AS AMERICAN Marines move gingerly into Monrovia, basic questions are raised about the level of America's interest and commitment in Liberia.

In January 2002, when President Bush defined the "axis of evil" as the dictatorships of Iraq, Iran and North Korea, he did not even mention Charles Taylor of Liberia. But this one-time warlord and escapee from an American prison is part of the real axis of evil -- the larger group of 44 dictators in an arc that runs unbroken west from North Korea and China through the Middle East and south to sub-Saharan Africa, according to Freedom in the World 2003, a Freedom House survey.

Focusing just on today's chaos in a single country obscures this larger reality and the fundamental U.S. interests at stake. For collectively, these 44 men (no women) are overwhelmingly the largest threat to American and global security and prosperity, and they do work together. Until they are all ousted, we will know no permanent peace.

In Africa, Moammar Gadhafi, the Libyan dictator, has supported nearly every tyrant on the continent. His government trained and befriended Mr. Taylor and his partner in crime, Foday Sankoh, leader of the notorious Revolutionary United Front of Sierra Leone. Mr. Sankoh, infamous for his policy of mutilations, died July 29 in custody after being indicted for crimes against humanity.

By financing slaughter in West Africa, Colonel Gadhafi opened lucrative weapons-trafficking routes and gained profits from the diamonds mined by Mr. Taylor's and Mr. Sankoh's child soldiers in Sierra Leone.

According to The Washington Post, Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida terrorist network has also tapped into Sierra Leone's blood-diamond wealth through Colonel Gadhafi and the West African branch of the dictators' club. Helped by such allies, Mr. Taylor and Africa's other dictators regularly send their thuggish armies across international borders with impunity, fueling genocidal conflicts that slaughtered well over a million people in 1994 alone, including in Rwanda.

Non-African dictators also have a hand in prolonging the continent's remaining tyrannies.
While Robert G. Mugabe drives white farmers off their land and turns it over to his family and cronies in Zimbabwe, effectively emptying southern Africa's breadbasket, China's dictator, Jiang Zemin, provides agricultural equipment for use on illegally seized farms.

Mr. Mugabe refers to China as "the No. 1 friend" of Zimbabwe. Kim Il Sung's North Korean regime provided training and equipment for Mr. Mugabe's massacres in Matabeleland province in the 1980s, where he resorted to ethnic terror in a bid to consolidate his power. And today, his son, Kim Jong Il, is perhaps the largest source of trainers for African dictators' security forces.

But what's to be done? Surely the United States can't be expected to send in military forces across all of Africa.

In sub-Saharan Africa, there are 29 free or partly free nations and just 11 countries that are run by dictators, according to Freedom House's ratings. Compared to the hundreds of years of horrors, the past decade is an extraordinary period of progress.

But the remaining 11 dictators still commit atrocities of such appalling savagery and scale that democrats everywhere must substantially increase the effort to finish the job in Africa.
We must create within the community of democracies an Africa Caucus so that the group of 29 free and partly free countries, with the assistance of non-African democracies, can help with still-fragile transitions (and incipient backsliding) among their members and also realize their collective strength by insisting that the last 11 dictators leave power.

We need to create special tribunals, such as the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, which is trying cases stemming from the genocide in that country, and the Special Court for Sierra Leone, which indicted Mr. Sankoh and 11 others for crimes against humanity.

Nations with particular histories in Africa need to revise their priorities and play a more aggressive role in ousting the 11 least wanted. French policy is in particular need of a radical shake-up, but Britain, Portugal, Belgium, Germany, Spain, the United States and others also have special histories and responsibilities. A minimal application of force may be needed in some cases and can work. Liberia is such a case today.

Perhaps most fundamental is for non-African nations and Africans themselves to begin to believe, as any other people, that Africans have as much right to democracy and the reasons and capacity for it. There is a terribly enervating condescension among many non-Africans with a view that we must treat Africa as a sort of child, a patient, a charity case.

The result is toleration of dictators, a focus not on the cause but on the effect -- not on getting the right governance but on debt forgiveness, refugee relief or conflict prevention.

Africa's longest-serving autocrat, Daniel T. arap Moi, was ousted from power in Kenya last year. Mr. Taylor must be out soon. Let's keep up the momentum of at least one every year. With just 10 to go, Africa would be a dictator-free zone within a decade.

Mark Palmer, the U.S. ambassador to Hungary from 1986 to 1990, is vice chairman of the board of Freedom House and author of Breaking the Real Axis of Evil: How to Oust the World's Last Dictators By 2025, to be published by Rowman and Littlefield.