Recently about a day ago, Foreign Policy issued the list of the failed states of the world and quite ironically, Pakistan was ranked 13th in the world. It didn’t have surprised the lot of people of Pakistan because as a nation we have struck a rockbottom and all the pictures are very gloomy as far as Pakistan is concerned. But when I observed the whole list, there were lot of things which came as a surprise. The complete list can be viewed on the following link:
http://www.fundforpeace.org/global/?q=fsi-grid2012
Now, first look at the neighboring countries of Pakistan. India was ranked 79th, China was ranked 76th, Iran came at 34th and our “loving” neighbor Afghanistan came at Afghanistan came at 6th. All the 12 countries which are above in Pakistan have been under quite a turmoil for the last few years like Iraq, Zimbabwe or Somalia for that matter. So it would be quite needless to say that Pakistan was quite better than these countries as well as countries which have been in the trouble for last few years due to the External Intervention.
So Pakistan is the country in the list from which the normality has prevailed. But one look below the list, there are countries like Uganda). The country with the lowest per capita income in the world), Nigeria, Rwanda (the poorest country in the world). As per this list, even Bangladesh and Sri Lanka have fared better than us, but the fact of the matter is Pakistan is the 14th Largest economy of the world as far as volume is concerned. And we have a pretty maligned but still the democratic setup in Pakistan, which is by the way not a criteria but anyways.
But this will serve us understand that how Pakistan is beign rated in the international community and we need to do lot of image building before we can be called a stable nation like most of our neighbors.
