U.S. Oil Politics in the 'Kuwait of Africa' (Page 2)

Washington and Malabo: The Ice Age

Not so long ago, Equatorial Guinea didn't register as even the tiniest blip on Washington's radar screen. Roughly the size of Maryland, the country is composed of a few islands--including Bioko, home to Malabo--and a square of land on the continent wedged between Gabon and Cameroon. Average life expectancy is 54; malaria, yellow fever and other diseases are rampant; and much of the population is engaged in subsistence farming of rice, yams and bananas.

The political picture is as grim as the economic one. The only former Spanish colony in sub-Saharan Africa, Equatorial Guinea gained independence in 1968. The country's first ruler was Francisco Macias Nguema, a West African version of Idi Amin who banned opposition parties and in 1970 appointed himself "President for Life"--the first of a string of self-decreed titles that included "Leader of Steel," "Implacable Apostle of Freedom" and "The Sole Miracle of Equatorial Guinea." As many as 50,000 people, roughly 10 percent of the population, were murdered during the Macias years--some were crucified along the road to the airport, for the benefit of visiting diplomats--and 80,000 fled the country. In 1979 the Sole Miracle was overthrown and subsequently executed by Obiang, his nephew.

Obiang was no reformer: As head of the National Guard and later commander of the armed forces, he played a major role in carrying out the terrible repression of the Macias years. And while he hasn't ruled as brutally as his predecessor, he's been sufficiently cruel that one Western diplomat has called him "a known murderer." The State Department's most recent report on worldwide human rights, released March 4, says that the government employs "the psychological effects of arrest, along with the fear of beatings and harassment, to intimidate opposition party officials and members," and that the country has never had a "free, fair and transparent" election. A case in point was Obiang's "re-election" to a seven-year term in 1996, which he won with 99.2 percent of the vote. Three years later his ruling Democratic Party of Equatorial Guinea won seventy-five of eighty seats contested in national legislative elections that were flagrantly rigged.

Obiang's economic record is also abysmal, and only the discovery of oil has prevented the country from sinking into complete misery. "It's a corrupt, rotten government," says Frank Ruddy, US ambassador to Equatorial Guinea during the Reagan years. "The people there deserve better than the crooks they've got."

For years US officials looked upon the country as a laughingstock. Ruddy told the story of how one of Obiang's top aides, who was fortunate to benefit from diplomatic immunity, was once stopped at New York's JFK airport with a suitcase full of marijuana. The police had little trouble making the bust: The aide's bag had a hole in the side, and he was trailing pot as he strolled through the terminal. There's a story famous in CIA circles about how two of Obiang's intelligence operatives came to Washington in the mid-1980s to meet top agency officials. The Guineans went shopping at a suburban Virginia mall beforehand and came to the meeting dressed in identical outfits: black business suits and electric Nike sneakers.

A less amusing illustration of the Obiang regime's nature came in 1994, when the US ambassador in Malabo, John Bennett, was threatened with death after calling for improved human rights conditions. The threat came in a message thrown from the window of a passing vehicle--which eyewitnesses said was driven by a government official--that warned Bennett, "You will go to America as a corpse." Two years later, the Clinton Administration shut down the US Embassy in Malabo, and relations have been handled from Cameroon ever since.

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