The moral of Gaddafi: Old dictators can run, but they cannot hide

What happened to the golden parachute for dictators on the run? The villa in France. Or  at least the top two floors of the Novotel Hotel in Jeddah. As Reed Brody, the Special Counsel for Prosecutions at Human Rights Watch once sardonically observed , “If you kill one person, you go to jail; if you kill 20, you go to an institution for the insane; if you kill 20,000 you get political asylum.” In the worst case, they were assassinated – or exploded mid-air in an airplane “accident”— which at least has more dignity than death in a drain. [caption id=“attachment_113592” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Muammar Gaddafi . AFP”] [/caption] But now those happy days are gone: the old-style dictators can run but cannot hide. Even if they bury themselves in a drainpipe or a hole in the ground like Saddam Hussein. The ignominy of Gaddafi’s end, the pathetic last cry of “the dean of Arab leaders, the king of kings of Africa” (“Don’t shoot!”), his blood-soaked face splashed across the front pages this morning: These are testimonials to the eternal fickleness of power and the human frailty of strongmen who cling to it. But they also signal a changing world order. Gaddafi’s death by no mean marks the end of dictatorship as a form of government. They still flourish all over the world, sometimes with the window-dressing of a stage-managed democracy. And there is no telling what or who will eventually replace decades of strongman rule in Libya. As a cynical chain SMS going around quips “To provide stability, US will now divide Libya into 3 parts – premium, unleaded and diesel.” But this much is true. The aura of immunity that once surrounded seemingly invincible dictators of yore is fast eroding.  Fallen tyrants can no longer rely on patrons and friends to arrange for a quiet retirement, safe from prosecution or punishment. One reason for this fall from grace is the end of the Cold War. Despots like Mobutu Sese Seko of the Congo was sure that the West would not forsake him, even if his own country turned against him. Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines got his villa in Hawaii. The Shah of Iran hopped around from the Bahamas to Panama to gallstone surgery in the US before finding refuge in Egypt. Mobutu had already been hailed as a “voice of good sense and goodwill” by Ronald Reagan. But the Cold War ended and the West had moved on because the odds of realpolitik had shifted. “I am the latest victim of the Cold War, no longer needed by the US,” Mobutu said bitterly when the US started pressuring him to democratise. “The lesson is that my support for American policy counts for nothing.” Mobutu was still lucky. He managed to scramble together some kind of dignity in exile in Togo before dying of cancer in Morocco. All dictators, be it Saddam Hussein or Idi Amin, inevitably succumb to the vagaries of fortune. The real lesson of Gaddafi’s fall is that they no longer can rely on a lifetime warranty of protection from anyone. Few countries want to incur the diplomatic cost of harbouring war criminals. Idi Amin was able to live out his exile in Saudi Arabia with half a dozen of his 30-oldd children, often spotted pushing his card along the frozen food section of the supermarket, and getting massaged at the local spa. Ironically at one time Libya gave refuge to Dada Amin as well. But in these days of the Arab Spring, even Riyadh might think twice about sheltering an unpopular despot. As long as South Africa existed as a sort of well-heeled pariah, it was a good travel destination for an out-of-favour ruler looking to buy a one-way ticket to some cushy post-dictatorial retirement home. Marc Ravalomanana of Madagascar has tasted South African hospitality in the past. But more recently, Sudanese president Omar al Bashir, with an International Criminal Court indictment out on his name, decided not to touch down in Johannesburg in case he was arrested. The choice of safe havens is shrinking fast. Perhaps North Korea. But King Jong-Il  just wants to live in splendid isolation. Zimbabwe. “Mugabe is a practiced host to fellow autocrats,” writes Alex Perry on GlobalSpin . “Harare is already home to former Ethiopian dictator Mengistu Haile Miriam.” But Mugabe is 86 and a change in government could be risky business for a former dictator who depends on the kindness of strangers. And as Tunisia’s Ben Ali found out even Saudi Arabia cannot guarantee the immunity of the Idi Amin days. The new government in Tunisia is demanding his extradition. European countries have frozen his assets. The International Criminal Court, founded by the Rome Statute to “bring to justice the perpetrators of  the worst crimes known to humankind – war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide” is still relatively toothless. It’s hamstrung by the fact that countries like the United States have not ratified it, and countries like India and China have not signed or ratified the Rome Statute. But at least international law has demonstrated that it has, if nothing else, a long memory. And that denies grumpy old dictators a sunny exile. Pinochet’s age and eventual death saved him from the unraveling of his own immunity. Slovodan Milosevic’s heart attack ended the case against him in the Hague. Hosni Mubarak, the iron man of Egypt, was wheeled into a defendant’s cage in an Egyptian courtroom on a hospital gurney. And of course who can forget that unforgettable image of Saddam Hussein, unshaven, old, weary, looking like a street bum as he emerged from his underground bunker?. His capture and then his execution must have weighed on Gaddafi’s mind even as he blustered about fighting to the last drop of his blood. As he broke that siege in desperation, he knew he had nowhere to go but down: Into the sewers. Take our quiz on dictators: