Somalia is No More a Failed State Than the United States

You gotta love the United States, I simply love it here, but sometimes we have to come out of the shadows on the side of struggling nations to battle the tendency of politicians and statistics brokers to potentially damage development efforts around the world, often by their misrepresentation of aggregate statistics.

Reports are sometimes simplified in such a way that they can downplay harsh challenges of the poor in wealthy stable countries and, worse, scare away investors from hardworking entrepreneurs in poor, unstable countries.

Recently, the "Fund for Peace," in partnership with Foreign Policy, released its Failed States Index 2010. The judges have made their decisions! Team Somalia looks hopeful. On Mounting Demographic Pressures, a solid 9.6. Massive Movement of Refugees gives them a shiny 10! Let's see what the Legacy of Vengeancy-Seeking Group Grievance or Group Paranoia judge gives them. Ooh, a 9.7. The coach was really expecting a 10 and he's really tearing into the judge, crying foul.

Chronic and Sustained Human Flight gives Somalia a disappointing 8.3. Oh my God, the Somali coach is over the railing. Security is restraining him. But now it looks like Criminalization and/or Delegitimization of the State offers, that's right, another 10! Despite the coach's disappointment on social indicators, it looks like the winner of the overall competition, The Number One Failed State in the world is ... Somalia!

The team is really, wait, they don't look so happy about their score. The Kalashnikov delegation was ready to renew their endorsement for Team Somalia, but it looks like Somalia is defying the judges, and ... that's right, they are refusing their trophy and handing it to a befuddled U.S. delegation, which was ranked only #158! Now second ranked Team Chad is handing their trophy to #159 Team France! And third ranked Sudan is handing theirs to #161, the U.K!

The Fund for Peace team are brilliant, good people trying to make a helpful report. But after working and carrying out humanitarian research in places like Somalia, Sudan, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Iraq, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Croatia, Bosnia, and the U.S., I think this index and others like it suffer the most camouflaged form of bias, that of "aggregation." And it could potentially prevent millions of dollars in private sector investment from reaching markets ready for development and badly in need of jobs.

There are millions of people in countries ranked high on the list who are peaceful people offering solutions for development and stability. Often their corner of the country is stable even if the other side is not. And when they approach foreign companies and organizations (oil, diamonds, and cell phone metals, and telecom an extreme exception) to ask for investment in their idea, everything from a peacebuilding program to a camel milk bottling company to a firm that trains technology managers for the region, the foreigners often rely on countrywide indicators like a Failed States Index to decide whether to invest or not.

Screw Somalia, Chad, and Sudan, the corporate trade analysts think. Well, while oil and diamond barons invest in the governments and elite of countries in the red, including support to those wanted for war crimes, few outside of aid are investing and partnering in non-governmental, more consistent baseline private industries that could provide jobs among the general population caught in the middle between the regimes and the war zones.

If a Darfuri family flees war, where do they go? They seek jobs in agriculture in Chad or they look for labor jobs in Khartoum or Juba or Tripoli. Even many of those who remain in the war zone are still reliant on industries which live or die based on foreign investment.

What often happens is that when a war breaks out, the wealthy resource companies like oil, etc, figure out a way to maintain access, sometimes propping the elite, while other foreign partners leave, helping to facilitate the collapse of trade among the people caught in the crossfire. And as anyone who's lived in a war zone knows, trade does not stop when there is a humanitarian crisis, it accelerates, but the benefits of that trade often concentrate into the few hands who still have external connections.

Why then call out the U.S. if we're talking about development in other parts of the world? There are an estimated 800,000 homeless people in the United States, including 200,000 children, for starters. They are not all individuals making bad life choices; many are children whose lives fell apart with the loss of a parent who got caught up in gang wars, were killed, or imprisoned. There have been over 7,000 people killed in war in or from the U.S. this past decade, including from 9/11, and not including thousands of post-war suicides. Not to mention failures in healthcare affecting the poor. Somalia has many more troubles than the U.S., in aggregate. But as for the disaggregated view, however, I'd argue that it would be safer to raise your kids in Hargeisa than in West Baltimore, especially if you were poor.

The Fund for Peace team and others who construct country-based reports like this did well to disaggregate along themes, but probably found it impossible to disaggregate among communities, which would be more helpful for development.

Somalia, Chad, Sudan, and the other countries may have slightly better cases, backed by a study like this, to get more humanitarian aid attention. But at the same time, those millions of people in the more stable and ready and hungry parts of those countries, many of whom do not qualify for humanitarian aid, but could, if supported employ many of their peers and wean them off aid, will continue to have trouble finding foreign investors and partners outside of aid.

To be clear, the real issue is war, corruption, and environmental catastrophe in these countries, and a serious lack of follow-through care for the poor in countries like the U.S. But what would really help the most is to isolate the "Mogadishus" which need a dramatic increase in conflict mitigation and humanitarian aid from the "Hargeisas" which need a dramatic increase in private sector employment, and which largely relies on partnerships with regional and distant traders. While one part of a country fails, another part of the same country may have solutions which need to be supported.

Photo credit: Daniel J Gerstle (A Somali restaurant in Eastern Sanag)