Pakistan may be taking a deleterious turn, especially as the United States plans to pull out of Afghanistan by 2012 and threatens to withdraw military aid from the country, but its media has reacted indignantly to claims that put it on the same scale as the poorest African countries.
Foreign Policy and the Fund for Peace declared Pakistan a near failed state (translated in Urdu “nakam riyasat“). In a June 21 ranking, Pakistan was placed 12th after many African underdeveloped nations (eg, Somalia, Chad, Sudan, Congo, Zimbabwe, Central African Republic, Ivory Coast and Guinea), disaster-prone Haiti, and the war-torn countries of Iraq and Afghanistan.