World’s Most Dangerous Countries

Chugging through the Gulf of Aden this past September, the crew of a Ukrainian freighter fell victim to an increasingly common predicament: a pirate attack. Contemporary corsairs from Somalia boarded the MV Faina and held the crew and its cargo33 Russian-made tanks–for ransom. After a five-month standoff, the raiders received a payment of $3.2 million and fled.

 

A curiously small sum for such a potent payload, but the pirates didn’t have much choice Somalia lacks the basic infrastructure needed to unload the tanks. Piracy is just one of the many hazards in Somalia, which tops this year’s list of the world’s most dangerous countries.

 

Somalia has gained notoriety as a modern-day Tortuga thanks to pirates that have captured 42 ships over the past year–but conditions inland remain just as chaotic. Somalia has seen 14 different governments since 1994 and, despite the installation of a new government in February, warlords and fundamentalist militias still rule much of the country.

 

"Somalia is really a tabula rasa," says Ed Daly, acting vice president of intelligence operations at iJet Intelligent Risk Systems, a Maryland-based risk-assessment firm.

 

"It’s got nothing." Somalia is worst of a trio of failed states that tower over the rest of the world’s countries in terms of danger and dysfunction.

 

The mountainous warzone of Afghanistan and the desert battlefield of Iraq round out the top three. "The top three are clearly in a league of their own," says Adam Strangfeld, research director at Control Risks.

 

"They are without a doubt the most dangerous countries in the world. After that, there’s a bit of a gap. What characterizes the top three is that the geographical spread is much greater." The remainder of the list is disproportionately dominated by African nations like the Democratic Republic of Congo and Sudan, the latter of which is on anything but a road to improvement (an arrest warrant was issued Wednesday on Sudan President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, on charges of crimes against humanity).

 

These countries are among a slew directly or indirectly mired in a conflict that started in 1998, sometimes called "Africa’s World War." Many other dangerous countries, such as Pakistan and Yemen, owe their infamy to the lurking menace of terrorist groups like al-Qaeda, which thrive in nations with un-policed nooks.

 

The craggy provinces in Pakistan’s north are ideal for such activities and are assumed to be the plotting grounds for the dramatic assassination of Benazir Bhutto in December 2007 and the Marriott Hotel bombing in Islamabad in September 2008, carried out by militant group Fidayeen-e-Islam. Experts at iJet warn that risk will remain high in the former British colony for the foreseeable future while fighting continues between government forces and tribal militants in the northwest And dire danger can even be found a lot closer to home than one might think – iJet ranks Mexico’s crime-wracked northern border as a high-risk location, on par with Algeria (though the rest of the country is considered much safer).