Stewart Patrick is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, andthe director of the organization?s program on Institutions and GlobalGovernance.
?A fragile state is one that cannot meet the functionsthat one associates with state sovereignty,? he says.
During his time as a fellow at one of the US?s leadingthink tanks, the Center for Global Development in Washington, D.C., Patrickconducted extensive research into failed and failing states. According to him,these countries can be so defined because they can?t provide ?basic physicalsecurity? to their citizens, and ?can?t control the territory of the state.?They also fail to provide ?basic social welfare? and ?access to food and basicservices? such as health to inhabitants. The weak states, says Patrick, fail tomanage their economies ?in a way that?s conducive to the growth of the privatesector?. The final component which is absent in many fragile states iseffective government and political institutions that provide accountability forthe inhabitants of a country.?
Patrick adds, ?If you look around the world, there?s hugedisparity in the ability of states to provide one, or in some cases all, ofthese basic political goods.? Most of these states, he says, are in Africa, andare home to a billion of the world?sinhabitants.
?Africa?s really the host of the most fragile states inthe world, for a number of different reasons, many of them historical,? Patrickcomments. ?Probably the archetype of a fragile ? or really a failedstate ? is Somalia, which has been for nearly 20 years without anyeffective central government institutions?. It has very little effectivecontrol over much of the territory and it exercises virtually no economicmanagement.?
In Somalia, international aid groups provide services thatshould be the domain of the government, and security is provided to itsTransitional Federal Government by an external force, namely Ethiopia.
Patrick also considers the Democratic Republic of Congo,where war has raged for years, to be a failed state, as well as Zimbabwe, whichunder President Robert Mugabe has undergone a ?precipitous decline? due to?government mismanagement? that?s ravaged the economy and led to a ?drasticdecline in the standard of living? in recent years.
Patrick says it?s ?nolonger possible for the world?s richest and most powerful country? ? namely theUS ? ?to remain indifferent to the fate of the planet?s impoverished, insecure,and misgoverned countries.?
He explains, ?As global interdependence has accelerated,one of the things that we?ve found is that problems rarely remain withinsovereign frontiers?. There?s great evidence that at times, transnationalthreats spill across the borders of weak and failing states and are facilitatedby weak and dysfunctional governments.?
Crime, Patrick says, is a prime example.
?Most of the major epicenters of narcotics production andin many cases transit of illegal drugs occur through weak and failing states?in South America, such as Colombia, and the Middle East, such as Afghanistan,where poppy cultivation makes it the center of the world?s heroin supply.
The drugs, says Patrick, end up on American streets andare increasingly being processed in and transported from African states wherecontrols are lax.
?A recent example of the connection between statefragility and transnational threats is the case of Guinea Bissau, which in recentyears has become a haven for narcotics trafficking from Latin America. This isa direct result of incredibly weak institutions in the country, which haveallowed drug traffickers to run rampant and to bribe government officials inthat country.?
The United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime recentlyrecognized the burgeoning narcotics crisis in Guinea Bissau and called forextraordinary attention to be paid to the very small country in West Africa.
Turning to the terrorism threat posed to the US by failedstates, Patrick again cites Afghanistan, where according to American securityagencies the al-Qaeda organization planned the September 11, 2001, assault onUS targets. This, he states, provides the best-known example ?of the world?smost powerful country attacked by terrorists operating from one of the world?sweakest and poorest states.?
Before the 9/11 attacks, al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Ladenfound safe haven in another weak state in Africa, Sudan, and the organizationalso planned attacks on US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania from bases inSomalia.
But Patrick says the tendency of state weakness togenerate or facilitate transnational threats is not limited to terrorism.