A list released on Monday by the Fund for Peace (FFP), a non-governmental organisation (NGO) whose mission is to prevent war and alleviate the conditions that cause war, ranks Mugabe second after North Korea’s Kim Jong il, who tops the organisation’s 2010 chart for the world’s top 23 dictators.
The FFP blames Mugabe, the country’s sole ruler since independence from Britain in 1980, for the nation’s socio-economic and political ills as the reason for listing the former liberation war leader as a dictator.
“Mugabe has arrested and tortured the opposition, squeezed his economy into astounding negative growth and billion percent inflation, and funnelled off a juicy cut for himself using currency manipulation and offshore accounts,” the FFP noted in its report.
Mugabe’s spokesman George Charamba could not be reached for comment on the ratings.
North Korea’s leader is listed as “a personality-cult-cultivating isolationist with a taste for fine French cognac, Kim has pauperised his people, allowed famine to run rampant, and thrown hundreds of thousands in prison camps (where as many as 200 000 languish today) – all the while spending his country's precious few resources on a nuclear programme.”
In their order from third position to number 23 as the world’s worst dictators, the FFP lists Than Shwe of Burma, Omar Al Bashir of Sudan, Gurbanguly Berdimuhamed of Turkmenistan, Isaias Afwerki of Eritrea, Meles Zenawi (Ethiopia), Hu Jintao (China), Theodoro Nguema (Equatorial Guinea), Hosni Mubarak (Egypt), Yahya Jammeh (Gambia), Hugo Chavez (Venezuela), Blaise Compaore (Burkina Faso), Yoweri Museveni (Uganda), Paul Kagame (Rwanda), Raul Castro (Cuba), Aleksandra Lukashenko (Belarus) and Paul Biya of Cameroon.
The FFP also ranked Zimbabwe as one of the world’s 10 worst failed states based on factors including economy, human rights record and security.
The US-based NGO released their 2010 "Failed States Index", on Monday, ranking 177 countries to determine those most at risk of failure.
The NGO focus on indicators such as security threats, economic implosion, human rights violations and refugee flows to rank countries.
Since the index was published for the first time in 2005, the top 10 slots have rotated among just 15 countries, and FFP said it seems that state failure "is a chronic condition".
The NGO’s report comes days after the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said Zimbabweans still top the world list of asylum seekers.
A coalition government formed by Mugabe and former opposition leader and now Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai is batting to revive the country’s shattered economy.
But unending bickering between the two former foes as well as the coalition government’s inability to secure direct financial support from rich Western nations have held back its efforts to rebuild the economy. – ZimOnline
