The G5 nations are sometimes referred to as the P5, the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council or the N5 , the members of the five Nuclear Weapons States under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. Since the end of the World War II, these five victor nations of the WW-II (US, UK, France, Russia and China) have held sway over the global geo-political issues and the balance of power. The Peoples' Republic of China was excluded from this august club till 1971 when Peoples' Republic of China was allowed to join the P5 in lieu of the Republic of China (Taiwan). To be part of the G5/P5/N5 club is the ultimate honor for a nation-state; to the extent that both UK and France are refusing to vacate their national positions in favor of a common European seat on these bodies despite tremendous decrease in their respective comprehensive national powers.

However, the new G5, in contrast to the above club is nothing to gloat about. Let us introduce the potential members of this new G5.  We can start with Pakistan, Afghanistan, Somalia, Sudan, and Haiti. These PASSH countries constitute the new G5 or the Group of Failed Nations (the GFN) or the Group of Failed States (the GFS). These failed nations are perpetually in crisis, always conducting diplomacy with a begging bowl in one hand and a gun pointed to their head in the other hand.  Combined together these nations have received billions of dollars in international aid and yet their voracious appetite for more fiscal aid from the international community is never satisfied. The international aid money goes into a perpetual black hole that sucks everything into it without any shred of evidence of either accountability or progress. Their leaders are corrupt to the core and have stashed billions of dollars of international aid money into foreign accounts. None of them have an effective and functioning government despite several and usually competing pretenders to the throne. The PASSH countries are not able to provide even civic relief services to their citizens in face of natural disasters. The writ of their respective national governments does not last beyond few hundred square miles of the national capitals. Yet they continue to blame other countries for their national sickness.

Except for Haiti, all of them have dallied with Al Qaeda and its mushrooming derivatives in one form or the other in the last three decades. Somalia has Al Shabab, Afghanistan has the Al Qaeda and Taliban, Pakistan has Al Qaeda, Quetta Shura, Paki Taliban, LeT and numerous hydra-headed terrorist outfits that change their names by every one minute. Three of them namely Sudan, Afghanistan and Pakistan have the unique distinction and honor of playing warm and gracious host to the greatest Houdini of the 21st century whose elusive dis-appearance trick can only be explained by the Heisenberg's uncertainty principle of the quantum mechanics. He is somewhere there but no one can find him in the border lands of Jihadistan, the great Osama bin Laden. Some of the PASSH countries have effectively used ethnic cleansing over decades (Pakistan and Afghanistan), while others have participated in genocide or fratricidal tribal warfare (Sudan, Pakistan and Somalia). The PASSH countries are not just the fountainheads of global terrorism; they are the fountainheads of illegal international drug trade, human trafficking and other crimes as well.

Some of these failed states are de facto under continuous secessionist movements or slow partition. Somalia is already de facto partitioned into Somaliland and Somalia; Sudan into southern Sudan and the Arab dominated northern Sudan. Sudan just had the African Union sponsored referendum that will endorse the partition officially. Northern Sudan will still have problems in Darfur region. Pakistan has already divided into Bangladesh and Pakistan in 1971 and is in the middle of another ensuing partition. One would not be surprised as and when Balochistan seceeds from Pakistan. Afghanistan for sake of stability needs to be partitioned into Northern Afghanistan and a new badland of Pashtoonistan if we agree with the thesis propounded by Robert Blackwell. The PASSH countries are decidedly and literally a pain in the rear end of the international community. You just can not ignore them but you do not like them either. The international community is forced to intervene for one reason or the other in these countries on humanitarian grounds or for sake of global security, although they are very touchy about their national sovereignty.

If history is any guide, the geo-political situation in the PASSH countries will not improve and there will be no change in their ways of governance or lack of it.  The international community needs to take a long-term view of various intervention strategies to ensure security and safety for the rest of the world.   Since the PASSH nations can not eradicate their problems on their own, external intervention is a grim reality, whether their respective governments acknowledge this fact or not. Perhaps, time has come for the UN to recreate the now defunct Trusteeship Council and declare these failed nations as UN protectorates to be governed directly by the UN Trusteeship Council. Perhaps, India, now back in UNSC should float proposals for recreation of the UN Trusteeship Council. No single nation should bear the cost of sustaining these failed nations in this cash-strapped era. The sole remaining superpower is ageing and declining. It is now frugal and fiscally fragile and should not be asked to bear the burden of nation building for these failed states.  It is already planning to withdraw from Afghanistan. US intervention in Somalia in the nineties was disastrous. Fiscal burden needs to be redistributed uniformly across the membership of the UN. Let China, Russia, Japan and Saudi Arabia also contribute to the national building costs through the UN Trusteeship Council. Perhaps, under UN supervision, these failed states and their respective NGOs, non-state actors and general populations must be demilitarized and completely de-weaponized.  Their nuclear weapons and nuclear programs must be dismantled under the UN and IAEA supervision. Their WMD capabilities need to be capped, rolled back and eventually eliminated to ensure a global community free of terrorism and perpetual threats of nuclear blackmail. That is the most daring challenge for the UN in the second decade of the 21st century. It takes a global village to raise a nation!