by Steve Coll
The United States had not formally imposed economic or military sanctions on Equatorial Guinea. But America’s policies of restricted military aid and sales, and its constant harping on human rights and elections, amounted to “crypto-sanctions,” as Smith called them in his private arguments with State colleagues. These constraints limited American influence in Malabo and threatened to drive Obiang into alliance with China, France, India, and other less squeamish oil-importing nations. This was the case even though the country produced 450,000 barrels of oil per day, and American oil companies, including ExxonMobil, had invested about $13 billion that would be at risk if Obiang fell from power or stopped trying to curry favor in Washington.2
During 2008, Smith struggled to persuade his superiors in Washington of his viewpoints. In May, Equatorial Guinea staged parliamentary elections in which Obiang’s ruling party won ninety-nine out of one hundred seats. International observers raised doubts about the credibility of the polls, particularly given that the country’s opposition leaders had been harassed, jailed, and forced into exile for years. Smith believed, citing his firsthand observations, that the vote itself should be certified as “free and fair.” He failed to persuade Washington. Then, in November, Manfred Nowak, the United Nations special rapporteur on torture, visited Equatorial Guinea on an invitation from the government. Obiang’s willingness to issue such an invitation struck Smith as a sign of progress. Nowak, however, inspected police stations and prisons, found evidence of recent abuses, and declared publicly that the country continued to use torture systematically against prisoners who refused to make coerced confessions. “Torture Is Rife in Equatorial Guinea’s Prisons” was the headline on a U.N. news release about Nowak’s inspection.3 Smith criticized Nowak as a grandstander with preconceived ideas and argued that Obiang should be given some credit for openness. Not long afterward, Obiang was reelected to yet another term as president with 95 percent of the votes cast. Smith’s superiors at Foggy Bottom reprimanded him during his annual review for failing to take policy direction from Washington.4
Smith decided that Barack Obama’s inauguration and the changes of political appointees that accompany any new administration offered an opportunity to lay down fresh, reasoned arguments to reexamine American policy toward Equatorial Guinea. On February 27, 2009, he filed the first in a series of six analytical cables to Washington. Smith’s series offered a comprehensive review of Equatorial Guinea’s relations with the former African colonial powers of France and Spain; its recent business deals with oil-thirsty China; its internal clan politics; its struggles with corruption and government capacity; its security challenges; and the policy choices facing the Obama administration. Smith marked the cables Sensitive but Unclassified—as a practical matter there was little choice but to send diplomatic transmissions from Malabo through unclassified channels, as the embassy lacked cryptographic equipment. “Are We Out? Or In?” the chargé d’affaires asked in his first filing.
“Since at least Forsyth’s ‘The Dogs of War,’ E.G. has been a favorite takeover target for both outside and inside plotters,” he wrote. “President Obiang came to power himself in a coup likely assisted from the outside. He and his team know how it works. Though without official declaration, the country persistently operates under martial law-like conditions. This posture generates human rights concerns as documents are checked, guns are displayed, and foreigners get the fish eye.” Still, Smith concluded, American policymakers would be better off if they recognized that Equatorial Guinea “is less a rogue state than it is a rudimentary one.”
He argued, too, that American economic and energy interests required a new approach. “Under pressure from U.S. oil companies,” he wrote, “Embassy Malabo was reborn in late 2003. . . . Nonetheless, our current state might still be better described as half-born than fully hatched. . . . The internal ambivalence of [the State] Department, the specter of a reluctant Capitol Hill and associated oppugnant human rights N.G.O.s, and the argument of scarce resources has kept Embassy Malabo on a drip-feed in these early years.” He continued:
Despite open doors E.G.’s nasty reputation is sustained and our ability to address problems constrained. . . . We are behind the curve. Unfortunately, while American oil companies are paying the bills (NOTE: U.S. operators Marathon, Hess, and ExxonMobil are responsible for almost all current production and most of E.G. government revenues), it is still more often the Chinese, the French, or the Egyptians who get credit for assisting the country’s development by undertaking high-profile projects. Our official allergy to E.G. apparently acts as an appetite suppressant to most private U.S. companies that might otherwise be interested.
“There are good guys and bad guys here,” Smith wrote. “We need to strengthen the good guys—for all his faults, President Obiang among them. . . . We need to get serious about engagement,” Smith wrote. “It’s time to commit. . . . It is time to abandon a moral narrative that has left us with a retrospective bias and ambivalent approach to one of the most-promising success stories in the region. . . . What do we want for Equatorial Guinea? Do we want to see the country continue to evolve in positive ways from the very primitive state in which it found itself after independence? Or would we prefer a revolution that brings sudden, uncertain change and unpredictability? . . .
“The latter has potentially dire consequences for our interests, most notably our energy security.”5
Since the failed mercenary coup attempt of 2004, which had been followed by Secretary of State Colin Powell’s reassuring meeting with Obiang at Foggy Bottom, the Bush administration had quietly trained Equatorial Guinea’s intelligence service, occasionally shared intelligence about threats to the regime and to offshore oil operations, and permitted training of Equatorial Guinea’s onshore police and security forces by the defense contractor M.P.R.I. (with human rights education as a part of the curriculum). The Bush administration had also inaugurated naval training exercises among visiting U.S. Navy warships, the nascent Equatorial Guinea navy and coast guard, and private security patrol boats operated by ExxonMobil, Marathon, and Hess—exercises that were designed, in part, to speed the time required by armed Equatorial Guinean vessels to reach ExxonMobil’s offshore oil platforms, if they came under assault. The administration dispatched General Charles Wald, deputy commander of European Command at the time, to meet with Obiang and assure him of American interest in the “shared responsibility” of protecting U.S. investments in the country. Not all of Bush’s advisers fully accepted this proposition: Cindy Courville of the National Security Council told Obiang’s senior aides that “because of market forces, the U.S. would benefit from Gulf of Guinea oil whether the U.S. had a good relationship with E.G. or not.” The administration would obviously not lightly abandon ExxonMobil, Marathon, and Hess, however. As the Bush administration’s quiet defense and intelligence cooperation with Equatorial Guinea deepened, Obiang pronounced that he considered the United States to be “our best ally,” and he was “lengthy and effusive in his praise for the current state of U.S.-E.G. relations.”6
The crypto-sanctions Smith complained about, as well as the limitations of Equatorial Guinea’s military forces, meant that it was easier for American-headquartered oil corporations to handle aspects of Malabo’s defenses than for Obiang to establish the capacity within his own Ministry of Defense. “The companies have better capacity to surveil than we do,” Brigadier Francisco Nugua, a special adviser to Obiang for national security, said. ExxonMobil and its peers installed and operated sophisticated “domain awareness” equipment in the waters around Equatorial Guinea, radars and integrated communications that allowed the companies’ security departments to track, identify, and monitor potentially threatening naval traffic. “If they see something, they communicate,” Nugua said. Cooperation between the oil companies and the Equato-Guinean navy and coast guard evolved to the point where, by 2009, the oil firms monitored “not only a hostile invasion, but illegal immigration” into Equatorial Guinea by boat from neig
hboring, poorer countries such as Cameroon.7
As long as these security engagements remained secret, and ran on bureaucratic autopilot in Washington, the United States seemed prepared to deepen its partnership with Malabo. The difficulty was, every so often, news reporting or investigations by human rights groups would turn up fragmentary information about the growing security ties, and the disclosures would provoke angry denunciations by members of Congress and human rights advocates. The U.S. Navy, for example, conducted four or five training visits to Equatorial Guinea after 2008, under its Africa Partnership Station program, until publicity about the engagement led the State Department to demand that the training contacts be suspended until Obiang’s human rights performance measured up.
Fortunately for Obiang, coup-prone African governments rolling in oil but lacking in arms and intelligence to defend their bounty had a discreet alternative to the Pentagon and the C.I.A. for defense support: Israel. Quietly, the Bush administration encouraged Obiang to enter into security and commercial ties with Tel Aviv.
During the cold war, the United States and Israel had occasionally collaborated covertly to shore up friendly governments in Africa. More recently, Israel had extended its global influence by using security partnerships to export its high-technology equipment and its hard-earned lessons in counterterrorism and defense against strategic surprise. Retired Mossad and Israel Defense Forces officers formed consultancies to sell electronic surveillance equipment, drones, gunboats, helicopters, and training packages to wealthy, insecure African regimes facing insurgencies or the threat of coup makers. These deals often had at least as much of a commercial as a security motivation, but even when profit figured to a great extent, the exported sales and training packages strengthened Israel by providing additional revenue for its defense and intelligence industries, and by building new global networks and political alliances. Israeli trainers and consultants peddling intelligence and defense systems quietly equipped Angola’s oil-rich, formerly Marxist government and Nigeria’s Joint Task Force, which battled unauthorized oil-thieving militants in the Niger Delta (as opposed to the authorized ones).8
In 2005, around the time the C.I.A. opened an intelligence liaison with Obiang’s security service, a Mossad officer approached Ruben Maya, Obiang’s national security adviser, according to a consultant to Equatorial Guinea’s government. A meeting in Paris followed. The Mossad “suggested that Obiang make a quiet trip to Israel and they would scan his plane and review his security,” the adviser recalled. This was a typical method by which Israel opened new intelligence supply relationships—it was the counterintelligence equivalent of a bank offering a television to customers willing to open a new account.9
After some false starts, the relationship between Malabo and Tel Aviv ripened. The more Obiang’s ministers and advisers learned about Israel, the more they identified with the country. Equatorial Guinea, too, was a small country surrounded by enemies. A global power like the United States could provide useful advice about defense strategy, but Israel’s advisers understood intuitively what it was like to be tiny, threatened, and unpopular. Among other problems, Equatorial Guinea struggled with coup-making conspiracies in West Africa that Obiang and his advisers believed were financed by networks of Lebanese traders. By retaining Israel for defense and intelligence advice, some of Obiang’s advisers felt, they would be sending a message to all potentially hostile Lebanese: We know who you are.10
By 2009, the Israelis had sold Equatorial Guinea electronic surveillance equipment and taken orders for armed speedboats, to be delivered in 2011. The defense ministry also acquired two small Ukrainian frigates that could carry a helicopter to sea. Regime protection was a visible priority; bodyguards at Obiang’s mainland palace practiced for would-be assassins at an outdoor shooting range mounted with human-size silhouetted targets. Some international diplomats in Malabo felt the Israeli trainers were not particularly helpful to their efforts to coax Obiang and his advisers toward political reform and the elimination of torture as a policing method; ex-Mossad officers doing business in Equatorial Guinea tended to exude a crush-your-enemies ethos that did not include much discourse about civil rights. The Israeli cooperation was not limited to defense and intelligence, however: Obiang also paid Israel to build and fully staff a modern hospital on the Equatorial Guinean mainland. Israeli doctors and nurses earning very healthy salaries provided international standards of care.
As his oil cash flow swelled, Obiang also bought attack Hind helicopters and rented out pilots and maintenance crews from Ukraine. The contracts provided that Ukrainian pilots would train local counterparts so that each helicopter crew would eventually have one Ukrainian and one Equato-Guinean at the controls in the event of hostile action against an invading force. Unfortunately, during one actual emergency, when gun-wielding Nigerian criminals arrived in Equatorial Guinea in fishing boats to rob local banks, the Equato-Guinean copilot did not turn up fast enough to give chase. A fully armed Hind followed the escaping bank robbers’ boat into the Atlantic with only a Ukrainian in the cockpit. According to reports that circulated afterward in Malabo, when Equato-Guinean officers speaking by radio ordered the pilot to fire, the Ukrainian declined, declaring that the direct, trigger-pulling use of lethal force was not provided for in his training contract.11
In Washington, Obiang’s lobbyists at Cassidy & Associates tried to keep the momentum of cooperation with the Bush admnistration moving. At State, their strategy was to argue, referring to Equatorial Guinea’s president, who had now been in power for more than twenty-five consecutive years, “I’m not telling you this is a good guy; I’m telling you that he’s willing to change.” To prove the point, during one meeting with high-ranking State officials, in late 2005, Obiang awkwardly handed over a check for $4 million to pay for development work in his country that would be carried out by the U.S. Agency for International Development. Normally, U.S.A.I.D. used American taxpayer funds to assist poor countries; Obiang said he would be willing to cover America’s expenses if the agency would help to improve his country.12
The gesture—and diligent pushing by Cassidy’s advocacy team—helped win Obiang a second visit to State Department headquarters, this time to meet with Condoleezza Rice, Bush’s secretary of state during the president’s second term. Obiang still maintained a residence in suburban Maryland and frequently visited the United States. A date was set for an April morning when Obiang was in the capital.
To prevent unwelcome publicity, both sides agreed that while Rice would receive Obiang formally in her office on State’s seventh floor, and two official photographers would record the meeting so that Obiang could display authenticating pictures back home, the meeting would otherwise be private—it would not be listed on Rice’s public schedule, and there would be no press notification.
As Obiang climbed into his car to ride to Foggy Bottom, one of his lobbyists’ cell phones rang. It was a reporter: “I hear your guy is going to be at a press conference.” The Cassidy team was stunned: Privacy had been negotiated and agreed upon, they thought.
There were three places at State headquarters where the secretary, by protocol, could greet an official visitor: outside, at the dignitary’s car door; inside the main lobby, at the elevator; or up on the seventh floor, at the secretary’s office. Cassidy and Bush administration officials had agreed that to maintain secrecy, Obiang would travel up to Rice’s office to be met there, out of sight. Why, then, would Rice’s office have notified reporters of the meeting?
The reason, Cassidy’s lobbyists were told later, was that the Bush White House had decided that morning that Rice needed urgently to make a public statement about Iran, and that she needed to do so in the morning, Washington, D.C., time, so that it would be carried on evening news broadcasts in the Middle East, which was roughly eight hours ahead. The Obiang visit, scheduled for 10 a.m., presented the best opportunity for Rice to get her statement out. So the word had gone out to attract the press to an event that was suppose
d to be off the schedule.
Obiang and Rice did talk privately, at first. Seated in the secretary’s office, with other State officials and note takers present, Rice asked for Obiang’s help with diplomatic efforts to calm violence in Sudan’s Darfur region. She asked, too, if Equatorial Guinea would vote to support Guatemala’s candidacy for membership on the United Nations Security Council.
Obiang told her that he had sought closer ties with the United States government “for a long time.”
Rice asked Obiang about his “top priorities,” and the president mentioned health, sanitation, and education. The secretary “commented favorably on Equatorial Guinea’s improvements on the education front,” as a summary of the conversation put it. (In fact, according to United Nations statistics cited by the World Bank, Equatorial Guinea’s rates of enrollment and completion in primary school had declined between late 1994, before oil’s discovery, and 2009, when the country’s national per capita income was about $19,000.)
Obiang invited Rice to visit Equatorial Guinea. She said that if Obiang continued “with reforms in human rights and democratization and invested in the social sector . . . Equatorial Guinea could indeed become a model country in Africa.”
It was the sort of pablum that had been exchanged between Obiang and senior Bush administration officials ever since the 2004 coup attempt; like Colin Powell, Rice had gently mentioned human rights as an American priority, but she had not pressured or scolded Obiang.
They rose to meet the reporters waiting outside. Photographers snapped them standing together, smiling. Rice called Obiang a “good friend” of the United States. She went on to make her comments about Iran.13
The next day, the Washington Post pointedly reported Rice’s remark about America’s friendship with Obiang. Other journalists, human rights groups, and congressional aides soon denounced Rice for naively coddling a dictator. As the unfavorable commentary accumulated, Rice was “embarrassed, pissed off, angry,” an adviser involved in the episode recalled. It was yet another setback for Obiang and his regime in their effort to become West Africa’s Kuwait in Washington’s perception. Cassidy & Associates advised Obiang to wait for the next American president before pushing for more engagement.
