Manuel Noriega dies - A nasty puppet

The former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega died on Monday.

He was a notorious, brutal warlord who was as comfortable working with Central America’s drug lords such as Pablo Escobar as he was working with America’s intelligence agency, the CIA.

Indeed, his despotism depended on support — money, arms and manpower — from both extremes of the spectrum. He was so corrupt, so dangerous, that the American ringmasters who supported him before his excesses made their position untenable must wish that the memory of their relationship dies with him. That is unlikely.

Noriega, as well as spying for the CIA, ruled Panama from 1983 to 1989 until the US invaded and toppled his corrupt government, ending his Tadhg an dá thaobh kleptocracy.

In the grand scheme of things Noriega was, unless you lived in Panama when his death squads were on the rampage, a nasty irrelevance but his death is as good a moment as any to wonder how many of today’s tyrants are kept in power by unseen puppeteers. Far more than we imagine, probably.