The Pakistani military leader is placed at No 17, with the pack being led by Omar al-Bashir of Sudan, who was No 1 last year as well. He is followed by Kim Jong-il of North Korea who is “credited” with running the world’s “most tightly controlled society”. Than Shwe of Myanmar takes the third position, with the fourth going to Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe and the fifth to Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan. The rest of the places in the order in which they have been awarded go to Hu Jintao of China, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, Saparmurat Niyazov of Turkmenistan, Syed Al Khamenei of Iran, Teodoro Obiang Nguema of Equatorial Guinea, Muammar al-Qaddafi of Libya, King Mswati III of Swaziland, Isayas Afewerki of Eritrea, Aleksandr Lukashenko of Belarus, Fidel Castro of Cuba, Bashar al-Assad of Syria, Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan, Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia, Boungnang Vorachith of Laos, and Tran Duc Luong of Vietnam. The oldest on the list is King Abdullah at 82 and the youngest King Mswati III of Swaziland at 37. khalid hasan