The same assessment works for India,
except that the country's reticent assessments tend to gloss over the threats
that failing states present to its economy and security.
Failed states export unsavoury elements,
including terrorists, large-scale immigrants, drugs and weapons. In South
Asia, one can see varying levels of this problem. For example, Nepal "sliding
into chaos'' means migrants will come to India, creating economic and social
pressure in the country's border areas.
Bangladesh sinking into Islamic
fundamentalism will put pressure on India's fragile north-eastern states.
Instability, the study says, has many faces, while internal conflict can
take virulent forms as in countries like Somalia and Ivory Coast or Afghanistan
where drugs, terrorism and external intervention make a deadly cocktail.
In fact, it is only incidents like
Wednesday's blasts in Bangladesh or LTTE's killing of the Sri Lankan foreign
minister last weekend that put the spotlight on failed countries.
Otherwise, the slide into instability
in countries like Saudi Arabia (ranked 45), Egypt (38) and even Russia
(59) is rarely documented.
US strategists like to talk of an
"arc of instability'', but the study says,"The geography of weak states
reveals a territorial expanse that extends from Moscow to Mexico City.''
NE on alert
The Northeast states bordering Bangladesh
were put on maximum alert on Thursday following the serial blasts in the
neighbouring country on Wednesday. "When something like Wednesday's incidents
in Bangladesh happen, there is always a possibility of some fall-out here
and in the surrounding areas,'' said the Assam police intelligence chief.
