The World’s Weirdest Dictators
The most successful tyrants are as eccentric as they are ruthless.
By Chris Bushnell
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Kim Jong Il collects Hollywood movies. Saddam Hussein made everyone call him “Uncle.” Muammar Qaddafi is obsessed with the color green. If you want to be an all-powerful dictator who incurs the wrath of the world’s only remaining superpower, you’d better be prepared to mix a little eccentric behavior in with your ruthlessness.
In an effort to predict our country’s ever-shifting foreign policy, we decided to take a look at some of the world’s remaining despots. In addition to banning that most American of exports – Freedom! – the following monocrats rule nations with vast natural resources. Mix in a little erratic behavior and you have a perfect excuse for an all-out military invasion. If you’re old enough to be drafted, you’ll find your travel itinerary below.
1) Saparmurat Niyazov
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Country: Turkmenistan
Age: 64
In Power Since: 1990
Country’s Natural Resource: Natural gas, oil
Expected U.S. Invasion: January 2008
Greatest Hits: Forget Kim Jong Il – when it comes to out-of-control personality cults, the self-obsessed regime that rules this former Soviet republic beats them all. Niyazov – or as he prefers to be officially called, “Turkmenbashi” (translation: father of all Turkmen) – has installed the requisite golden statues of himself in every city (including one in the capital that rotates to always face the sun) and has, of course, put his face on all the currency… but it’s the little things that have earned him the top spot on our list. Things like restructuring the curriculum of every school around his published poetry, renaming the days of the week after members of his family and enforcing a peculiar national dress code (women may wear their hair in braids or under a hat… only!) But make no mistake, Niyazov is a man of the people. How else could you explain the 1999 parliamentary vote that elected him president for life? The vote? 2,500 to 0.
2) Gnassingbé Eyadéma
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Country: Togo
Age: 67
In Power Since: 1967
Country’s Natural Resource: Limestone
Expected U.S. Invasion: November 2020
Greatest Hits: The island of Togo doesn’t have the wealth to erect enormous monuments to their leader, but they do feature hand-painted portraits of him in every shop. And many fear that the posters, instead of the country’s military police, are watching them; Eyadéma has, after all, claimed to have some sort of super powers. State-sponsored radio frequently interrupts their regular programming – a loop of the jingle “Rest assured, Eyadéma/You were crowned by God/Rest assured, Eyadéma/The people are behind you” – to report how Eyadéma survived an assassination attempt at point blank range, or how his plane was destroyed by a bomb yet he survived. Togo does hold elections, although Eyadéma frequently wins with a suspicious 99% of the vote. A 2003 constitutional amendment banning term limits, as well as the well-documented slaughter of political opposition groups, also helps keep him in power.
3) Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah Mu’izzaddin Waddaulah
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Country: Brunei
Age: 58
In Power Since: 1967
Country’s Natural Resource: Natural gas, timber
Expected U.S. Invasion: March 2012
Greatest Hits: The Sultan of Brunei is a busy man. When he isn’t ruling his country with a velvet fist (the so-called “soft dictator” is the only ruler on this list whose name is not associated with innovations in the science of human torture), the Sultan is also the country’s prime minister, defense minister, finance minister and religious head of the country’s Islamic population. Oh yeah, and he also throws a mean party in his 1,788-room palace (the world’s largest). The Sultan has spent about $30 billion of his $40 billion cash reserve on parties in the last decade. In addition to having Michael Jackson play private shows and giving out Rolls Royce Silver Seraphs (at $250,000 each) as party favors, the Sultan is also fond of flying planeloads of beauty pageant winners, supermodels and famous actresses across the globe as party guests. So far only one of them (former Miss U.S.A. hopeful, Shannon Marketic) has sued the Sultan for being forced into sex slavery while visiting the palace. To his credit, the Sultan has recently created a 15-member parliament and has promised elections for the vacant body “soon.” If held, it will be the first election since 1962, when the Sultan’s then-ruling father threw out election results when he didn’t like the outcome.
4) Islam Karimov
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Country: Uzbekistan
Age: 66
In Power Since: 1990
Country’s Natural Resource: Gold, copper and uranium
Expected U.S. Invasion: December 2006
Greatest Hits: When a national election in 1992 gave Karimov only 86 percent of the vote, the disappointed Soviet holdover ordered a crackdown on political opposition. (“Such people must be shot in the forehead,” Karimov once quipped. “If necessary, I will shoot them myself.”) The punishment for public dissent became torture by the SNB, Uzbekistan’s feared secret police. Among the more popular methods of extracting confessions, according to a report commissioned by the British embassy: Boiling dissidents alive. Aside from being the most sterile form of torture, it may also be one of the most effective; in the election of 2000, Karimov increased his margin of victory to 92 percent of the vote. In fact, during debates on the state-run television network, Karimov’s opponent (wisely) admitted that he, too, would be voting for the incumbent. None of this has hampered relations with the United States, which considers Uzbekistan a major partner in the global war on terror due to its proximity to Afghanistan.
5) King Taufa’ahau Tupou IV
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Country: Tonga
Age: 86
In Power Since: 1965
Country’s Natural Resource: Tourist-friendly beaches
Expected U.S. Invasion: Late 22nd Century
Greatest Hits: Tonga may be a tiny South Pacific island, but it has one of the biggest leaders, the over 450-pound King Taufa’ahau IV. While this king rules over one of the last remaining feudal systems in the world (regional lords still require serfs to provide food for their frequent feasts), Tonga does retain a few elements of modern society, like a free press (Well, sort-of free: The Times of Tonga was banned in 2003 and is now printed in New Zealand before being snuck over the border) and a supreme court (Well, sort-of supreme: Decisions of the court are routinely vacated, if not ignored, by the king). And unlike most dictators, this one actually foresees a day that he is out of power; Crown Prince Tupouto’a, the aging ruler’s playboy son, is being groomed for a takeover. Unfortunately, the 56-year-old Tupouto’a is reported to be more interested in videogames and playing with toy soldiers.
6) Kirsan Ilyumzhinov
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Country: Republic of Kalmykia
Age: 44
In Power Since: 1993
Country’s Natural Resource: Oil, natural gas, caviar
Expected U.S. Invasion: Imminent
Greatest Hits: While Ilyumzhinov may be the president of his own Russian republic, he’s much more consumed with his other job: President of the World Chess Federation. The eccentric ruler spent millions on a lavish chess-competition complex for a 1998 chess convention that was held only days after the mysterious murder of opposition newspaper editor Larisa Yudina. Today, the crumbling building sits nearly abandoned, but is sometimes used as a practice facility for the players on Ilyumzhinov’s football team, whose annual budget is three times that of the entire state’s education budget. But Ilyumzhinov is nothing if not a free spender. After a visit from the Pope in 1993, Ilyumzhinov spent millions building a Catholic church – despite the existence of only a single Catholic citizen in the heavily Buddhist Kalmykia.
7) Than Shwe
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Country: Myanmar (a.k.a. Burma)
Age: 72
In Power Since: 1988
Country’s Natural Resource: Natural gas, timber, coal
Expected U.S. Invasion: Summer 2007
Greatest Hits: Unlike other despots, Than Shwe likes to stay out of the public eye. The introvert is an enigma to most of his subjects, preferring to rule by written decrees which are carried out by his vast network of secret police, security forces, military officers and personal henchmen. These forces, which slaughtered over 3,000 pro-democracy student demonstrators during Shwe’s coup d’etat, are the real power in Burma. Anyone suspected of disloyalty is subject to any number of heinous repercussions, not the least of which is the infamous knock-on-the-door-in-the-middle-of-the-night. In 2003, human rights group FreedomHouse.org estimated that over 2,000,000 citizens had been forcibly removed from their homes after nighttime visits by Shwe’s State Law and Order Restoration Council. As criticism from other countries has grown in volume, Shwe has been quick to respond. He recently renamed the state security forces the State Peace and Development Council. Now that’s progress.
8) Teodoro Obiang Nguema
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Country: Equatorial Guinea
Age: 61
In Power Since: 1979
Country’s Natural Resource: Oil
Expected U.S. Invasion: August 2005
Greatest Hits: In the decade since oil was discovered there, Equatorial Guinea has been the recipient of billions of dollars in foreign investment. So why is a country with a reported per capita income of $5,300 home to a population that subsists on less than $1 a day? If you guessed “power hungry dictator,” you’d be correct. Most of the funds spent in this tiny West African country go directly to Nguema, who is hailed by state-sponsored radio (there are no newspapers) as “the god of Equitorial Guinea who can decide to kill without having to give anyone an account.” Nguema was recently re-elected to a fourth seven-year term with a whopping 100% of the vote. The highly-decorated military commander denied that a policy which required voters to show their ballots to officials before dropping them in the box had anything to do with his margin of victory. Citizens of the capital city of Malabo are always aware when their leader is in town; when he leaves, the city shuts off electricity because “it is no longer needed.”
9) Alexander Lukashenko
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Country: Belarus
Age: 50
In Power Since: 1993
Country’s Natural Resource: Peat deposits
Expected U.S. Invasion: Spring 2019
Greatest Hits: Lukashenko, a former Communist party hack and collective farm manager, was elected president of Belarus after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Ironically, it was his anti-corruption platform (“Defeat the incumbent mafia!”) that propelled him to power. But absolute power corrupts absolutely, and soon the paranoid Lukashenko was claiming that he was under constant threat of assassination. Soon, Lukashenko was praising Hitler’s domestic policies, extending his four-year term limit to seven years and shutting down the parliament that dared to impeach him. Having recently announced the results of a fictional referendum that eliminated term limits which required a 2006 departure from office, Lukashenko has solidified his hold on power by closing media outlets he calls “opposition scum,” and removing uppity government officials, some of whom are never heard from again. On the upside, he has ordered the building of ice hockey rinks in every city as a tribute to his favorite sport.
10) Joseph Kabila
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Country: Democratic Republic of Congo (a.k.a. Zaire)
Age: 32
In Power Since: 2001
Country’s Natural Resource: Diamond mines
Expected U.S. Invasion: “After this episode of Mama’s Family is over.”
Greatest Hits: Is it fair to judge the son by the actions of the father? As son of assassinated Congo boss Laurent-Désiré Kabila, should we automatically assume that Joseph Kabila shares his old man’s taste for disposing of political enemies? Colin Powell obviously didn’t; Kabila was one of the first foreign leaders he hosted in Washington after being appointed Secretary of State. To fully illustrate the difference between father and son, we need merely look at the condition of those upstarts who took part in the two coup d’etat attempts in 2004. Does anyone know where they are, so we can see what their condition is? Kabila has also applied revolutionary ideas to his country’s problems, such as military enlistment (a growing percentage of Congo’s troops have yet to hit puberty) and economic development (180,000 citizens were recently displaced when their city became a battleground in Congo’s unending civil war). Kabila insists that he will hold elections in 2005 as part of the peace treaty in Congo’s civil war, a war he refuses to stop fighting.
