The dirty half-dozen

When Saddam Hussein fled this month, it marked the fall of a vicious tyrant, but it may -- just may -- have signalled something even more important: the end of tyranny itself.

Congo's Mobutu Sese Seko fell in 1997, Indonesia's Suharto in 1998. Serbia's Slobodan Milosevic was overthrown in 2000 and Syria's Hafez Assad died in the same year. Kenya's Daniel Arap Moi finally left the stage in 2002.

Membership in the tyrants club has been shrinking so fast that Freedom House, the chronicler of global freedom, now puts just nine of the world's 192 countries on its "worst of the worst" list of extremely repressive regimes, down from 16 five years ago.

Syria's Bashar Assad, son of Hafez, is under fire from Washington for supporting terrorism and helping the Hussein regime in its dying days. Cuba's Fidel Castro has seen his famous beard grow silver as his country slides further and further into poverty. North Korea's Kim Jong-il threatens to go nuclear but presides over a friendless regime and a people racked by hunger.

All of them face an inescapable fact. The age of the tyrant is ending. In continent after continent, region after region, the number of authentic, self-worshipping, all-powerful despots has been falling.

In Africa, the era of the "big men" concluded years ago. Gone is Jean-Bedel Bokassa, who turned Central Africa into his private preserve and crowned himself emperor, Napoleon-style. Gone is the Congo's Mr. Mobutu, with his leopard-skin hat, his trademark cane and his string of European villas. Gone, too, is Malawi's Hasting Banda, whose 30-year reign of terror ended in 1994.

Even Robert Mugabe, the revolutionary intellectual who transformed himself into one of Africa's last classic despots, is in trouble. Shunned by the Commonwealth, plagued by strikes and protests, he presides over a broken country and a ruined reputation.

In Latin America, the bemedalled generals who ruled so many countries in the 1970s and 1980s have faded away. General Alfredo Stroessner, who ran Paraguay for 35 brutal years, is passing his autumn years in exile in Brazil. Haiti's Jean-Francois (Baby Doc) Duvalier, accused of 60,000 political killings, subsists on handouts in Paris.

In Europe, the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989 led to the end of Communist tyrants such as Romania's Nicolae Ceaucescu. The post-Communist strongmen who sprang up in their place -- Franjo Tudjman in Croatia, Mr. Milosevic in Serbia -- are gone now too.

In Asia, authoritarian father figures such as Malaysia's Mahathir Mohamed and Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew are in their late 70s.

Of course, not all tyrants are old or under threat. Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus is robust and very much in control. Turkmenistan's Saparmurat Niyazov, the new boy on the block, is only now solidifying his cult of personality.

And not all repressive countries are ruled by a single tyrant. Some are collective dictatorships. Burma, with its faceless military junta, falls into that category. So do China and Vietnam.

Still other countries have become "illiberal democracies," technically democratic but lacking full civil liberties. Consider Russia under the stern former KGB man Vladimir Putin or Venezuela under the populist former general Hugo Chavez.

But "these regimes are not the same as these megalomaniacal leaders who build monuments to themselves in their own lifetime and by their own hand," said Adrian Karatnycky, senior scholar at Freedom House. "There are fewer and fewer of them."

With his gilded palaces, his statues and his torture chambers, Saddam Hussein was a classic of his kind. Was he also one of the last? The reasons for hoping so are growing stronger all the time.

The leader of the Cuban Revolution, Mr. Castro has been in power longer than any other political leader in the world today. Known as el jefe (the chief), he is head of government, chief of state, first secretary of the ruling Communist Party and commander-in-chief of the armed forces. But his grip may be weakening. This month, in a possible sign of concern about slipping political control, he threw about 75 dissidents and writers in jail for up to 28 years each.

Mr. Mugabe seemed like a hopeful figure when he came to power in 1980 as Britain granted independence to Rhodesia. He called for reconciliation with whites and justice for all. But his popularity fell in the 1990s as the economy declined because of rampant corruption. In 1999, Mr. Mugabe backed the forced seizure of white-owned farms and last year he effectively cheated his way to re-election. Today, Zimbabwe faces rising unemployment, shortages of food and fuel and inflation of more than 200 per cent, presenting Mr. Mugabe with his biggest threat in two decades.

Colonel Gadhafi was a 28-year-old military officer in 1969 when he and a group of comrades staged a coup d'état, abolished the monarchy and set up a revolutionary council. His regime became an international pariah because of its support for terrorism, including the 1988 bombing of an airliner over Lockerbie, Scotland. But, under U.S. pressure, Col. Gadhafi has pulled in his horns since the 9/11 terrorist attacks and recently his regime scored a small success: Libya was elected to the chairmanship of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights.

Mr. Kim gradually took over the reins of power after the death of his father, Kim Il-sung, in 1994, inaugurating the first communist dynasty. In 1997, he formally assumed the leadership of the ruling Korean Workers' Party. North Korean propaganda portrays "The Great Leader" as a dynamo who wrote six operas in two years and personally designed a huge tower in the capital, Pyongyang. In fact, he presides over a broken country beset by food shortages.

When Turkmenistan, the poorest republic in the Soviet Union, became independent in 1991, Mr. Niyazov became its first President. In recent years, he has shown growing signs of egomania, taking on the title "Father of all Turkmen" and naming streets, towns, schools and hospitals after himself. When he lost his hair after heart surgery in 1997, he used Chinese herbal medicines to save his people the "unpleasantness" of having a bald leader. The country's top legislative body, the Mejlis, made him President for life in 1999.

Known as Europe's last dictator, the former state-farm director swept to power in democratic elections in 1994. Two years later, he consolidated his powers by dissolving parliament and creating a tame new legislature after holding a referendum extending his term. He won another five-year term in 2001, but observer groups said that result was tainted by undemocratic practices. His regime forced nine newspapers out of business last year and uses the secret police to intimidate opponents. Belarus is the only former Soviet republic where the security service is still called the KGB.

2 posted on 05/05/2003 7:27:39 AM PDT by conservatism_IS_compassion ( <<-- Click here for further analysis)

A lovely utopian sentiment, but I have doubts. Look at Venezuela. A two-bit thug gets in, decides he want's to become dictator, suspend further elections, etc. And that in the last year or so. There will always be two-bit thugs who gain power. And our handling of Haiti shows that we aren't exactly hell-bent to fix the way that island is governed.

3 posted on 05/05/2003 7:40:35 AM PDT by theDentist (So. This is Virginia.... where are all the virgins?)

Hey, they missed one . . .

4 posted on 05/05/2003 7:40:40 AM PDT by geedee (Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed.)

His regime forced nine newspapers out of business last year

Our media should take series notice of this...

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