Last year, more people throughout the world chose their leaders through the electoral process than at any previous time in history.
Voting democratically and subsequent peaceful transition of governments are increasingly the avenues through which nations govern themselves. With the fall of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, this trend continues and dictatorships seem likely to be relegated to the dustbin of history.
Or will it? For all the democratic gains, tyranny still hangs on stubbornly-in Communist China, North Korea, Vietnam, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Cuba, and elsewhere.
In the Western Hemisphere, Castro recently celebrated his 44th year as maximum leader of Cuba, while Castro wannabe Hugo Chavez survived a coup attempt and continues to dismantle Venezuela's democratic structure.
Recognizing that the brutal legacy of modern tyrants is far from extinct, Italian journalist Riccardo Orizio introduces us to nine of the grisliest, most heavy-handed strongmen that modern history has known in Talk of the Devil.
Using back-channels and clandestine means, the former CNN correspondent secured interviews with a rogue's gallery of exiled dictators:
One finds from Orizio's chronicles that none of his dark figures is particularly charismatic. Some are, he writes, "sane and insane at one and the same time." Amin, for example, volunteers that he was a "reluctant" cannibal who found human flesh too salty. Of his reign (1971-79), in which an estimated 300,000 Ugandans were killed or disappeared (a former foreign minister who fell out of favor with Amin was fed to crocodiles), he expresses only "nostalgia."
Do any of the ex-strongmen have something noteworthy to say and add anything substantive to history? Certainly. The Milosevics offer Orizio a "sneak preview" of what their defense will be at the Hague-that, as Marcovic puts it, "Serbia was the first victim of terrorism. Therefore we were the first to fight terrorism and the Islamic extremists. . . . Bill Clinton and his administration backed the terrorism of the Albanian separatists in Kosovo."
Similarly, the near-forgotten Jaruzelski-now 78, out of uniform, but still wearing his signature dark glasses-still defends the imposition of martial law during his premiership in 1981. "If I had not acted and opted for the lesser of two evils," he says of the actions that brought Lech Walsea and Solidarity to the fore, "Warsaw could have become another Budapest 1956, with more Soviet tanks on the streets of a European capital."
(The former Polish strongman, we learn, remains in friendly contact with Mikhail Gorbachev, the reformer who presided over the demise of the Soviet Empire; both are extremely bitter about the lack of appreciation shown by their respective peoples and, as their two deeply religious nations celebrate Christmas, the last two representatives of Bolshevik-style Socialism "remain staunchly atheist and make a point of concerning themselves only with the secular festivity.")
While Communism may be disgraced, Orizio points out, it still has its undying adherents. Ethiopia's Mengistu, for example, loathes Gorbachev ("Hypocrite!") for abandoning worldwide Marxist revolution. Albania's Hoxha-even behind bars, a still-feared figure whose very presence forces a government spokeswoman accompanying the author into stunned silence-defiantly believes "Marxism was right." Released from her Tirana cell after five years, the "Black Widow" argues that "Albania is on the wrong road" under a free market system.
For whatever historical value comes from the reminiscences of these notorious has-beens, Orizio's powerfully-written work is important reading for the student of world affairs because the notorious have a way of coming back. Peron of Argentina and Banzer of Bolivia, for example, returned to power years after being toppled.
Only last week, the pro-U.S. president of El Salvador voiced his worry that the Marxist FMLN might return to power through the ballot box this year.
(If any of Devil's subjects are candidates for comeback kids, it is Duvalier-his life in order thanks to a strong-willed girlfriend, admitting errors in his past, and in touch with a worldwide Haitian exile network as the regime of President Aristide grows more vicious and "Baby Doc" looks good by comparison).
Unaware if we can forgive the former tyrants, the author concludes "we can only study them. And perhaps the exercise will help us reach a greater understanding of ourselves."
