Quote: Sudan, Yemen and Syria are among the nations most prone to unrest in the Middle East and North Africa, trailing only Libya in a ranking of 20 countries in the Bloomberg Combustibility Index.
Qatar, Kuwait and United Arab Emirates are rated by the index as least likely to experience the kind of turmoil that has threatened Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi’s rule and toppled regimes in Egypt and Tunisia.
The index is based on variables including gross domestic product adjusted for purchasing power parity, unemployment, median age, income inequality, access to information and repression.
The repression factor accounts for 50 percent of the weight of the variables. It was calculated from the size of a country’s military per capita, length of tenure of the head of state, whether the head had a military background, whether the head is also commander-in-chief of the armed forces, whether the head came to power in a military coup or following an assassination, military spending as a percentage of GDP and absolute military spending.
The 20 countries on the list, from most prone to unrest to least, are Libya, Sudan, Yemen, Syria, Egypt, Oman, Djibouti, Iran, Iraq, Tunisia, Bahrain, Algeria, Mauritania, Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Qatar.
|