Since the end of the Cold War, non-governmental organisations have been flourishing and mushrooming in countries once ruled by one-party dictatorship, changing their political and social landscape in more ways than one.

I do think this scenario is, in general, more than welcome. After all, the spirit of freedom and the culture of agreeing to disagree are the twin pillars that have made western countries great and prosperous.

However, it must also be said that the notion of civil society per se is a double-edged sword, at least such is the perception of the regimes that remain skeptical about the idea.

China, for one, has long been deeply distrustful of western NGOs, seeing them as the fifth column of the US and Europe through which peaceful subversion could be orchestrated, thereby ending the long rein of the Communist Party.

(It is therefore not at all surprising that many a Chinese Malaysian, while professing to believe in democracy and human rights, is also the first to lecture the young on the dangers of western interference in China's domestic affairs. He may detest strongly the heavy-handedness of the Barisan Nasional, but will, incongruously, turn into the staunchest defender of one-party rule in China for the sake of peace and stability.)

Still, the anxieties and fears of the repressive regimes can hardly be overstated. In Supporting Democracy and Human Rights: The US Record 2004-2005 , published by the US State Department in March last year, the American government readily makes clear its policy of fostering democracy and human rights, a policy that "springs from American ideals and our national interest".

Furthermore, the same report reiterates President Bush's policy of "supporting democratic movements in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world".

Some of my friends from China were, quite understandably, alarmed by the unambiguous language of the Bush administration. I duly reminded them that by feeling aghast at the wording of the report, they only admitted that China is indeed ruled by an oligarchical group of tyrants. None of them were bemused by my frankness.

The Chinese government has in recent months moved in the direction of formulating laws needed to better govern and monitor the activities of NGOs operating within China. Some laud the far-sighted efforts by the communists, citing it as yet another sign of the country integrating into the world system. I, however, tend to think it would greatly benefit the regime when legal provisions are in place to respond to and deal with the growth of civil rights movement among the populace.

With the shadow of Falun Gong hanging over them, the rulers in Beijing have every reason to be suspicious of foreign groups.

Five years ago, I stayed for a week in a small village in Guizhou Province with several Hong Kong-based NGO workers. The local party cadres had bypassed the higher authorities and allowed our presence there to help the village children and women with their educational needs. Had they sought clearance from above, our entry into the village would most likely have been denied. In the eyes of a hot-blooded Chinese nationalist, my act could very well have been interpreted as serving foreign interests, probably those of the Japanese.

So, we are caught in a dilemma, aren't we?

Orange Revolution

When the so-called Orange Revolution came to pass in the Kiev square in December 2004, I was, rather unusually, cautiously optimistic. The courage of the Kyivites who took to the streets and demanded the seriously flawed presidential election to be annulled deserved international recognition and global praise, but it should not have obscured us from the fact that outside forces had played a hand in the removal of the former regime and the installation of the current government led by President Viktor Yuschenko.

With the benefit of hindsight, now even experts and journalists from the western world concur that the regime change was more a coup bankrolled by unnamed sources from the outside than a spontaneous embrace of democracy and freedom on the part of the Ukrainians. The mistrust is so strong that many are now convinced, rightly or wrongly, the scores of NGO activists and election monitors rushing into the Ukrainian capital were nothing but agents of the West.

Once president, Yushchenko also brought with him businessmen - who had remained loyal to him while he was in political wilderness - into his administration. One of them, Petro Poroshenko, served as National Security and Defence Council Secretary. Last September, Yushchenko finally fell out with Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, and sacked her, ostensibly over ideological differences, but in-depth analysis suggests the president was ill at ease with the prime minister's resolve to fight corruption.

One year after the revolution, many Ukrainians have begun to feel equally cynical of the current leader as they had been of the presidency of Leonid Kuchma, if not more.

And similar patterns repeated themselves in the presidential election in Kyrgyzstan early last year, only that the picture was more complex and haphazard: the Russians have a military base near Bishkek, the Kyrgyz capital, which is close to a US military base at Manas, a civilian airport opened for American use since December 2001.

So, the Tulip Revolution that ushered in a new government in Bishkek was, again, a tug of war between two foreign powers, with the third, China, watching very closely.

Such scenario has no doubt created deep mistrust around the world's capitals and prompted a number of Latin American nations to turn down an offer by Washington to monitor the exercise of democracy in a region regarded traditionally as the US backyard, as reported by the New York Times in June 2005.

Powerful force

Meanwhile, one must be careful in order not to fall under the delusion that the enemies within could only be instigated by western agents. Again in Latin America , Peru has just recalled its ambassador to Caracas, amidst accusations that the left-wing President of Venezuela was interfering in the country's presidential election, scheduled to take place April this year. I write this because many in Malaysia appear to think some eastern or relatively less developed nations are so righteous that they never have such positions as secret agents open for application.

I still want to go back to the issue of civil society and address the concern of many that NGOs that claim themselves to uphold and campaign for democracy and human rights may simply be a wolf in sheep's clothing, serving the interests of powerful nations.

Such suspicion is more likely than not informed by the realist thinking that the state, in the words of Justin Rosenberg, author of The Empire of Civil Society , is the only completed social order capable of identifying and safeguarding a nation's foreign interests. This very same realist view has, sadly but quite unnecessarily, given rise to the chronic angst that all groups with foreign origins can never have good intentions, because we always see the state behind them.

According to Rosenberg, realism holds that the state "sits easily with the popular nationalist identification with the home state which comprises most individuals' participation in the international system", although we all know this is far from reality, otherwise the world would not have been praising the hard work of Amnesty International, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, Reporters sans Frontieres, Medicins sans Frontieres and so on.

The belief in a rational state has led many in the developing world to pin its hopes on the ruling elites from the east as well as the west to lift them out of political misery, while failing to see that a more natural and longer lasting partnership lies in the civil groups from the outside.

These NGOs may not be well-oiled, but they are comparatively much more entrenched in the notion of democracy and human rights. I do not share fully the vision of Rosenberg, who seeks to create a world based on a gigantic structure of civil society, but I do believe when the NGOs put their differences aside and combine their strengths, they can play a powerful part in shaping and making opinions around the world, thereby defeating the plot of any power to impose hegemony worldwide.