Who's next after Mubarak?

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First it was Tunisia. Then Egypt and Yemen. Algeria, Morocco, Jordan, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, North Korea, Belarus and Tajikistan could be next. The long list of autocratic regimes that could fall sends shivers down my spine, because they won't go without a fight. There will be bloodshed.

First it was Tunisia. Then Egypt and Yemen. Algeria, Morocco, Jordan, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, North Korea, Belarus and Tajikistan could be next. The long list of autocratic regimes that could fall sends shivers down my spine, because they won't go without a fight. There will be bloodshed.

Every year we see new lists of the autocrats, tyrants and dictators who will be toppled, if not today then tomorrow, or maybe in six months or a year. Regardless of the timeframe, their fate is sealed. Not all predictions come to pass, but new lists crop up every year.

TIME Magazine published the latest list of the top 10 doomed autocrats: Hosni Mubarak, Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh, North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Sudanese president Omar Hassan al-Bashir, Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe, Algerian president

Abdelaziz Bouteflika, King Abdullah and the House of Saud, Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko and Tajikistan's Emomali Rahmon.

The usual suspects

These lists of the worst of the worst always remind me of that wonderful classic "Casablanca" starring Humphrey Bogart. After the murder of a German major, the French police chief says with a sigh: "Round up the usual suspects."

There are a lot of usual suspects when it comes to authoritarian rulers, and the names vary only slightly from list to list. Which names make it onto each particular list is a matter of the expert's (if it is an expert at all) preferences and political views, as well as the political situation in these rulers' countries at the moment. But on the whole the list has changed little in the last five years.

Since all eyes are now fixed on Egypt, North Africa and the Middle East, it makes sense to focus on the leaders from this region. Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah is unlikely to suffer the same fate that awaits Hosni Mubarak and has already claimed Tunisian President Ben Ali (who fled to Saudi Arabia, incidentally). Monarchs are, by definition, autocrats. But Abdullah can take comfort in the relative prosperity of Saudi Arabia compared to Egypt or Tunisia, the prevailing attitude toward the House of Saud among his subjects, the prestige of the royal family, his brutally efficient tactics and the stability it has won. The uprising in Egypt is unlikely to spill over into Saudi Arabia. Which isn't to say that South Arabia is problem free. Its citizens lack rights and freedom but not to the same extent as in Egypt.

Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika is more likely to fall to an Islamic uprising. Several years ago, the country endured a civil war after the government invalidated the results of a general election after radical Islamic parties had won. An Islamic government would have been a huge step backward for Algeria. In North Africa, the Islamic groups that are engaged in an open war against the secular regimes are generally very strong.

Friends of America

What often gets lost in the conversation is the stunning fact that the movements waging war against these regimes allied with the United States were formed out of the mujahedin units that were set up, armed and funded by the United States during the Soviet war in Afghanistan. Al-Qaida is one such movement. While it's tempting to blame the emergence of these dictators and the radical Islamist movements that oppose them on the White House alone, the problem would never have taken on such massive proportions without the Soviet war in Afghanistan. Although the Soviet Union shares less of the blame than America, the fact remains that it takes two to tango.

It should be noted that, with the exception of Ahmadinejad, all the Muslim autocrats on TIME's top 10 are friends of America. They are not personal friends of Barack Obama, of course, but of the United States government. Now the Obama administration has to figure out how to distance the United States from these friends without causing too much damage.

President Bashir of Sudan, who has been in power since 1989, is facing problems not unlike the problems in Egypt. He is not a friend of America, at least not for now. Moreover, he is the only sitting president that has been accused of genocide. But Sudan (where the south recently voted for independence), exhausted after 40 years of civil war, is unlikely to have any energy left over for an uprising against the government.

Yemeni President Abdullah Saleh, who has ruled for 32 years, has already got the message from Egypt. He released jailed opposition figures and journalists and announced that he will step down when his current term expires in 2013. The opposition considers Saleh an American puppet. Yemen is indeed an important ally in Washington's war on terror, but this does not prevent him from maintaining contacts with Islamic radicals, including al-Qaida.

Opposition to Ahmadinejad is also growing, thanks in part to support from Washington. Iranians have grown weary of life under the ayatollahs and their nation's pariah status in the world. But he appears to be safe from a popular uprising for the time being.

Absent from TIME's list is Pakistan, the lynchpin of America's war in Afghanistan. The government in Pakistan is the most likely candidate to fall next. The northwest of the country is controlled by Islamic radicals and the Taliban, which was also armed and funded by the U.S. government. The Pakistani government is much more likely to be overthrown than Alexander Lukashenko in Belarus, for example. Pakistan lived for years under the brutal military dictatorship of President Pervez Musharraf, a special friend of the White House.

So the list of regimes in line after Egypt is not so long, and most of those left standing in it are American allies.

The views expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.

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