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POST CARD FROM HELL

The world's most Failed States. " Somalia" Powered by GoodWidgets.com For the last half-decade, the Fund for Peace, working with Foreign Policy, has been putting together the Failed States Index , using a battery of indicators to determine how stable -- or unstable -- a country is. But as the photos demonstrate, sometimes the best test is the simplest: You'll only know a failed state when you see it. 1. SOMALIA FSI score: 114.3 (out of 120) Somalia has topped the Failed States Index for the last three years -- a testament to the depth of the country's long-running political and humanitarian disaster and, as James Traub writes , to the international community's inability to find an answer. After two decades of chaos , the country is mainly under the control of Islamist militant groups, the most notorious and powerful of which is al-Shabab. A second faction, Hizbul Islam, rivals the former in brutality -- it recently executed two Somalis for the crime o...

Desert Flower; FGM-Female Genital Mutilation, Unite for Children

Love hurt three times. Once when you are cut. Once when you marry.  Once when you give birth African Proverb. "Desert Flower"  Below is an eyewitness account of what is done to all Somali girls because men still refuse marriage with an uninfibulated , or " open ," bride. And without marriage, there is no future for a girl:            Instruments used for the FMG "With the Somalis, the circumcision of girls occurs in the home among women's relatives and neighbors. The grandmother or an older woman officiates. On each occasion, usually, only one little girl or, at times, two sisters are infibulated, but all girls, without exception, must undergo this mutilation as it is required for marriage. The operation itself is not accompanied by any ceremony or ritual. The child, completely naked, is made to sit on a low stool. Several women take hold of her and open her legs ...