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Azerbaijan, Israel, Syria and Saudi Arabia among top ten militarized

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  • Azerbaijan, Israel, Syria and Saudi Arabia among top ten militarized

    Azerbaijan along with Israel, Syria and Saudi Arabia among top ten
    militarized nations in the world: Global Militarization Index

    arminfo
    Thursday, November 15, 13:15

    Azerbaijan along with Israel, Syria and Saudi Arabia is among top ten
    countries in the list of the world's most militarized nations,
    according to the latest Global Militarization Index released Tuesday
    by the Bonn International Centre for Conversion (BICC).

    Singapore ranks second, followed by Syria, Russia, Jordan, and Cyprus,
    according to the Index, which is based on a number of weighted
    variables, such as the comparison of a country's military budget with
    its gross domestic product (GDP), and the percentage of the GDP it
    spends on health care.

    Six of the top 10 states, including Israel (1), Syria (4), Jordan (5),
    Kuwait (7), Bahrain (9), and Saudi Arabia (10) are located in the
    Middle East, while yet another of Iran's neighbors, Azerbaijan, made
    its first entry into the militarized elite at number 8.

    Created in 1996, the GMI, which has been updated each year, tries to
    assess the balance between militarisation and human development,
    particularly related to health. In addition to BICC's own research,
    data published by the Stockholm Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the
    International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Health Organisation
    (WHO), and the Institute for Strategic Studies are used to compile the
    Index, whose rankings go back to 1990 at the end of the Cold War. In
    addition to the comparison of military budgets, GDP, and health
    expenditures, the Index uses several other variables, including the
    total personnel in the paramilitary and military forces - albeit not
    the police - and total number of physicians vis-a-vis the overall
    population, and the ratio of the number of heavy weapons to the total
    population.

    Prime Minister of Azerbaijan Artur Rasizade said that Azerbaijan had
    increased its military expenditures 89% over the last year. Earlier,
    he said that over the last 8 years Azerbaijan's military budget grew
    20fold. In Azerbaijan, military spending increased by 39.74 million
    manats to 1.36 billion manats (about 1.73 billion U.S. dollars) in
    2011. It is also reported that for 2012 Azerbaijan's military spending
    account for 15 percent of its overall annual budget, increasing to
    1.38 billion manats (about 1.77 billion U.S. dollars).

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