According to Transparency International’s latest report, Sudan, Libya, Iraq, Syria and Yemen are among the world’s most corrupt countries, beaten only by Somalia, North Korea and Afghanistan.
“Corruption saps social and economic growth and exacerbates poverty in a country, leading to a vicious circle that sustains these conditions and lays the foundations for tyranny and oppression,” said the London-based daily Al Quds Al Arabi in its editorial on yesterday.
Citizens of the most corrupt countries in the world are the poorest. Their poverty is the outcome of corruption and also a key factor to its continuity since it thrives on the fortunate minority who manipulate factors of economy and politics in their favour.
If left unbridled, this minority begins to see its privileges as a divine power raises them above other humans.
Those holding the reins of power see themselves as members of a ruling club and they don’t hesitate to mobilise entire nations to its service. The government morphs from attending to citizens’ interests to being a private farm manipulated by the father, the wife, the son and their posse.
The most corrupt countries in the world have in common their decades-long submission to a totalitarian ideological regime akin to a military robot headed by an individual who controls every single detail and eliminates any opposition, and hence any possibility of change.
A case in point: Kim Jong Un, the son of the former leader Kim Jong-il and grandson of Kim Il-sung of North Korea, who fascinated the former Syrian president Hafez Al Assad to the point that he decided to follow in their footsteps and hand down the torch to his son. “The corruption and tyranny machine devours anyone in its way, up to those near and dear to the great dictator,” the paper noted.
There were reports this week that the uncle of North Korea’s dictator was removed from office and some officials affiliated with him were executed.
The news brings to mind similar incidents in Iraq under Saddam Hussein and Syria under Bashar Al Assad, who went as far as liquidate their own sons-in-law and brother-in-law respectively.
Corruption sentences its victim countries to devastation. It stands in the way of change and sows the seeds of future failure. With the death, assassination or imprisonment of the tyrant, the demons of tyranny and oppression break loose, pulling the country into a fight for its life.
“Tyrants share similar characteristics and their countries meet identical fates, swinging between strict centralisation and total chaos when faced with their people’s revolutions. This pleases the tyrants and their aides who gloat that ‘dictatorship is way better’, all the while forgetting that it was precisely dictatorship and corruption that led to the mess in the first place,” the paper concluded.
US has to recalibrate its Middle East stance
Washington’s dismay with the new protest law in Egypt, in addition to being blatant interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign state, is both risible and condemnable, opined the columnist Mohammed Obeid in the Sharjah-based daily Al Khaleej.
Washington slammed the law for “inconsistency with international criteria” and asked Cairo not to restrict peaceful protests.
“One wonders whether Washington sees itself as the sentinel of values, principles and morals and whether it holds exclusive rights about determining international principles that regulate rights and freedoms,” he said.
The US attitude has gone beyond reason. Washington is now contradicting itself and is lost in double standards when it deals with Middle East issues. It cites human rights in reaction to a law that was stipulated by a sovereign state; meanwhile, it dares not utter one word of condemnation to Israel’s deliberate sabotage of a peace process it is overseeing.
“Washington has broken all international standards with its blind bias in favour of Israel. It is overlooking all the values and treaties known to man in order to protect war criminals from condemnation,” he added.
The international criteria that the US administration is trying to instil in Egypt serves its interests and the objectives of its allies – including historic enemies of Egypt and its people – and is but a new formula to break into the Egyptian scene.
UN accusation puts Assad in the frame
With the death toll in Syria’s continuing civil war exceeding 125,000, a United Nations inquiry rhas found “massive evidence” that president Bashar Al Assad is indeed implicated in war crimes.
In comment, the columnist Mazen Hammad wrote in the Qatari daily Al Watan: “The official UN accusation to Al Assad reshuffles war cards and casts doubts on the future of the second Geneva conference on Syria slated for January 22.”
The probable scenario at present is that Damascus will withdraw from the conference and Moscow, its primary ally, will veto any bill that pushes for Mr Al Assad’s prosecution, Hammad said.
For the first time in three years, the international organisation has explicitly accused the Syrian president of ordering fatal attacks on his people.
Although Damascus was fast to deny the accusation and tried to undermine the report’s findings, the rest of the world is taking the matter seriously.
Efforts to destroy the Syrian regime’s chemical arsenal must not deflect the world’s attention away from the regime’s conventional weapons, which have been responsible for the majority of fatalities since the war erupted in Syria, the writer said.
* Digest compiled by The Translation Desk
translation@thenational.ae