1.  And failed states are almost always poverty stricken.

2.  Afghanistan is a failed state now, and with the added distress of recurrent drought its people are hungry and frightened.

3.  Afghanistan may have been a failed state, but it was a state that Somalis could gaze upon with envy.

4.  Algeria is on the cusp of what has come to be called a failed state.

5.  Bush made clear that he was strongly against sending troops and resources into failed states.

6.  But a growing group of experts caution against introducing too much democracy too fast in failed states.

7.  But we should lead an international order that confronts the problem of failed states.

8.  He captured neatly the humbling, ambiguous reality of trying to rebuild failed states.

9.  In failed states, such armed groups are hard to contain, as the United Nations found in Somalia and the Organization of African Unity in Liberia.

10.  Officials who have played a role as the United Nations has tried to untangle the ruins of failed states have refined similar lists of rules to go by.