Arab Dictators - Totalitarian Whisky

Because of its position as a status symbol, whisky holds a strange but special place for dictators and totalitarians. Johnnie Walker is one of the most accessible whiskies in some of the most inaccessible places in the world.

Whisky is the favourite drink of the late Yasser Arafat of the Palestinian authority. Saddam Hussein, also known as the butcher of Baghdad, had a fondness for whisky and cigars despite praying and reading the Koran. Colonel Gaddafi’s favourite tipple was the old Johnnie Walk, when he was not being toppled.



The leaked cables by wiki-leaks expressed King Saleh Abdullah of Saudi Arabia as have having concerns about drugs and weapons smuggled from nearby Djibouti. Then he was joking that he is not concerned about whisky being brought into the Islamic republic, “provided it’s good whisky.”