In 2010, Syria was ranked 111 out of 169 countries on the Human Development Index, just behind South Africa. But there's more to the life of a country than the maintenance of a solidly lower middle-income economic baseline. There's more to it than even peace and stability. Since 1970, dictator Hafez al-Assad and his son and successor, Bashar al-Assad, have turned Syria into one of the world's most thorough police states.