Foreign Policy Magazine Lists the World's Worst Dictators

This article in Foreign Policy (one of those periodicals that all Global Citizens should peruse regularly) makes for some very interesting if discouraging reading. In it, George Ayittey, head of the Free Africa Foundation, compiles a list of the 23 worst dictators in the world today. The article can speak for itself, but the list itself is as follows:

1. Kim Jong Il of North Korea
2. Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe
3. Than Shwe of Burma
4. Omar al-Bashir of Sudan
5. Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov of Turkmenistan
6. Isaias Afwerki of Eritera
7. Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan
8. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran
9. Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia
10. Hu Jintao of China
11. Muammar Al-Qaddafi of Libya
12. Bashar Al-Assad of Syria
13. Idriss Deby of Chad
14. Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea
15. Hosni Mubarak of Egypt
16. Yahya Jammeh of Gambia
17. Hugo Chavez of Venezeula
18. Blaise Compaore of Burkina Faso
19. Yoweri Museveni of Uganada
20. Paul Kagame of Rwanda
21. Raul Castro of Cuba
22. Aleksandr Lukashenko of Belarus
23. Paul Biya of Cameroon

In China, Burma, and Iran, the individual listed as the "dictator" for this list is really just the most visible face of a larger group of oligarchs that keep the country under their thumb (the Communist Party in China, the military junta in Burma, and the mullahs of Iran). This doesn't at all diminish the point that Ayittey is making in his article, but it is worth keeping in mind.