|
Wealth, poverty and fragile states 富国、穷国和弱国 MOST people think they know what a failed statelooks like. An obvious one is Somalia, where anoutbreak of famine in the south was formally acknowledged by the United Nations this week.Help has started to trickle in after the Shabab, an Islamist militia, lifted its ban on aid agenciesthat it once termed anti-Muslim. In most ways the afflicted region epitomises the collapse ofauthority: extremists control roads and markets; the government is powerless outside thecapital; outsiders provide what little assistance exists. 大多数人自以为懂得何谓失败的政权。索马里就是一个典型的例子。这个星期联合国正式承认索马里南部闹饥荒。伊斯兰民兵组织Shabab解除被它称为反伊斯兰教的援助机构入境的禁令之后，援助终于缓缓而来。这个备受磨难的地区很大程度上体现了这个国家政权的崩塌：极端主义者控制了道路和市场;政府在首都外无能为力;外援少之又少。 But not all failed or fragile states look like Somalia. This month the World Bank issued itsannual list of countries by income category: rich, middle, poor. Several African countries arefaring rather better than Somalia; they have graduated from poor to middle-income status. Yetstrikingly, some 15 of the 56 countries on the banks lower-middle income list also appear on the list of fragile and failed states maintained by the OECD, a rich-country club. They range from C?te dIvoire to Yemen; the most important of them arePakistan and Nigeria. State failure, it appears, does not necessarily go hand in hand with otherhuman woes, such as poverty. | 
