The presidential election in Equatorial Guinea will undoubtedly extend the 30-year rule of Teodoro Obiang Nguema, a man accused of draining his nation’s oil wealth to fabulously enrich family and cronies while his people suffer in slums.

Western governments that have promised to fight corruption so far have done little as companies compete for concessions for petroleum and a burgeoning natural gas industry.

Obiang, 67, denies all charges and his government said in a statement released by an expensive U.S. lobbying firm that Equatorial Guinea “is committed to holding fair and democratic elections. As part of our reform efforts we aim to ensure all voices are heard.”

Opposition parties though complained that the playing field for Sunday’s vote was far from even: Campaigners have been attacked and harassed, Obiang gave only six weeks’ notice for the election and coverage in the state-controlled media is skewed.

The National Electoral Commission is also headed by the interior minister and weighted with Obiang supporters, and the government has refused to publish the voters’ roll.

Obiang had boasted at rallies that he would win with more than the 97.1 percent garnered in a 2002 poll widely criticized as fraudulent. Then, he ran unchallenged as opposition leaders pulled out citing harassment and rigging. This year four men were challenging Obiang, though none doubt who will win.

“People will vote for Obiang so that they can survive, so that they can keep their jobs,” said John E. Bennett, a retired diplomat who was U.S. ambassador there from 1991, left briefly after receiving government-sponsored death threats in 1993 and ended his term in 1994. The government also accused Bennett of dancing on graves in a black magic ritual.

Through government jobs and private companies from hotels to Internet service providers, Obiang and his clique control everything in the small country, Bennett said.

“Obiang has such an extraordinarily tight control that there is no oxygen for civil society to develop independent thought,” Bennett said.

He said that is why an estimated quarter of the population — including writers, historians and artists — live in nearby Gabon, Cameroon or Nigeria, or in Spain, the former colonizer. About 600,000 people live in the country.

Bennett said Obiang flies in a $50 million Boeing jet while those needing to get from Malabo, the capital on an island, to Bata, the biggest town on the African mainland, are crammed into a secondhand Russian turboprop that cost $200,000.

“The national airline sells the seats, then they sell floor space, and people have to sprawl on top of piles of baggage,” he said.

The country’s average annual income per capita has swollen to some $37,000, making the World Bank classify it as a developed nation. But according to U.N. figures, 60 percent of people try to live on less than $1 a day.

Obiang has called such statistics “false,” and strongly denies any corruption.

“I ask myself, where is this corruption, how is it found, where is it discovered?” he said in an interview Friday with the Al-Jazeera television network. “I don’t have knowledge of that. There is none whatsoever.”

A U.S. Senate investigation in 2004 found $700 million stashed away at Riggs Bank in Washington, all held in accounts in the name of Obiang, his family and clan. Some of the money was carried to the bank, a million dollars at a time, in shrink-wrapped bundles, bankers told the Senate. Riggs was fined $41 million and subsequently collapsed.

Despite all that, the human rights group Global Witness last week published documents of an investigation by the U.S. Justice Department and Immigration and Customs Enforcement indicating U.S. banks since have accepted some $75 million in wire transfers between 2005 and 2007 from Obiang’s favorite son and would-be successor, Teodorin Obiang.

Two of the banks filed suspicious activity reports but still went ahead and accepted the loot.

“This was a spectacular moral failing by the banks, pretty shocking stuff,” said Anthea Lawson of Global Witness.

Her organization says the money bought a $35 million Malibu mansion, $33 million private jet and a fleet of exotic fast cars.

Obiang himself owns two mansions in Washington, according to the Senate investigation. And human rights groups have filed complaints in courts in France and Spain about multimillion-dollar villas and fleets of cars owned by the Obiang family in those countries.

Teodorin Obiang, who has acknowledged a salary of $60,000 a year for being agriculture minister, has not responded to the allegations. But he justified his wealth in a sworn affidavit to a South African court questioning his ownership of luxury mansions and expensive cars in Cape Town in 2006.

He stated that public officials in his country are allowed to partner with foreign companies bidding for government contracts and said this means “a Cabinet minister ends up with a sizable part of the contract price in his bank account.”

President Obiang himself was welcomed to the White House two years after the Riggs scandal, and met with then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who scandalized human rights activists by calling him “a good friend.”

Her comment came after the publication of a State Department report with a long list of human rights abuses in Equatorial Guinea including torture, arbitrary arrest, severe restrictions on freedom of speech and forced child labor.

Equatorial Guinea is voting today in a presidential election that is expected to return to power incumbent Teodoro Obiang Nguema, who has run the small but oil-rich west African country with an iron fist since 1979.

A polling station in the economic capital Malabo opened as scheduled at 8:00 am (0700 GMT), although there were not yet many people waiting to cast their ballots, an AFP correspondent reported. Polls close at 6:00 pm (1700 GMT).

A large number of security forces have been deployed around the city since Saturday night.

One of the five presidential candidates, Carmelo Mba Bacale, quit the race on Saturday, saying he would boycott the poll because of the lack of transparency in the electoral process.

He accused the party of Obiang Nguema of having “made plans to win the election by force” by placing party members in charge of polling stations and as head of the electoral commision.

Initial results of the vote are expected on Thursday, with full results on Monday, December 7.

In the presidential poll of 2002, Obiang Nguema won with 97.1 percent of votes cast against four other candidates. Last Sunday, he vowed that he would achieve a similar score in this year’s election.

The New York-based Human Rights Watch has cast doubt on the credibility of the poll, noting that in the absence of an independent and impartial body to watch over the electoral process, the vote is unlikely to be free and fair.

Equatorial Guinea is the third largest producer of oil in sub-Saharan Africa, but almost all of its population of less than a million lives in dire poverty.

“Equatorial Guinea is the most coward country in the world,” says a commentator on Al Jazeera on Teodoro Obiang’s 30-yr rule of impunity.

Equatorial Guinea is a poor country in Africa many probably have never heard of and can’t locate on a map. About 60 percent of its population live on less than a dollar a day, despite being a major African oil producer with U.S. and Chinese clients.

It is also a democracy. On Sunday, the nation goes to the polls. But everyone in Equatorial Guinea already knows the winner. Obiang has confidently declared that he will win more than 97 percent of the vote!

“I am the people’s candidate and I don’t see anyone who can go against the will of the people” – Teodoro Obiang.

All these sound too familiar to many Filipinos.  And in light of the massacre in Ampatuan, they should not wait for someone to talk about the Philippines that way – as “the most coward country in the world”.

The New York Times recently (I am catching up on blogging this weekend) ran a front page story (complete with incriminating documents posted online) on the reasons why Teodoro Nguema Obiang, minister of agriculture and son of the dictator of Equatorial Guinea, can leave and enter the US as he pleases while his dad runs a corrupt and dictatorial regime that would make Robert Mugabe blush.

In fact, “[US] law enforcement officials believe that “most if not all” of his wealth comes from corruption related to the extensive oil and gas reserves discovered more than a decade and a half ago off the coast of his tiny West African country, according to internal Justice Department and Immigration and Customs Enforcement documents.” The younger Obiang–his father has the same name and he is the favorite to succeed the old man–owns a $35 million mansion in Malibu (the aerial photograph above), a record company, fleet of luxury cars, speedboats and a private jet (he also briefly dated the rapper Eve).

The reason is simple:

“… “Of course it’s because of oil,” said John Bennett, the United States ambassador to Equatorial Guinea from 1991 to 1994, adding that Washington has turned a blind eye to the Obiangs’ corruption and repression because of its dependence on the country for natural resources. [Production of the country’s nearly 400,000 barrels of oil a day is dominated by American companies like ExxonMobil, Hess and Marathon.] … “

Swoosh, originally uploaded by techbhoy.

Took this photo last Sunday inside our camp accomodation near the tennis court during my early morning photo walk.

In case you are thinking of purchasing the new global version of Amazon’s Kindle for Christmas, be aware that there are still quite a few places that the global version will NOT work.  I was disappointed to find that the new version still will not work in my country.

Apparently the new global version will only work in SOME countries.   I thought it would be helpful to most expats to have a complete list of which countries it will, or will not work in (below).

It’s also interesting to note the PATTERN of groups of countries where the Kindle doesn’t work–some countries probably lack satellite coverage or delivery systems, while others probably don’t WANT readers to be able to download whatever they want by satellite.

STARRED (*) countries marked below indicate that Kindle needs to be ordered from a SPECIAL PAGE on the Amazon site.

The Global Kindle version DOES work in (as of Dec. 2009):

Aland Islands, Albania, American Samoa, Andorra, Angola, Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Armenia, Aruba, Australia*, Austria, Bahamas, Barbados, Belarus, Belgium, Belize, Benin, Bermuda, Bhutan, Bolivia, Boznia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Brazil, Bulgaria, Burundi, Cambodia, Canada, Cape Verde, Cayman Islands, Central African Republic, Colombia, Comoros, Congo, Cook Islands, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Cote d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Denmark, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Estonia, Ethiopia, Falkland Islands, Faroe Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Finland, France, French Guiana, French Polynesia, Gabon, Georgia, Germany, Ghana, Gibraltar, Greece, Greenland, Grenada, Guadeloupe, Guam, Guatemala, Guernsey, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Haiti, Holy See, Honduras, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, India, Ireland, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Jersey, Kenya, Kiribati, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Latvia, Liberia, Leichtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macao, Macedonia, Madagascar, Malawi, Malta, Marshall Islands, Martinique, Mauritius, Mayotte, Mexico, Moldovia, Monaco, Mongolia, Montenegro, Montserrat, Mozembique, Myanmar, Namibia, Nauru, Nepal, Netherlands, New Caledonia, Nicaragua, Niue, Norfolk Island, Northern Mariana Islands, Norway, Palau, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Puerto Rico, Romania, Russia, Rwanda, Réunion, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, San Marino, Sao Tome and Principe, Serbia, Seychelles, Slovakia, Slovenia, Solomon Islands, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka,  Suriname, Swaziland, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Tanzania, Timor-Leste, Togo, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, Turks and Caicos Islands, Tuvalu, Uganda, Ukraine, United Kingdom, Uruguay, Vanuatu, Venezuela, Viet Nam, Virgin Islands – British, Virgin Islands – U.S.,  Wallis and Futuna, Zambia, Zimbabwe.

The Global Kindle version does NOT work in (as of Dec. 2009) the following countries:

Afghanistan, Algeria, Antarctica, Argentina, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Bouvet Island, British Indian Ocean Territory, Brunei Darussalam, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chile, Chad, China, Christmas Island, Cocos (Keeling) Islands, Cuba, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, French Southern Territories, Gambia, Guinea, Heard Island and McDonald Islands, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Isle of Man, Israel, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Korea – Democratic People’s Republic of, Korea – Republic of, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Lesotho, Libya, Malaysia, Maldives, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco (including the Western Sahara), New Zealand, Niger, Nigeria, Oman, Pakistan, Palestinian Territories, Pitcairn, Qatar, Saint Barthelemy, Saint Helena, Saint Martin, Saint Pierre and Miquelon, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Somalia, South Georgia and the Sandwich Islands, Sudan, Svalbard and Jan Mayan, Syrian Arab Republic, Tajikistan, Thailand, Tokelau, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, United Arab Emirates, United States Minor Outlying Islands, Uzbekistan,  Yemen.

By Gary Rotto

SAN DIEGO–The tensions around the Goldstone Report ( Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict) have died down for the moment.  But hard feelings still remain in the community regarding the report and the resulting resolution in Congress.  Congressman Filner clearly communicated his feelings and his thinking around the resolution.  He has “mishpachah” in Israel with whom he consulted.  His response to SDJW questions were fair and well thought out.   And may be factually based.  But politics is – especially geopolitical – are based on perception.

The Jewish community reaction to the Goldstone Report may not be so much about the actual information in the report, but the visceral feeling that the United Nations seems fixated on the Middle East, and in particular, the Arab-Israeli, or Palestinian-Israel conflict.

Back on October 2, 2006, as Kofi Annan’s term as the Secretary General of the United Nations was coming to a close, Human Rights Watch reflected on the tasks ahead for his successor.  While praising Annan’s dedication to human rights and the creation of the UN Human Rights Council (HRC), Human Rights Watch openly criticized the HRC. “The Human Rights Council has so far stumbled because of its relative fixation on Israel, while failing to take concrete steps to address other serious human rights situations as well. It has yet to show that it is willing to take firm, collective action against intransigent governments engaged in systemic rights violations.”  The article on its website goes on to say that “The incoming secretary-general must work to ensure that the Human Rights Council is both more credible and more effective than its predecessor.”

One of the giants in the world of Human Rights monitoring, Felice Gaer, severely criticized the Goldstone Report.  Her career in the human rights community has included membership on the Council on Foreign Relations, serving as chair of the steering committee for the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and as a member of the Carter Center’s International Human Rights Council since 1994.  As reported in the New Jersey Jewish News, Gaer called the report “a biased mandate by a biased group of people.”  The biased group of people is the HRC.

Jackson Diehl, Deputy Editorial Page Editor of the Washington Post noted after the HRC’s first year that “Genocide in Sudan, child slavery and religious persecution in China, mass repression in Zimbabwe and Burma, state-sponsored murder in Syria and Russia — and, for that matter, suicide bombings by Arab terrorist movements — will not receive systematic attention from the world body charged with monitoring human rights. That is reserved only for Israel, a democratic country that has been guilty of human rights violations but also has been under sustained assault from terrorists and governments openly committed to its extinction.”  In that first year, Israel and Israel alone was the only government criticized by name – and to the tune of 11 resolutions.

Freedom House, one of the preeminent “peace and democracy” institutions since 1941, in its 2009 Worst of the Worst report, which cites  the World’s Most Repressive Societies, lists Burma, Equatorial Guinea, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Sudan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.

While Israel is imperfect, clearly, other nations and hot spots around the world deserve far greater attention from the HRC.  Only once a track record of tackling ongoing, regimented, government sponsored human rights violations in the areas around the world, will the Jewish community will feel that a Goldstone Report maybe even handed and fair and maybe justified.

*
Rotto is a freelance writer based in San Diego

10:16 November 24th, 2009
Is the “wonga” running out for Africa’s mercenaries?

Posted by: David Lewis
Tags: Africa Blog, “dogs of war”, Camara, Equatorial Guinea, Guinea, junta, mercenaries, Simon Mann

Africa’s infamous “dogs of war” may still be going strong, but it seems the rewards of the mercenary life aren’t quite what they used to be. 

Only this month, Britain’s Simon Mann won a pardon for his part in a foiled 2004 coup attempt on Equatorial Guinea, an old-style adventure whose glittering prize was the central African state’s multi-billion-dollar oil riches.

Contrast that to reports last week that a band of South African and other mercenaries had flown into the chaos of Guinea to train up a militia loyal to the incumbent junta leader — on a salary put at barely $3,500 a month.

That’s not bad money in most parts of the world, and there were reports that the company involved would have won extra remuneration in the form of minerals from Guinea’s fecund soil.

But it would have been peanuts to Mann, whose Equatorial Guinea coup was known as the “Wonga Plot” after the English slang for the money they hoped to yield in buckets.

While mercenaries are often seen as in the business of bringing governments down, it is not new that they should be trying to prop one up, as is happening in Guinea.

Mann himself is reported to have worked for the Angolan government in the 1990s to help it wrest back control of a key port from rebels, and again for Sierra Leonean authorities in the 2002 civil war there.

But what has changed since then is the economics. Thanks to the steady flow of new oil and mineral finds on the continent, the private security business in Africa is booming. A lot of the real pros now find there is steady money to made in guarding a gold mine in northern Congo, for example.

The more dubious end of the business is now increasingly the preserve of what some describe as cowboys.

“They couldn’t get enough people to do the job,” Henri Boshoff, a military analyst who served in the South African army, told Reuters of the mercenaries hired by Guinean junta leader Captain Moussa Dadis Camara. “(The South Africans) were very desperate. They are not being very well paid.”

The Guinea mercenaries may not be in the same league as Mann and his fellow Wonga plotters, but their capacity to stir up trouble should not be underestimated.

The fact that Camara’s militia is being selected on tribal lines could add an alarming new ethnic dimension to Guinea’s instability.

Security sources also told Reuters that part of their job is to ensure the arrival of arms acquired by the junta in Ukraine in direct contravention of an international arms embargo.

South Africa is keen to get rid of its reputation as a training ground for hired guns and is officially investigating the activities of its nationals in Guinea.

Depending on what it finds, it may have to decide whether they are in breach of its
three-year-old anti-mercenary law that still contains grey areas as to what is mercenary behaviour.

Is it time for a more concerted effort by governments to end the days of Africa’s dogs of war? Or will the wonga run out by itself?

YPNXN9V6URBV

Amazon's Global Kindle Reader

I heard that Amazon now has a global version of Kindle. I was disappointed to find this morning that the new version still will not work in my country.

Since I’ve wanted one for some time, but have been waiting until they got a version that would work in my country, I checked out their website this morning, only to be disappointed again. Apparently the new global version will only work in SOME countries.

In case you are thinking of purchasing the new Global Kindle for a Christmas gift this year, since the new version will only work in SOME countries, I thought it would be helpful to most expats to have a complete list of which countries it will, or will not work in.

STARRED (*) countries marked below indicate that Kindle needs to be ordered from a SPECIAL PAGE on the Amazon site.

The Global Kindle version DOES work in (as of Dec. 2009):

Aland Islands, Albania, American Samoa, Andorra, Angola, Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Armenia, Aruba, Australia*, Austria, Bahamas, Barbados, Belarus, Belgium, Belize, Benin, Bermuda, Bhutan, Bolivia, Boznia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Brazil, Bulgaria, Burundi, Cambodia, Canada, Cape Verde, Cayman Islands, Central African Republic, Colombia, Comoros, Congo, Cook Islands, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Cote d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Denmark, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Estonia, Ethiopia, Falkland Islands, Faroe Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Finland, France, French Guiana, French Polynesia, Gabon, Georgia, Germany, Ghana, Gibraltar, Greece, Greenland, Grenada, Guadeloupe, Guam, Guatemala, Guernsey, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Haiti, Holy See, Honduras, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, India, Ireland, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Jersey, Kenya, Kiribati, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Latvia, Liberia, Leichtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macao, Macedonia, Madagascar, Malawi, Malta, Marshall Islands, Martinique, Mauritius, Mayotte, Mexico, Moldovia, Monaco, Mongolia, Montenegro, Montserrat, Mozembique, Myanmar, Namibia, Nauru, Nepal, Netherlands, New Caledonia, Nicaragua, Niue, Norfolk Island, Northern Mariana Islands, Norway, Palau, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Puerto Rico, Romania, Russia, Rwanda, Réunion, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, San Marino, Sao Tome and Principe, Serbia, Seychelles, Slovakia, Slovenia, Solomon Islands, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Suriname, Swaziland, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Tanzania, Timor-Leste, Togo, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, Turks and Caicos Islands, Tuvalu, Uganda, Ukraine, United Kingdom, Uruguay, Vanuatu, Venezuela, Viet Nam, Virgin Islands – British, Virgin Islands – U.S., Wallis and Futuna, Zambia, Zimbabwe.

The Global Kindle version does NOT work in (as of Dec. 2009):

Afghanistan, Algeria, Antarctica, Argentina, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Bouvet Island, British Indian Ocean Territory, Brunei Darussalam, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chile, Chad, China, Christmas Island, Cocos (Keeling) Islands, Cuba, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, French Southern Territories, Gambia, Guinea, Heard Island and McDonald Islands, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Isle of Man, Israel, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Korea – Democratic People’s Republic of, Korea – Republic of, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Lesotho, Libya, Malaysia, Maldives, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco (including the Western Sahara), New Zealand, Niger, Nigeria, Oman, Pakistan, Palestinian Territories, Pitcairn, Qatar, Saint Barthelemy, Saint Helena, Saint Martin, Saint Pierre and Miquelon, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Somalia, South Georgia and the Sandwich Islands, Sudan, Svalbard and Jan Mayan, Syrian Arab Republic, Tajikistan, Thailand, Tokelau, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, United Arab Emirates, United States Minor Outlying Islands, Uzbekistan, Yemen.

Republic of EQUATORIAL GUINEA

stamp: 1 ekuele

year: ?

insect: bumblee bee

Stories like this drive me crazy.

Quoting the Guardian Newspaper:

“Little Teodoro, as President Teodoro Obiang Nguema’s son is known at home, appears to spend as little time as possible fulfilling his duties as the minister of agriculture and forestry in the west African state. Instead he flits between South Africa, France and the US, pursuing business ventures such as a failed rap label while acquiring property and a fleet of Ferraris, Lamborghinis and Bentleys – all made possible by the discovery of oil in Equatorial Guinea’s waters a decade ago.”

further ahead…..

“President Obiang, who has ruled since seizing power in 1979, has decreed that the management of his country’s $3bn a year in oil revenues is a state secret.”

According to the CIA factbook:

Per capita GDP of Equatorial Guinea (PPP) is 37,300. Obiang (the elder) spends a paltry 0.6% of his country’s GDP on education. Almost two thirds of the country’s 633,400 people live below the poverty line. Meanwhile, Obiang – whose kleptocratic leadership has plagued Equatorians since he staged a coup against his own uncle (and then executed him) in 1979 – managed to win a seven year term in 2002 with over 97% of the vote. The next elections will be held in 2010.

TOTAL INSANITY.

Republic of EQUATORIAL GUINEA

stamp: 0,25 ekuele

year: ?

insect: ladybird

Republic of EQUATORIAL GUINEA

stamp: 0,30 ekuele

year: ?

insect: ant

Republic of EQUATORIAL GUINEA

stamp: 0,55 ekuele

year: ?

insect: wasp

A failed coup attempt…a British mercenary in a notorious African prison…a dictator suspicious of Western powers…and beneath it all, a spectacular underwater oil reserve that the world’s major powers would love to get their hands on.

It may sound like the latest John LeCarré bestseller, but in fact it’s the real-life intrigue of Once upon a Coup, WIDE ANGLE’s penetrating look at the mysterious goings-on in Equatorial Guinea, a tiny West African nation newly rich with oil and infamous for corruption. The story begins in 2004, when a group of mercenaries, including a British ex-special forces officer named Simon Mann, is arrested in Zimbabwe.
Equatorial Guinea’s president, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, accuses them of plotting a coup against him. When Mann is sentenced to 34 years in Equatorial Guinea’s notorious Black Beach prison, he claims to be only one piece of an international plot to control the country’s vast oil resources. Once upon a Coup travels the globe to unravel that plot, which stretches from Africa to the U.K., from a prime minister’s son to Zimbabwean arms dealers, from South Africa to Spain.

But as this all plays out, another actor is bidding for a share of the oil: China. The Chinese government has showered the country with glittering new buildings and a new administrative capital. If President Obiang has grown skeptical of Western intentions, he has welcomed China as a new business partner. Starting with a small West African nation and stretching around the globe, Once upon a Coup sheds light on the uncomfortable realities of oil politics in the 21st century.

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A failed coup attempt…a British mercenary in a notorious African prison…a dictator suspicious of Western powers…and beneath it all, a spectacular underwater oil reserve that the world’s major powers would love to get their hands on.

It may sound like the latest John LeCarré bestseller, but in fact it’s the real-life intrigue of Once upon a Coup, WIDE ANGLE’s penetrating look at the mysterious goings-on in Equatorial Guinea, a tiny West African nation newly rich with oil and infamous for corruption. The story begins in 2004, when a group of mercenaries, including a British ex-special forces officer named Simon Mann, is arrested in Zimbabwe.

Equatorial Guinea’s president, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, accuses them of plotting a coup against him. When Mann is sentenced to 34 years in Equatorial Guinea’s notorious Black Beach prison, he claims to be only one piece of an international plot to control the country’s vast oil resources. Once upon a Coup travels the globe to unravel that plot, which stretches from Africa to the U.K., from a prime minister’s son to Zimbabwean arms dealers, from South Africa to Spain.

But as this all plays out, another actor is bidding for a share of the oil: China. The Chinese government has showered the country with glittering new buildings and a new administrative capital. If President Obiang has grown skeptical of Western intentions, he has welcomed China as a new business partner. Starting with a small West African nation and stretching around the globe, Once upon a Coup sheds light on the uncomfortable realities of oil politics in the 21st century.

I love the smell of bullshit in the morning, especially when it comes from the righteous reader’s favourite rag, the Observer – that’s the Guardian with its green wellies on for the weekend.

The story of Simon Mann is quite an involved one – that is until you cut through to the quick of it…the money.

But conspiracies, Mark ‘Scratcher’ Thatcher and Black Beach Prison aside, it’s the way that the Guardian described Mann in its headline today that piqued my interest:

Simon Mann, freed dog of war, is demanding justice

Dog of war?

He’s a fucking mercenary – a military whore – who attempted to bring about a coup in an African country…and who’s to say if the money had been better he wouldn’t have attempted such an action in a European country? Or even our own?

And what’s all this crap about him being banged up in one of the worst prisons in the world? For a start, he doesn’t look too bad on it and even if he did, what do you expect? African jails aren’t exactly reknowned for being shining examples of enlightened penal reform, are they? I know that, and I’m as sure as shit that Mann knew that too.

In fact, the only thing that I can find with some degree of merit in this article is the fact that the author hasn’t referred to Mann as an ‘old Etonian’ or as being ‘ex-SAS’.

The simple fact is that Mann has come from a privileged background and after leaving the British Army continued with a military lifestyle as a mercenary. By doing so he must accept the risks of what he does, expect to get involved with some very dodgy people and thank his lucky stars that he’s a free man again.

I find it somewhat insulting that Mann gets column inches from the Observer on a day when we should be thinking about real soldiers who did their job for basically fuck all and out of some sense of duty.

In short, Simon Mann – fuck you.

Republic of EQUATORIAL GUINEA

stamp: 10 ekuele

year: ?

insect: ant

British mercenary Simon Mann today vowed to testify in court against Sir Mark Thatcher and oil magnate Eli Calil, the two men he alleges were co-conspirators in the failed attempt to take over Equatorial Guinea in 2004.

Mann who many here believe was lucky to be released made clear he had no intention of drawing a line under the episode, and will be obliging to Scotland Yard’s decision should the cops insist on quizzing the conspirators.

He warned Thatcher and Calil, who deny any involvement in the plot, that he will repeat in a British court the allegations he has made to Metropolitan police detectives and in front of a judge in Equatorial Guinea.

The news is absolutely shocking for those involved and as The Daily Mails’s Andrew Malone pointed out in his piece Wednesday, 4 it could become very worrying for many Establishment figures – even likely to end careers.

His is yet another case of an attempted coup orchestrated by well known thugs who irrespective of rules governing sovereign states will stop at nothing as long as the right amount is on table. Which raises the question, who is a thug and when do political operations become illegal.

According to Andrew Malone, Mann a former SAS officer was member of the well known and legally registered KAS Enterprise- a private military company involved in “deniable operations” on behalf of governments.

Out but not keeping mumb

Mann’s freedom and his subsequent return to Britain has already sparked a media frenzy with many a publication vying for his interview. I don’t have the cash to compete for his word but i have a question; why should a company be legally allowed to champion deniable operations?

British mercenary Simon Mann was released from a jail in Equatorial Guinea after being pardoned for attempting for overthrowing the government.
Mann, along with several dozen other suspected plotters, was arrested five years ago on charges of trying to start a coup to overthrow president Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo. Their plans were foiled, however, and Mann was arrested after arriving in Zimbabwe to purchase firearms and grenades.
The conspirators had planned to install exiled opposition leader Severo Moto as president and to gain control over the country’s vast oil supplies. Equatorial Guinea is Africa’s third biggest oil producer.
The government said that the decision was made on compassionate grounds, seeing as Mann, aged 57, was reportedly not in good health. It stated that Mann had “shown sufficient and credible signs of repentance and a desire to take his place in society.”
Amnesty was also given to four other co-conspirators, among them Nick Du Toit, from South Africa. Mann was arrested along with 63 others in 2004 when his plane landed in Zimbabwe allegedly to collect arms bought from the country’s state arms manufacturer. He was extradited to Equatorial Guinea in 2008.

The news that Simon Mann is being released from his confinement in a deep dark African jail is no doubt cheering for his family, but probably less so for the likes of Mark Thatcher who will no doubt be rueing the day that he ‘paid for an air ambulance’. Mann’s remarkable ability not to remain tight lipped will surely result in some candid remarks to newspapers in weeks to come.

But surely, one might think Mann is something of a one off, an unusual case, there can’t be many mercenaries knocking about, ready to go off on half baked coup plots. Well ok, most of them may not be ready to get involved in such nonsense as Mann did, but there are certainly plenty of them around.

I speak dear reader, as one who knows, having been involved in one way or another with two separate groups of people who were directly involvedin these kind of activities. Strange for a pacifist I know, but there you go.

I am not going to name names, but one chap I did some research work for a number of years ago recently returned to the Uk after a sojourn in Sudan, where he was working for one fo the rebel factions. Like Mann he is an outwardly posh, smart looking figure, who has an air of authority and mystery which is carefully cultivated to impress those who pay him. They might be heads of multinational corporations or insurance companies, or they might just as well be leaders of rebel armies.

Another group I worked for during another contract were led by a quiet, friendly looking chap who seemed more interested in walking in the countryside than working on a computer, he it turned out had been a senior NCO in the SAS for a number of years. I beleive he is right now in Iraq, where he has been providing private security services for a number of years.

During the time when I worked for these men I came into contact with lots of other people working ‘on the circuit’, this being just after the twin towers fell, they were all of a sudden in great demand, today I beleive there is much less demand, and the massive pay packets demanded by skilled ex SAS men have been diluted because of the flood of much cheaper gun carriers from Eastern Europe.

Most of these guys dont look like Simon Mann, many of them are very inconspicuous, that’s how they are trained to be in fact. Their leaders may be a bit more toffish, but in my experience most of the guys who do the shooting are working class men with families to look after. And if what they told me is true, most of them are Scottish.

Remember Margaret Thatcher’s comment about the SAS men she met having ginger hair and moustaches? I found that to be true too, often not very tall either. Apparently the muscular guys dont fare so well in ‘the Regiment’ where stamina and an ability to be bloody minded are prized assets. The guys with the big shoulders tend to end up in the Royal Marines, or the shaky boats (SBS) where their ability to climb up ropes and swim at 100 miles an hour is more valuable.

Until the Government does something about PMC’s (Private military companies) there will remain many mercenaries available for hire here in the UK, anyone with enough money could get a small army together pretty quickly, and providing they are whisking them off to foreign soil, they wont exactly struggle to find volunteers.

EDIT: The best of today’s crop of articles, albeit somewhat sympathetic to Mann, is possibly this one from the Times, which raises his involvement in EO and Sandline, two legends of the Mercenary world.

…and the Past Role of European Countries

Who am I to say this, and how dare I say it?

I am merely responding to the announcement made by the prize committee of The Mo Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership that no prize will be awarded this year. Here is the press release. The main web page of the parent organization describes the nature and origin of the prize:

The Ibrahim Prize recognises and celebrates excellence in African leadership. The prize is awarded to a democratically elected former African Executive Head of State or Government who has served their term in office within the limits set by the country’s constitution and has left office in the last three years.

The Ibrahim Prize consists of US$5million over 10 years and US$200,000 annually for life thereafter. It is the largest annually awarded prize in the world. The Foundation will consider granting a further $200,000 per year, for 10 years, towards public interest activities and good causes espoused by the winner.

In October 2006, Dr. Ibrahim launched the Mo Ibrahim Foundation to support good governance and great leadership in Africa. In 2007, Dr. Ibrahim stepped down as Chairman of Celtel International to concentrate on this initiative.

Founded in 1998, Celtel International has brought the benefits of mobile communications to millions of people across the African continent. The company operates in 15 African countries, covering more than a third of the continent’s population, and has invested more than US$750 million in Africa. In 2005, Celtel International was sold to MTC Kuwait for $3.4 billion.

Before I tell you of the past winners of this prize, I want to draw a picture for you of the grievous state of governance and leadership throughout the continent of Africa by calling attention to a few historical and present facts and factors.

Facts on Africa

There are 53 internationally recognized countries in the continent of Africa, including the six island states of: Cape Verde, Comoros, Madagascar, Mauritius, São Tomé and Príncipe, and Seychelles.

Of these 53 states, 52 are former colonies of, or protectorates of, or were occupied by, one or more of several states in Europe: Belgium, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal and Spain. The only country not so colonized or dominated, Liberia, was settled by freed slaves from the USA, its territory having been expropriated in 1822 from the many local tribes who had not formed a nation state.

[Image Source. Please click on the image for greater clarity]

To get a notion of the relative poverty of living even at the world average GDP per person per year of US $10,400, here are the figures (in US Dollars) of the top 20 countries and the European Union, which has 27 countries in its membership:

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As mentioned above, every one of Africa’s countries, except Liberia, has been, at one time or another and in varying degrees, a vassal state of one or more European countries. It is well known that, with some exceptions, these states, while under foreign domination, were stripped of natural resources and essentially plundered. The stripping of natural resources continues in most of these countries today, with relatively few examples where a diversified economy under true democratic rule obtains.

Of the six countries currently at a GDP level above the world average, most are still extracting minerals from the soil as the major part of their economy: oil, diamonds, manganese, timber.

It is well known that the world’s major economies have poured money and aid into Africa, to no lasting effect, again with a few exceptions. This, in my view, shows the futility of sending money and goods into countries to help people who are ruled by despots and thieves.

Dr. Mo Ibrahim has the better idea, in my view. As can be seen above and under the links provided, his foundation will reward with significant money and recognition those African leaders who turn away from pillage and one-man rule, toward democracy that is not merely in name only; and, toward raising the standard of living for the people through good husbandry of resources and in diversifying the economy.

The prize has been awarded since 2007. Here are the awardees (text and photos taken directly from the foundation’s website):

Joaquim Alberto Chissano, 2007—Mozambique

In 1992, President Chissano helped to end Mozambique’s 16-year civil war and reconcile a divided nation, working tirelessly to negotiate piece with the RENAMO (Resistência Nacional Moçambicana) rebel group. To cement the reconciliation President Chissano offered 15,000 places in Mozambique’s 30,000-strong army to former opposition RENAMO soldiers.

President Chissano implemented a deliberate shift from Marxist-Leninist ideology to multiparty democracy and a mixed economy. He successfully negotiated a reduction in Mozambique’s debt repayments and oversaw reforms that have led to sustained economic growth. During his time in office, Mozambique began the journey of reconstruction and development, with improvements in healthcare, increased access to education and greater empowerment of women.

Between 2003 and 2004, President Chissano served as Chair of the African Union. During his presidency he was a powerful advocate for Africa on the international stage, particularly in promoting the debt relief agenda.

Festus Gontebanye Mogae, 2008—Botswana

At his inauguration ceremony in 1998, President Mogae vowed to address poverty and unemployment. His time in office was characterised by programmes to develop education and health infrastructure, and to privatise parts of the economy, notably the airlines and telecommunications industry.

Under President Mogae’s stewardship of the economy and careful management of the country’s mineral resources, Botswana experienced the steady economic growth that has characterised its post-independence history. Having been one of the poorest African countries at the time of independence, President Mogae consolidated Botswana’s place as one of the most prosperous countries on the continent.

After decades of enforcing strict anti-corruption measures, Botswana is regularly ranked as one of the least corrupt countries in Africa. Describing the principles that guided his time in office in his final State of the Nation address, President Mogae said that “prudent, transparent and honest use of national resources for your benefit has been my guiding principle and code of conduct”.

Following the Botswana Democratic Party’s victory in the October 2004 General Election, President Mogae was sworn in for a second term in November 2004. He again promised to fight poverty and unemployment, and pledged to halt the spread of HIV/AIDS in Botswana by 2016.

In April 2008, in accordance with Botswana’s constitution, President Mogae stepped down as President, having served two terms in government. He was succeeded by Seretse Khama Ian Khama.

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Addendum

In the face of massive aid in money and goods perennially provided African people by other countries and NGOs through the governments of their respective countries, small and direct-to-the-people efforts pay off at least equally well. In the above photo showing orphans in Kenya, you will see Jacinta Njoroge Lahti, a native of Kenya and a resident of Sweden, who founded the depicted orphanage and school. She is a member of the Rotary Club of Stockholm International, which club continues to be a major supporter of the school.

Note on figures used in this article

All figures were derived from The CIA World FactBook