Torture and Poverty Are Part of Life in Equatorial Guinea

It has the makings of a modern-day fairy tale, the story of a country transformed from a pariah state into an oil paradise. But the reality is that Equatorial Guinea, almost unnoticed by the rest of the world, is experiencing a modern-day tragedy, a story of the dark niches of global politics in times of oil and terror.

After a long trip abroad, the president has just landed in Malabo, the island capital of Equatorial Guinea. It’s Sunday morning, the sky is one big, dripping cloud, and two days ago the price of a barrel of crude oil on the New York Mercantile Exchange hit $74. A good day for Equatorial Guinea.

President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo is a gaunt man. He is an excellent tennis player, and those who know him — and plan to remain in the country — describe him as modest and likeable. Human rights organizations, on the other hand, place him on par with the likes of Uganda’s Idi Amin and Cambodia’s Pol Pot.

There are a few ways to be removed from the United State’s list of pariah states. Regime change, negotiations and scrapping weapons and torture chambers are options, but the easiest way to be considered honorable by the United States is to discover oil. Lots of oil. After all, everyone wants to drive.

Obiang gets into his bulletproof limousine. A former lieutenant colonel, he is now 64 and the condition of his prostate compels him to make frequent visits to the Mayo Clinic across the Atlantic. The hospitals in his country aren’t nearly as good. In fact, they aren’t really recognizable as hospitals.

Spiegel