In my last post I mentioned that the new Somali president has accused the U.S. of undermining his administration by supporting an “Anti-Terror Alliance” made of warlords to help root out al-Qaeda networks in the country. Since this piece of news coincided with Somalia making the cut on the Foreign Policy Index of Failed States I want to go into this a little more.

Ethan Zuckerman hits it on the head on his post Wednesday in My Heart’s in Accra when he said that failed states have a “ripple effect” on their neighbors….like concentric circles in a pond. This is magnified by the fact that 11 of the 20 failed states are in Sub-Saharan Africa.

“Failed states have the potential to export violence beyond their borders – think Sudan and Chad, or eastern DRC and Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi. A quick glance at the map provided by FP gives a sense for how state failure has a “neighborhood” effect – we’re hard pressed to find an island of stability in Central Africa, and Ghana, Mali and Senegal begin to look like bulwarks against West African instability.”

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