The obits for North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il are filled with details about his weird personal habits and his country’s nukes, but the history books will reveal him as one of the great mass murderers of our times.

One of my most chilling journalistic experiences – in 2004 in South Korea - was interviewing a handful of North Koreans who had managed to escape to Seoul, and listening to the horrors they’d endured in their home country. Only a few thousand North Koreans have made it out, and they bear witness to the terrible suffering that Kim, and his father Kim Il Sung, inflicted on the North Korean population. Their crimes are on a par with the autogenocide conducted by Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge.

Much of the world knows that more than one million North Koreans perished of starvation in the last decade due to the regime’s bizarre economic policies. But, because the  North Korean regime seals its own people off from the outside world, and permits only a few carefully controlled visitors in,  Americans are less aware of North Korea’s death camps. They still reputedly hold 200,000 political prisoners, including many Christians.

The “lucky” prisoners are sentenced to reeducation, which means they may someday be released if they survive years of hard labor and torture. But many political prisoners are sentenced to life at hard labor. Their whole families are deported to the camps, including children and grandparents.  Food rations are minimal, and death by starvation is common. 

On my trip to Seoul, I met one North Korean woman, whose entire family was suddenly rounded up because her military officer brother had said something that was interpreted as critical of the regime. She survived by jumping off the train that was taking the family to the camp, and making it across the river that divides North Korea from China.

But China will send refugees back if it catches them,  which means imprisonment or death.  Female escapees are often sexually abused inside China.  And those North Koreans who make it to Beijing still face immense hurdles in reaching South Korea; relatively few eventually make it to Seoul.

On that trip to Seoul, I attended a church service where North Korean refugees gathered, even those who were not Christian. Curch emissaries often travel to the North Korean border with China to help the refugees, and churches provide one of the few welcoming places where North Koreans can meet. But in talking to these exiles, I felt I was conversing with dead people walking, with men and women who had endured so much they were barely alive.

Having lived entirely regimented lives, North Koreans are often unable to fit into South Korean life. They are haunted by the certainty that their entire families back home will be punished for their escape to freedom.  And, until recently, the South Korean government – fearing a huge flood of refugees – was less than welcoming to those who made it out.

What’s so galling about this mass murder is that there are no levers to stop it.   The only country with real influence on Pyongyang is China, which is indifferent to human rights crimes. And the world is more concerned with preventing North Korea from selling its nuclear material to terrorists or rogue regimes than it is with closing death camps.  Of course, the regime baldly denies the camps exist, despite the testimony of escapees and the evidence of satellite photos.

But, as Pyongyang “celebrates” Kim’s supposed achievements, the only North Korean deaths the world should be mourning are those of his victims.  Kim Jong Il’s obituary should read “Murderer of millions of innocents”. Full stop.

Once again Pakistan has undermined its own security interests – and that of its supposed American ally – by using a bizarre scandal to force the resignation of Pakistan’s talented ambassador to Washington, Husain Haqqani.

The supposed "memogate" scandal revolves around accusations that Haqqani colluded with Pakistan-American businessman Mansoor Ijaz in drafting a memo to then Joint Chiefs Chairman Mike Mullen after the killing of Osama bin Laden. The memo supposedly offered to replace Pakistan's "military-intelligence establishment" with a team that would break off ties with radical Islamists; in return, Washington was asked to preempt a Pakistani military coup.

There are so many weird elements to this story it's impossible to take seriously. For one thing, President Asif Ali Zardari had tried once and failed miserably to gain control of the ISI, and Haqqani would hardly be likely to court another such failure.  Moreover, a coup was most unlikely after the bin Laden episode, which left the Pakistani military weakened. And if Haqqani wanted to deliver a message to Mullen, he didn't need to use an unreliable cutout such as Ijaz.

Haqqani adamantly denies any connection with the memo. "I was not involved in doing this.  This is a setup of gigantic proportions," he told me by phone before leaving for Islamabad.

Moreover, the memo was so "completely non-credible" that it "made no impact on Chairman Mullen," says his former communications chief , Capt. John Kirby. "It wasn’t signed. It was a weird single page with no date, and not on letterhead."

Haqqani is known for opposing the Pakistani ISI intelligence agency's links to Islamist militants (and wrote the best book on the subject). This is a prime reason the military long sought to dump him.  

But the savvy, well-connected diplomat was the best emissary Pakistan could have had in Washington. At a time when U.S.-Pakistani relations are frayed to the point of breaking, only someone like Haqqani could make the case for continuing to send U.S. aid to Islamabad.

The biggest loser from Haqqani’s resignation is the Pakistani government – and its military. "I have much to contribute to building a new Pakistan free of bigotry & intolerance. Will focus energies on that," Haqqani tweeted to U.S. media.Amen.

The first free Egyptian election season will get seriously underway only after the feast of Eid Al Adha on Nov. 6-8.  Voting will begin on Nov. 28 and continue through February, in three phases.  Islamist parties are favored to get a plurality.

I spoke about the elections to residents of the Imbaba district – known for it political activism – as they shopped for the feast.  The Imbaba marketplace was a cacophony of food and clothing stalls, butchers selling whole skinned lambs for the feats, with motorbikes and minicabs weaving precariously through the stalls and the crowd.

Many shoppers said they didn’t know who their candidates are – the election regulations are quite confusing and, except for the well-organized Muslim Brotherhood – most parties have yet to get their message out.

Most people said they would vote, but the overwhelming message was that they would choose the best local candidate irrespective of what party he/she came from.

In this conservative district there is no fear of the Muslim Brotherhood, which has long done charity work on the ground.  Some shoppers said they would vote for Salafis because they were “good religious people.” When I noted that some Salafis had burned churches, the reply was that “those are fanatics, not normal Salafis.”

I left  convinced that Islamists would do well here, not because the locals were extremists, but because the Islamist brand is well known and other parties have yet to get their message out.

One of the most unsettling developments of Egypt’s Arab Spring has been the surge of activity by ultraconservative Salafist Muslims, who used to denounce conventional politics.

Salafism is a puritanical form of Sunni Islam that aims to emulate the faith as it was practiced during the Prophet Muhammad's time.  Unlike the Muslim Brotherhood, which has long tried to engage in politics, when it was not being repressed by past Egyptian governments, the Salafis concentrated on preaching and social work.  Some veered into violence.

But today – in the midst of Egypt’s open political season – Salafis have formed two political parties, and a Salafi, Hazem Saleh Abu Ismail, is running for president.

Salafis are a wild card in the elections, with some predicting they could win ten per cent of the votes. They don’t speak with one voice: Some preach hatred of Christians on well-funded satellite channels,  some have attacked Christians and burned churches, while others denounce such actions.  Although they deny it, Salafi groups are rumored to receive substantial funds from Saudi Arabia.  

There is no question these fundamentalists want to push for an Islamic state and to change Egypt’s conservative but tolerant culture: Abu Ismail says if he were president all women would have to veil.  Recently, at a Salafi rally in Alexandria, a statue of Zeus surrounded by mermaids was covered up because it was considered indecent.

Yet some Salafis insist they are misunderstood.  I interviewed Mohammed Nour, the spokesman for the Nour (light)  Party, who runs a multi-media production company that makes films and apps for I-phones.  He wore a suit with a striped shirt, and his office sported orange couches with chrome armrests, and a office secretary with in a headscarf  and long skirt but face uncovered. “The image in the media of salafis with long robes is not necessarily true,” he told me in an obvious charm offensive.

 But when I asked why Salafis were entering politics, he responded, “We’re always going to believe the Islamic way of life is better than democracy.  But all Egyptians believe change can happen through these elections, so we should all present ourselves.”

So it is an open question whether - as some Egyptians hope - Salafis will be tamed by participation in poltics, or whether they see democracy as a means towards an undemocratic end.

 Salafi parties and groups originally allied with the Muslim Brotherhood, but – resentful of the Brotherhood’s superior organization – they later formed their own alliance of fundamentalist candidates. One big question in the upcoming elections is whether they will emerge from the election with a key bloc of seats that, if joined with the Brotherhood, would give Islamists a majority in parliament.  That would give them latitude to press the more cautious Brotherhood to adopt more hardline views.

Cairo, Egypt. Even as it continues to kill protesters, Syria accepted an Arab League plan today that calls on Damascus to end the fighting, and start talking to the Syrian opposition.

The plan requires Syria to implement an immediate ceasefire, withdraw its military forces from all cities; release thousands of opposition detainees and permit Arab media and independent observers to enter the country. If these conditions are met, the plan calls for a dialogue to begin within two weeks, at the Arab League headquarters in Cairo, between Syrian officials and Syrian opposition leaders, including those inside the country and the recently formed Syrian National Council of leaders-in-exile.

Syria initially resisted the Cairo venue, but Arab League officials insisted that a neutral location was required. I asked Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, who was in Cairo for Wednesday’s Arab League meeting, whether he thought the Syrians were serious.

 Zebari, who helped persuade the Syrians to sign on, admits that “many believe the Syrians are buying time to relieve the pressures on them.” He says that Syrian leaders “are banking that the opposition will reject the plan,” but external Syrian opposition leaders are not rejecting it outright. Instead they are waiting to see if Syria implements a ceasefire.

The Saudis, and other Arab Gulf countries “don’t have much faith in Syria’s promises,” Zebari said. “This is the last opportunity” for Damascus, he added. “Two weeks from today is the deadline.”

The Arab League took action to stop the Syrian bloodletting as it became clear that the international community was unlikely to do so, especially after Russia and China vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution harshly critical of Damascus.

Arab leaders are tremendously nervous about an all out Syrian civil war that would pit majority Sunnis against Syria’s Alawite (Shiite) leadership, and reignite sectarian conflicts around the region.  Iraq is especially worried.  Syria is a close ally of Iran, and if its president falls, the Iranians may focus more intently on exerting influence inside Iraq.

If Syria reneges on the Arab League plan, more pressure is likely to be applied by neighboring Turkey. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is said to be incensed by the behavior of Syrian President Bashar al Assad, who rebuffed extensive Turkish mediation efforts. Turkish officials believe the Syrian regime can’t be reformed, and Ankara is already permitting defecting Syrian army officers to find shelter across the border in Turkey.

Zebari says that, if Syria rebuffs the Arab league, Turkey is likely to “impose many sanctions”, including restrictions on trade and free movement across the Syrian-Turkish border; both have become essential to the Syrian economy.

Rumors are swirling here about stepped up Saudi financing for Syrian rebels and the possibility that opposition activists could receive military training in Turkey, perhaps leading ultimately to another NATO no-fly zone over parts of Syria. So far NATO has squelched such ideas, nor is there any Western appetite for another Mideast military adventure.

What is clear is that, as Zebari said, this is probably Assad’s last chance to avoid a far bloodier civil war that will eventually do him in.

Cairo. Egypt. Nine months after the Tahrir Square revolution that over threw President Hosni Mubarak, the mood in Egypt is glum.

I’ve just come from Tunisia where  Sundays elections – the first of the Arab Spring – were marked by the high turnout and excellent organization. In contrast, Egyptians are confused and uncertain about how their upcoming elections will work. 

With dozens of party lists and huge number of independent candidates, no one is quite certain how the voting will work, when the first round starts in late November.  Nor do Egyptian authorities appear anywhere near as organized as the Tunisians were. Meantime the economy, and tourism, are in the tank. Egyptians in every line of work – who are eager to seize their freedom – are striking for benefits the country cannot afford to pay.

A couple of things are certain.  The biggest winner – sure to take a plurality – is the Freedom and Justice party, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood.  Another smaller chunk of votes will be picked up by salafist parties, comprised of hardline Islamic fundamentalists who have turned from violence to elections.

The Muslim Brotherhood has large amounts of money – they just built a huge new headquarters in Cairo that is rumored to have cost ten million dollars.  Stories abound of huge donations from rich Saudis or Gulf Arabs, who are also believed to be bankrolling the salafists. The latter have enough cash to set up satellite TV stations populated with radical clerics who have been known to broadcast hateful propaganda against Egypt’s Coptic Christians.

Most Egyptians believe another block of seats will be won by backers of Mubarak’s old NDP party, who will come back as independents or under a new party name.

Lurking in the background, the military is still the main power in the country, and many Egyptians believe they are in cahoots with the Islamists and former NDP members, because they know these people and think they can control them.

Meantime, liberal and social democratic parties have fragmented and so failed to united into a grand alliance that could offset the Islamists. Nor have they been able to raise sufficient funds to get their message out; most liberal businessmen are afraid to contribute from fear that they will alienate the military who might harm their businesses in retaliation.

Bottom line:  Egypt’s first election post-revolution is likely to be dominated by conservative Islamists, but may be so fragmented as to be unable to govern.  Optomists here say it will take five years for the population to grasp the culture and mechanics of democracy.  Pessimists fear that five more years of chaos may send the country lurching towards fundamentalist Islam or economic collapse.

I will be talking to many Egyptians next week in an effort to decide where I stand on the optimist-pessimist pole.

Jacob “Gilles” Lellouche runs the only Jewish restaurant in Tunis, named after his mother, “Mamie Lily.”  Most of the customers are Muslims, or tourists, and the menu contains a variety of couscous and tajines, with just a little extra special touch from Lily’s kitchen.  The dining room is cozy and adorned with family photos, including a large wedding photo of his mother and father. There are tables outside in a leafy walled courtyard.

Like so many of Tunisia’s dwindling Jewish community, Lellouche lived in France for decades,  studied, married and had children there.  But his parents never left Tunis and when Lucy was widowed, Jacob came back home. “I had to. I had a Jewish mother,” he explained, laughing.

As 85-year-old Lily,  dressed in blue with a string of pearls, napped in a chair in the entry room, Jacob told me she had risen at 6 a.m. to be first in the queue at her polling place. “I waited for 85 years,” she had said. “I have an appointment with democracy.” 

Jacob too has a strong interest in the election; he ran as a candidate in his district, the only Jewish candidate in Tunisia.  Before World War II, Jews made up 20 % of the Tunisian population, he said, but they now number only 1400 or so out of a population of 14 million.

Jacob can trace his father’s family back to the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem, after which they fled to Spain, leaving in 1492 for Salonika and moving to North Africa in 1550.

Jacob feels deeply Tunisian and agreed to serve on an independent list “to break the taboo that days minorities in Tunisia don’t do anything in political life.”  At this writing, I don’t know yet whether he won a seat.

Writing about Tunisia’s spectacular elections involves a tussle between hope and the cynicism that comes from having long covered the Middle East.

The elections themselves were more impressive than I could have imagined, with enormous queues waiting for hours.  I had seen similar lines and inked thumbs in Iraq in 2005. But there many Shiites joined the line because they were instructed to do so by Shiite Grand Ayatollah Sistani, and came after much terrible violence and a top down imposition of democracy. 

In Tunisia, from what I could see, the urge to vote was an expression of joy at the peaceful, bottom-up revolt that toppled a dictator. But here’s where the hope vs. cynicism factor kicks in.

 The party with the most votes – a hefty plurality at this point – is an Islamist group called Ennadha, which as I wrote today in my column, is far more moderate than any other Islamist group in the region.  In my interviews with Ennadha’s two top leaders, Rashid Ghannouchi and Hemadi Jebali, it was hard not to be impressed by their claim that Islamic values and democratic politics could mesh, and their insistence that they respected a pluralist political system and women’s rights.

However, there is plenty of evidence that sections of Ennahda’s rank and file are more hardline that these two leaders, and conflicting evidence as to whether they’re ready to reject hardline salafi Islamists who use violence. (Both men told me they reject the use of violence by anyone, salafi or not, but they haven’t really made a strong public stand against recent salafi attacks on a TV station and its owner).

Moreover, it’s hard to check the claims by many secular Tunisians that Ghannouchi uses a double standard, saying one thing to a Western audience and another to Arab audiences.  I queried him on one such claim, that he had called for the restoration of the Arab caliphate in a speech in Cairo, even though he told me that he believes religious and political institutions must be separate in a modern state.  

He denied making any such statement, and told me he had spoke of modern forms of Muslim unity such as the Arab Mahgreb Union of North African countries.  And I’ve yet to pin down any verifiable report of this claim.  Yet the claims of doublespeak were repeatedly raised by worried secular Tunisians.

I have seen too many Islamist parties in the Mideast, not to worry that even good intentions can be waylaid by the primal urge by such parties to instill “Islamic values.”

Ghannuchi and Jebali are impressive, and if they mean what they say, they deserve strong support from the West.   But their spoken intentions have yet to be tested. And many of their youthful followers may have a far less sophisticated understanding of moderate Islam, believing that a resounding  victory means the winner can impose his views.        

In between political interviews I stopped at the American cemetery in Tunis. Surrounded by trees, it contains the graves of more than 2,800 men and 22 women who died in the North African campaign of WW II. I was the only one there.

By chance I came across the grave of Pvt Celia Goldberg, a member of the Women's Army Corps who died aboard ship in Feb. 1944.

I could not stop thinking about this young woman, brave enough to enlist and buried so far from home in this lonely, beautiful place near the sea.