Oily Imperialists?

On Sunday, March 7th the Zimbabwe government detained a plane apparently en route to Equatorial Guinea. The plane, to use a variation of a Tony Blair turn of phrase, was full of "military-related-activities" equipment and alleged mercenaries preparing to engage in the support of a coup plot in Equatorial Guinea. The plane had apparently stopped to pick up weapons in Zimbabwe.

The interesting thing about Equatorial Guinea, a tiny country on Africa's west coast south of Cameroon, is that oil was discovered off the coast in 1995; enough oil to make it the third largest petroleum producer in Africa.

This month's Harper's Magazine featured Equatorial Guinea in its Annotations section. The piece focused on the fact that Equatorial Guinea's president, one Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, had hired Robert Cabelly, the managing director of the American lobbying and PR firm C/R International. Presumably President Mbasogo had hoped Mr. Cabelly would run interference for his regime. You see, in 2002 Mbasogo had 150 political opponents rounded up and accused of plotting a coup. Many were tortured, two died. Not exactly a model of democracy.

The Zimbabwe Home Affairs Minister claims that British, American and Spanish officials convinced police and military leaders in Equatorial Guinea to support the coup. To support this claim they apparently have a suspect in custody who agreed to cooperate with them, one Simon Mann, who they also claim is a member of Britain's elite Special Air Service commando unit.

This is a story still being unearthed, so verification of the connections to the British, Americans and Spanish is still forthcoming. But given the recent Bush Administration actions in Haiti, given the presence of large quantities of oil, and given the money needed to gather close to 100 mercenaries, their military equipment, and charter a jet, it is unlikely this plot was hatched by a disgruntled military leader in Equatorial Guinea.

In fact the British newspaper the Guardian had an article in November of last year highlighting an agreement between Britian and the US to secure African oil.

Perhaps Bush and Blair are uncomfortable with president Mbasogo's stability. The country's state radio did recently announce that the president is in frequent contact with the almighty. Note that I am talking about Mbasogo, and not President Bush, who has made similar claims about God.

It will be interesting to see how this story shakes out in the coming weeks. If the Zimbabwe alleged links to the US and UK are found to be accurate, it will be yet one more indication of the kind of incompetent idiocy in charge at the White House and No. 10 Downing St.