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Jeffrey Gettleman calls Somalia the "most dangerous place in the world."

The East Africa bureau chief for the New York Times tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross that the country — where violent rebels fight for control and wreak havoc in villages nationwide — is just as hopeless as it was in 1991, when the central government collapsed.

"There's no green zone. There's no one part of Somalia that's safe," Gettleman says. "That's the problem. In some of these other countries like Iraq or Afghanistan, where I've worked, there are conflict areas, there are lawless areas, but there's one part of the country that is somewhat stable, where if you needed help, you could get it. In Somalia, that doesn't really exist."

Somali PiratesCAPTIONS BY ELIZABETH DICKINSON |  JULY/AUGUST 2010 | Images from the world's most failed states.

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 here demonstrate, sometimes the best test is the simplest one: You'll only know a failed state when you see it.

IHASA Ogaden Conference By Oromsis Adula*

The Institute for Horn of Africa Studies and Affairs (IHASA*) held its annual conference in Minneapolis from June 18th to 20^th, 2010. The conference was designed to address “the crucial international crisis facing the Horn of Africa region” with much of the focus devoted to the Conflicts in the Somali Region (also called the Ogaden). Themed, “Looking Back and Looking Forward: The Somali Region (The Ogaden) in the 21st Century”, the first IHASA conference was co-hosted by the Human Rights Center at the University of Minnesota.