David Wallechinsky - The Book of Lists

In power since 1989.

Sudan, the largest country in Africa, is in the midst of a complex 20-year civil war that has claimed the lives of 2 million people and uprooted another 4 million. Al-Bashir seized power in a military coup and immediately suspended the constitution, abolished the legislature and banned political parties and unions. He has tried to negotiate a peace agreement with the main rebel group, but he insists that the nation be ruled according to Islamic Shari’a law, even in southern Sudan, where the people are Christian and animist. Meanwhile, his army has routinely bombed civilians and tortured and massacred non-Arabs, particularly in the oil-producing areas of the south. Sudanese troops have also kidnapped southerners and subjected them to slavery. Al-Bashir has also been accused of ‘engineering famine’ in regions that oppose him. He has a long history of providing sanctuary for a wide range of terrorists, only to turn against them. He turned over the notorious Carlos the Jackal to France in exchange for financial and military aid and, in 1996, he tried unsuccessfully to sell Osama bin Laden to the US government.

In power since 1990.

Since taking charge of this former Soviet republic in central Asia, Niyazov has developed the world’s most extreme personality cult, challenged only by that of Kim Jong Il. Niyazov’s picture appears on all Turkmen money, there are statues of him everywhere and he renamed the month of January after himself. His book, Rukhnama (Book of the Soul), is required reading in all schools at all levels and all government employees must memorise passages in order to keep their jobs. Niyazov rules without opposition. As he once put it, ‘There are no opposition parties, so how can we grant them freedom?’ In the past year, Niyazov has cracked down on religious and ethnic minorities, including Russians, and has refused to issue exit visas for families or for women under the age of 35. He has imprisoned political dissidents and subjected them to Stalinist-style show trials and public confessions. The Turkmen constitution requires retirement at the age of 70, but in August Niyazov ensured his own rule by creating a 2,507-member People’s Council which unanimously elected him Lifetime Chairman.

In power since 1959.

The world’s longest-reigning dictator, Fidel Castro took advantage of the world’s preoccupation with the war in Iraq in March and April of 2003 to carry out his biggest round-up of non-violent dissidents in more than a decade. He arrested 75 human rights activists, journalists and academics, and sent them to prison for an average of 19 years. Cuba remains a one-party state with all power in the hands of Castro. The courts are controlled by the executive branch — in other words, Castro, who has traditionally blamed all of his country’s problems, economic and social, on the United States.

In power since 1986.

Swaziland (pop. 1.2 million) is the last remaining absolute monarchy in Africa. Mswati III ascended to the throne when he turned 18, four years after the death of his father. Because Mswati had been educated in England, it was thought that he would modernise his kingdom. However, he has shown a liking for certain Swazi traditions. On September 15, 2002 he watched thousands of girls and young women dance bare-breasted in the annual Reed Dance and then chose one to be his tenth wife (his father had 100 wives). The girl’s mother filed a lawsuit against the king, charging him with abducting her daughter. Mswati, who rules by decree, then announced that the Swazi courts were forbidden from issuing rulings that limited the king’s power. In an attempt to appease international opinion, Mswati approved the drafting of a new constitution to replace the one that his father had suspended 30 years earlier. However, the new constitution bans political parties, allows the death penalty for any criminal offence and provides for the reintroduction of debtors’ prisons.

Amin seized power in 1971 and launched a reign of terror that led to the deaths of an estimated 300,000 people. Deposed in 1979, Amin was offered asylum in Saudi Arabia, with all living expenses paid. In 1989 he tried to return to Uganda using a false passport. He got as far as the Congo, where he was recognised and arrested and then sent back to Saudi Arabia. Amin died in 2003 at the age of 78. Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni vetoed a suggestion to give Amin a state funeral in order to win votes in his home region: ‘I would not bury Amin. I will never touch Amin. Never. Not even with a long spoon.’

Bokassa seized power in 1965. In 1976 he declared himself emperor and a year later staged an elaborate coronation celebration that used up one-fourth of the nation’s annual earnings. He was overthrown in 1979, but not before he had committed a series of horrible outrages, including ordering the massacre of schoolchildren who refused to buy uniforms made in a factory owned by Bokassa’s wife. After he was ousted, he lived lavishly in Paris. Then, incredibly, he returned to the CAR, where he was arrested upon arrival and charged with murder and cannibalism. He was convicted of the former charge and was kept in ‘comfortable confinement’ in the capital city of Bangui. Bokassa was set free in 1993, when General Andre Kolingba, the country’s latest dictator, ordered all the nation’s convicts released. He died in 1996.

When longtime Haitian dictator François ‘Papa Doc’ Duvalier died in 1971, the mantle of power passed to his 19-year-old son Jean-Claude, better known as ‘Baby Doc’, who also inherited the dreaded Tonton Macoutes secret police. Baby Doc was finally forced out of office in 1986 after widespread protest and flown out of the country on a US Air Force plane. Baby Doc and his wife, Michelle, not content with stuffing an Air Haiti cargo plane with plunder, bumped 11 passengers off their escape flight — including Michelle’s grandparents — to make room for more loot. The Duvaliers settled on the French Riviera and spent millions of dollars a year before divorcing in 1990.

As head of East German security, Honecker supervised the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961. Ten years later he assumed leadership of the Communist Party. Among his more odious acts was ordering all border area to be mined and equipped with automatic shooting devices. With the fall of Communism in 1989, Honecker was put under house arrest. In 1991 he was flown from a Soviet military hospital near Berlin to Moscow itself. However, on July 29, 1992, the 79-year-old Honecker was expelled from the Chilean embassy where he had sought refuge and was flown back to Berlin to face charges of corruption and manslaughter. Because he was diagnosed as dying from liver cancer, Honecker was allowed to leave for Chile in January 1993. He died on May 29, 1994.

Saddam Hussein took power in 1979. A ruthless dictator, he used poison gas during his eight-year war with neighbouring Iran and to suppress rebellions by his country’s Kurdish minority. He managed to survive despite losing the first Gulf War with a United States-led coalition in 1991. In 2003, the United States led a ‘pre-emptive’ war against Iraq. As Baghdad swiftly fell, Saddam disappeared. He remained elusive until December 13, 2003, when US forces found Saddam in a 6-ft deep hole on a farm outside his hometown of Tikrit. He offered no resistance, telling the American soldiers in English, ‘My name is Saddam Hussein. I am the president of Iraq and I want to negotiate.’ At the time of writing Saddam is being held in Baghdad, awaiting trial on war crimes and other charges. In February of 2004, French lawyer Jacques Vergez became Saddam’s attorney and declared his intent to call officials from the US and other Western powers to the stand to demonstrate their complicity in Saddam’s acts.