[FREE IRAN Project] In The Spirit Of Cyrus The Great

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Fall of the Dictators

January 10, 2004
The Straits Times
William Choong



ONE of the world's biggest gatherings of dictators - both past and present - can be found in a private garden in the American state of Texas.

There, a notorious crowd of top names mingles. It includes Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin, Romanian despot Nicolae Ceausescu and long-serving Cuban autocrat Fidel Castro.

Owned by Dallas real estate investor Harlan Crow, the statues and busts of such colourful personalities were bought off sculptors or officials as regimes crumbled.

Lenin's statue, for example, was toppled by a Georgian crowd celebrating the end of Moscow's formal control there.

It was found behind a warehouse and was ferried by truck across Georgian and Turkish checkpoints before being shipped to Texas.

'I had to sleep with one eye open for three days, but it was worth it,' Mr Crow told the New York Times.

His growing collection bears out one key fact: For those adept at harassing their citizens and political rivals, stashing away large wads of their countries' hard-earned foreign exchange and building up huge arsenals of banned weapons, dictators had a torrid year in 2003.

The trend is new. For years, dictators got away into relatively tranquil retirement, unfrazzled by trial or retribution.

Nigeria's Ibrahim Babangida, for example, kept enough political power to even avoid the bother of exile.

But in recent years, a confluence of factors has affected tyrants from Baghdad to Tripoli.

Across many countries, there has been a burgeoning of an educated and well-informed middle class which has enjoyed some aid from Western democracies to rout their local despot.

Another push factor has been the growing web of globalisation and democracy. And after the Sept 11 attacks in the US, the American doctrine of pre-emptive strikes against so-called rogue states has yielded significant returns.

Iraq's deposed president Saddam Hussein, for example, bore the brunt of this policy in April last year when his regime fell to US-led forces.

And analysts believe that Libyan autocrat Muammar Gaddafi was all too aware of this policy when he announced the termination of his country's banned weapons programmes last month.

'There's a fear on the part of Gaddafi and North Korea's Kim Jong Il that if they don't change, the US might actually invade,' said Mr Mark Palmer, author of Breaking The Real Axis Of Evil: How To Oust The World's Last Dictators By 2025.

And this is a long-term trend, the veteran US diplomat told The Straits Times.

Since 1974, about 30 of the world's despots - or half the global total - have been toppled.

According to a widely watched annual report by Freedom House last year, a New York-based human rights group, about a quarter of the world's 192 countries were tagged 'not free' - markedly lower than 43 per cent in 1973.

The departure of many big-name dictators, however, would mean a loss of entertainment value - particularly for news hacks.

For years, their notoriety stemmed not only from their clinical efficiency in dispatching their political opponents, but also their quirky and quixotic qualities.

According to Italian journalist Riccardo Orizio, who wrote a book based on hard-won interviews with seven dictators, Ugandan strongman Idi Amin takes the cake.

To Britain's Queen Elizabeth, Amin - nicknamed the 'buffoon tyrant' - offered to send a cargo ship full of bananas to help Uganda's former coloniser with its 'economic problems'.

According to Mr Orizio, Amin once wrote a telex to the Queen saying: 'Dear Liz, if you want to know a real man, come to Kampala.'

Amin - who died in August in Saudi Arabia - was also reported to have expressed admiration for Adolf Hitler and kept the severed heads of political opponents in his refrigerator.

In Turkmenistan, President Saparmurat Niyazov has named some days of the week after himself, including a new name, 'Turkmenbashi', or 'father of all Turkmen'.

A golden profile of the man is also broadcast on a corner of two state television channels at all times.

All said, analysts and diplomats agree that there is much work to be done about the world's remaining dictators.

To some, however, the process of 'domino democratisation' is again happening.

This happened across Eastern Europe in the early 1990s and Latin America in the 1980s.

It is the exact opposite of the 1960s-vintage domino theory put out by American policymakers, which predicted a communist wave engulfing states during the Cold War.

Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer has argued that American military force used in Iraq has yielded results across the Middle East.

Besides Libya, Iran has agreed to surprise checks on its nuclear sites while Syria - Israel's arch foe - has made peace overtures.

'The domino effects of the Iraq campaign are already in clear view,' he noted.

Another instrument to bring down dictators would be the full force of international law, said other analysts.

Already, a growing number of leaders have been brought to international tribunals.

They include former Yugoslavian leader Slobodan Milosevic, Liberia's Charles Taylor and Jean Kambanda, the Rwandan prime minister jailed for life for genocide.

'The practice of dictatorship should really be considered a crime against humanity,' said Mr Palmer.

There are other more novel ways as well.

Some have proposed the 'fatal hug', where the United States would grant its enemies full diplomatic recognition.

The end-result: This opens the door to the 'insidiously attractive' forces of globalisation and democracy - Coca Cola, Levi's and Big Macs.

This could work in relatively isolated countries like Iran and North Korea, where anti-American rhetoric has been used to mask decades of autocratic rule.

'It would certainly catch the mullahs by surprise,' Iranian dissident Azar Nafisi told Time magazine.

'It would drive them crazy - the thought of having an American embassy in Teheran again, with lines of people around the block, trying to get green cards,' said the fellow at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

An even more innovative way to manage dictators like North Korea's Mr Kim could well be something akin to a Dictators Anonymous.

Mr Ralph Cossa, president of the Pacific Forum CSIS, a research institute based in Honolulu, has even suggested that Libya's reformed Mr Gaddafi speak to Mr Kim himself.

Such a form of private diplomacy beats other private initiatives conducted by well-meaning professors, former politicians and diplomats, he argued.

Novel initiatives aside, the year 2003 was probably the only year where so many of the world's most noxious leaders have fallen.

'Unfortunately there are still several dozen well-entrenched dictatorial regimes in the world and I think they will fall only slowly,' Mr Thomas Carothers, a senior associate at Washington's Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told The Straits Times.

The key problem could lie with the US.

During much of the Cold War, Washington supported oppressive regimes which it used to form a defence against the expansion of the former Soviet Union's communist empire.

Notable examples were Saddam and the Shah of Iran before the revolution of 1979.

Former US president Franklin Roosevelt reportedly said this about murderous Nicaraguan dictator Anatasio Somozo: 'He may be a son of a b***h, but he's our son of a b***h.'

Now, however, a similar trend is occurring - states with dictatorial leaders who are on-side with Washington in its global war against terror have been given lots of latitude.

Take, for example, Ethiopia's ruling People Revolutionary Democratic Front, Uzbek leader Islam Karimov or Pakistan's Pervez Musharraf, an army general who toppled an elected government.

And quite often, such dictators clothe themselves with the tools of political legitimacy - democracy. 'They are elected autocrats,' argued former Foreign Affairs editor Fareed Zakaria, referring to leaders such as Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe and Azerbaijan's Ilham Aliyev.

'Maybe that's the form new dictatorship takes, through leaders who have found a way to use the symbols of legitimacy of the modern age.

'They embrace one element of democracy - elections - and forgo all the others.'

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Rogues Gallery

For many decades, the career paths of the world's dictators went from the brutal oppression of citizens and the amassing of great wealth, and then into leisurely retirement. Recently, however, an increasing minority are finding themselves out of a job, in court or in prison.

THE FALLEN ...

Saddam Hussein (1979-2003)

Styling himself as a Arab nationalist, Saddam ruled his people with brutal force and even gassed them. He also led Iraq into three wars in two decades.

He was captured by US forces last month and is awaiting trial.

Slobodan Milosevic (1989-2000)

Milosevic rode a wave of Serbian nationalism to power in 1989 when he was elected President of the Serbian Republic.

But Nato action to stop ethnic cleansing of Kosovo resulted in his capture and removal from power in 2000. He is on trial at the Hague for war crimes.

Idi Amin (1971-1979)

Dubbed the buffoon tyrant, Idi Amin presided over a reign of terror in Uganda during which an estimated 300,000 people died.

He declared himself King of Scotland, banned hippies and mini-skirts, and appeared at a royal Saudi Arabian funeral in 1975 wearing a kilt. He died in August last year.

Charles Taylor (1989-2003)

He came to power after launching a revolt against Liberia's dictator Samuel Doe in 1989. An estimated 200,000 people died before his supporters emerged as the dominant force.

He is accused of masterminding conflicts in West Africa. He lives in exile in Nigeria which, for now, is refusing to extradite him for trial before a UN tribunal.

THE SURVIVORS


Muammar Gaddafi (1969 - )

Hostile towards the West and reportedly a sponsor of terrorism, Colonel Gaddafi rules by decree and denies Libyans a range of basic rights.

With Libya becoming increasingly isolated, however, he has sought to have Libya accepted back into the international community.

Kim Jong-Il (1997 - )

Diplomats and escaped dissidents talk of a vain, paranoid, cognac-guzzling hypochondriac. He is said to wear platform shoes and favour a bouffant hairstyle to appear taller than his 1.57m.

Analysts said such eccentricities could mask the cunning mind of a master manipulator, or betray an irrational madman.

Fidel Castro (1959 - )

Life in Castro's Cuba is essentially controlled by the state, and political dissent is a punishable offence.

He earned the enmity of the US by nationalising US-owned properties and has reputedly survived more than 600 CIA-sponsored attempts on his life.

Sources: BBC, Christian Science Monitor, Newsday



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