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hostilities, violence against and abduction of opposition candidates and their supporters, detention of opposition activists and human rights defenders, and searches and harassment of independent non-governmental organizations.' Lukashaenko has few friends. Putin's Russia is the most valued, despite fractious relations between the two countries. Kazakhstan, ruled by another ageing autocrat and one of our new found friends, recently visited by President Mahinda Rajapaksa is another. And Turkmenistan, where former Soviet autocrat, Saparmurat Niyazov, declared himself the President for life and ruled till his death is another basket case. The incumbent regime in Colombo is faced with a similar predicament. The Rajapaksa regime also has few friends, and even fewer in civilized advanced democracies. Our closest neighbour and the world's largest democracy, India, with whom we have testy relations, is the closet we have for a friend in the democratic world. East Asian democracies such as South Korea, of which the Prime Minister is now making a rare visit to the island, and Japan, have sympathies towards our predicament, but their strategic culture is such that their ultimate loyalty lies with the West. Dismantling pillars of democracy President Rajapaksa's recent visit to Minsk adds to our list of friends, yet another least salubrious nation. Our other friends such as Gaddafi in Libya perished in the Arab Spring and Ahamedinejad in Iran was succeeded by a much more outward looking Hassan Rouhani, a liberal mullah, who happens to hold a doctorate from the Glasgow University. Pakistan and China are our tested allies, but they are not exactly democracies. The Liberal west views the Rajapaksa regime with jaundiced eyes as the incumbent regime gradually dismantles the pillars of one of oldest democracies in Asia. In terms of international relations, allies of a nation constitute a lion share of its comprehensive powers and the countries that are wooed by another, maybe proof, partly of its soft power. Our new found friends, ranging from Sudan (of which the President is wanted by the International Criminal Court) to Belarus, do not add up our clout; instead, they suck up whatever little is left of our legitimacy as a respected member of the international community. Unlike China, which is a strategic partner with deep pockets, those new found friends from Uganda to Kazakhstan to Belarus, offer little economic incentives for deepening bilateral relationships. (Uganda may at least have modernizing autocrat in Yoweri Museveni. But, much of the recent international friends of the regime are characterized by crass despotism.) The incumbent regime's increasing thaw with the authoritarian regimes is an act of desperation. But, it is also a pointer to our growing international isolation. The interlocutors of the regime would prefer to call it 'the look east policy,' borrowing from Mahathir Mohammed. But, Mahathir did not cuddle with outcasts in Belarus and Sudan. There is hardly any reason for Mahinda Rajapaksa to do that either.