Authoritarian leaders and their grip on power

The protesters who have drawn the attention of the world to Cairo's Tahrir Square have been focusing much of their anger on Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and the authoritarian state he has led for three decades.

His tight grip on power, however, is hardly unique. Autocrats from North Korea to Zimbabwe, or Equatorial Guinea to Turkmenistan, lead regimes that human rights advocates decry for their lack of democracy and their treatment of citizens.

And in some places, there's no sense that democracy is improving.

In the Economist Intelligence Unit's Democracy Index 2010, it says: "the dominant pattern in all regions over the past two years has been backsliding on previously attained progress in democratization."

Of the 167 countries considered in the index, Egypt ranked 138th. At the bottom of the list was North Korea.

Here is a look at some of the authoritarian leaders in countries that fall in the bottom half of the index.