June 18, 2004 (CBS)
With gas prices hitting record levels this summer, and violence in the Middle East unabated, America has been scouring the globe searching for new sources of oil.

And one could be Equatorial Guinea, a tiny nation that's been dubbed the Kuwait of Africa because it has so few people and so much oil.

It used to be called the armpit of Africa because it was so desperately poor. But since the discovery of oil 10 years ago, that has started to change.

In fact, as Correspondent Bob Simon reported last fall, African countries like Equatorial Guinea will provide as much as 25 percent of America's oil in the next decade.

And giants like Exxon-Mobile are pumping out more of it all the time.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The oil workers come in droves, and there are so many that there's now a weekly flight direct from Texas to Equatorial Guinea called the Houston Express.

The country has the third largest reserves in Africa, so the men know what they're here for, even if they're not quite sure where they are.

The men are bussed straight to a compound, and then out to sea – the oil is offshore. Simon visited an offshore platform in the Gulf of Guinea. There is lots of oil a couple of miles under those waters.

The big discoveries began in the '60s in Nigeria, Angola and Cameroon, but remarkably no one could find much of anything in the waters off Equatorial Guinea. The Spanish tried and failed, so did the French, and the giant American companies simply weren't interested.

Then, in 1992, a tiny American firm scraped together some money, bought a concession to explore, and hit the jackpot.

“You know, when they tell you, you don't have anything, you make a deal,” says Pierre Atepa, an adviser to the Guinean president. “And they say, ‘OK, let's hit a deal. If we find, we take almost everything.' You know, you may as well have a little bit of everything than everything of nothing.”

Equatorial Guinea got to keep a mere 12 percent of the oil revenues in the first year of its contract -- not much of a deal considering that other African countries were keeping as much as 60 percent.

ExxonMobil, which struck that first production deal, wouldn't talk to 60 Minutes about it. So we talked to Alex Vines, a senior researcher for Human Rights Watch, who specializes in Equatorial Guinea.

According to Vines, the negotiators were amateurs: “They had no clue and I'm sure that the boys from Texas understood that this was a good one to get in the bag. ...This was not a good deal at all for Equatorial Guinea.”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This former Spanish colony is a tiny country, the size of Maryland, with a population of only half a million. It’s an exquisite place, a great place to live if you're a butterfly. But not so great if you're not. Most people are dirt poor, earning about $1 a day. Most don't have access to clean water or sanitation, and the malaria is the deadliest on the planet.

But if the oil revenue hasn't helped them, it's done a lot for the country's ruler. From the moment you arrive, you can't avoid the sight of His Excellency, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo. And however long you stay, you never lose sight of President Obiang. He is everywhere, even occasionally in person. But he can't be all that confident of his people. His bodyguards are specially imported from Morocco.

60 Minutes was there when President Obiang celebrated the 24th anniversary of the military coup that brought him to power. His predecessor's regime was so brutal that a-third of the nation was either killed or went into exile.

That predecessor was President Obiang's uncle. When he seized power, Obiang threw his uncle into prison, put him on trial and had him executed.

President Obiang has won big since oil was discovered – and now he is bestowing on himself and his family the lifestyle of the rich and famous. The president visits Washington, D.C. A lot. He's bought a couple of mansions in the D.C. area – and he paid $2.6 million in cash for one.

Obiang's first son, Teodoro, Jr., has also been picking up mansions -- even one in his own country, where he doesn't spend much time. When he's not in Hollywood or Rio, you're likely to find him in Paris, where he lives in one of the best hotels, and coasting down the Champs Elysees in his Bentley.

In a film shot by French TV a few years ago, there was a Lamborghini waiting to take him on a shopping spree. He bought more than 30 suits in a shop that day. Everywhere he goes, he's accompanied by his country's ambassador to France.

Not only is he the son of the president, and considered by many a likely successor, he's also the minister of infrastructure. The oil business is in the hands of his brother Gabrial, the president's cousin is inspector general of the Armed Forces, and his brother runs the security services. It’s all in the family.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For all others, the president says he'll make sure the oil wealth trickles down. And he's doing his bit, offering handouts to the grateful multitudes on special occasions.

The president is grateful, as he told 60 Minutes when Simon sat down with him in his palace.

“The oil has been for us like the manna that the Jews ate in the desert. And we have to follow the rules to make sure this manna reaches all the people in Equatorial Guinea,” says President Obiang.

“Well, I mean theoretically, absolutely the president's right, but you know, ‘Where's the beef?’" asks Vines. “Equatorial Guinea is one of these very rare countries - less than half a million people who could really benefit from vast oil wealth. But we're not seeing much evidence of it yet.”

There's not much evidence of democracy, either. There are no newspapers or bookstores. Television and radio are controlled by the president and his family. And at the main station, a government official recently announced to the nation that their president is none other than God. That was after the last election, in which the president won 97 percent of the vote. Impressive, perhaps, but this is in fact less than previous years.

Is the president worried that his popularity is slipping?

“My popularity at the moment is not decreasing. In a sense it's actually growing,” he says. “It's growing, because if I obtain 97 percent of the elections, it just shows there is no one left in the opposition.”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Maybe that's because the opposition's leaders were locked up in the notorious Black Beach Prison when the elections were held. One prisoner, Placido Mico, was released last August after spending more than 400 days behind bars.

“I have been in prison with more than 100 people who were tortured by Obiang's brother, ‘El Armengol,’ and his cousin Antonio, the people that eat with Obiang every day. His brother, cousins, close relatives, bodyguards have been torturing these men I lived with in prison for 14 months,” says Mico, who has been in prison more than eight times.

“The first time they tried to accuse me of slander. Sometimes they don't bother to accuse me of anything. This time they have tried to accuse me of plotting a coup against the president.”

John Bennett, a former U.S. Ambassador to Equatorial Guinea, says political show trials are a permanent feature of the regime: “Usually the prisoners, when they're brought in, there are very clear signs of torture. Sometimes they can't walk. Or barely can walk. Because the bottoms of their feet have been beaten off. If you've ever seen a person limp on both legs, you know you're in Equatorial Guinea.”

When Ambassador Bennett named one of the torturers and highlighted these abuses in the State Department's annual human rights report, he received a death threat. He's convinced it came from a member of the ruling clan. Not only that, he says American oil executives were not happy with him.
“And one of them [a senior executive of an oil company] just really was irritated. To the point of yelling at me,” says Bennett. “Because it interfered with the way they wanted to do business with the government.”

But now that there are a lot of U.S. oil men in Equatorial Guinea, does Bennett think this will be an indication of how they will react to the continuing human rights abuses?

“It (hasn't) bothered investments, certainly. Investment has gone up over $5 billion if I understand correctly, from U.S. firms,” says Bennett.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
And how close are the U.S. firms to the president? Well, for starters, oil company compounds are built on land owned by the president, and leased from him for a princely sum. And when the president comes to the states, the companies entertain him lavishly.

As first reported by the Los Angeles Times, American oil companies have been depositing hundreds of millions of dollars in oil royalties into an account controlled by President Obiang at a branch of the Riggs Bank in Washington, D.C.

“I still believe that this is a state secret -- that is, secret from outsiders and not from the government itself. The government knows very well the amounts we've been given,” says President Obiang.

After Sept. 11, it became crystal clear that the United States needed to diversify its oil sources.

“Somewhere like Equatorial Guinea is particularly strategic because I mean, figure it's non-OPEC and it's non-Muslim oil that's very attractive for the U.S.,” says Vines. “But if you have greater disenfranchisement and frustration by the local populations who see no benefit from oil, they may become festering zones for other types of individuals who want to manipulate this, including sympathizers to al Qaeda or other groups that may have an anti-American interest involved.”

Not only did the executives of the major oil companies operating in Equatorial Guinea refuse to be interviewed by 60 Minutes, they also prohibited their employees in the country from speaking with us while we were there.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
UPDATE: Since this story first aired last fall, federal investigators have reportedly been looking into American oil companies and their real estate dealings in Equatorial Guinea -- to determine whether they improperly benefitied President Obiang.

Sources close to the investigation are examining whether the oil companies paid prices so far above market value that they violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

U.S. Oil Politics in the 'Kuwait of Africa'
"We've found in excess of 500 million barrels of oil here, and we expect that to grow to at least 1 billion--and that's not to say that we won't find more. This is one of the hottest spots in the world right now." The speaker is Jim Musselman, head of Triton Energy, and the spot he's talking about is Equatorial Guinea, a tiny nation located on the west coast of Africa. We're sitting in the front room of his comfortably appointed government villa in the capital city of Malabo, and though it's blistering hot outside, the villa's interior is pleasantly cool. It's one of dozens that the government, flush with oil revenues, has built for visiting foreign dignitaries and businessmen, and that sit inside a walled compound guarded by soldiers posted in towers spaced alongside the perimeter.

Equatorial Guinea has long been one of the poorest and most neglected nations on the planet, but within a few years the country could be producing as much as 500,000 barrels a day--one per capita--which would make it sub-Saharan Africa's third-largest producer behind Nigeria and Angola. Thanks to oil, Equatorial Guinea's economy is projected to grow by 34 percent this year, more than twice the rate of any other nation's. It is also thanks to oil that under George Bush there's been a slow but steady blossoming of relations between the United States, which buys almost two-thirds of Equatorial Guinea's petroleum, and the government of Brig. Gen. Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, who took power in a coup in 1979.
==========================================================

What makes Equatorial Guinea especially important today, Musselman says, is political turmoil in the Persian Gulf and other regions from which the United States imports petroleum. "There is plenty of instability in the world, and the more diverse supplies of oil we have, the better off things are," he says. "Knock on wood, this country is stable and the president is sincerely trying to improve things. It's not going to turn into suburban Washington, but it could be a model for this part of the world."

With its newfound oil wealth and tiny population, Equatorial Guinea could indeed be a model in a region known for dictatorial rule and gross corruption. But that prospect seems unlikely given that the Obiang regime is generally considered to rank among the world's worst--an assessment shared not only by human rights groups but also the CIA. The agency's current World Factbook says that America's new strategic partner is a country "ruled by ruthless leaders who have badly mismanaged the economy." From outside the villa walls, it's easy to see how the CIA reached that conclusion.

Bringing the Oil Home

During the cold war, the United States viewed Africa as a major battleground with the Soviet Union and poured billions of dollars of economic and military aid into the continent. After the collapse of Communism, though, American interest waned. As recently as 1995, a Pentagon report concluded that the United States had "very little traditional strategic interests in Africa." But during the past few years, Africa has become a growing source of American oil imports--especially West Africa, which in oil parlance is considered to include Angola as well as Nigeria, Congo Republic, Gabon, Cameroon and now Equatorial Guinea. The United States already buys 15 percent of its oil from West Africa--nearly as much as comes from Saudi Arabia--a figure expected to grow to 20 percent within the next five years and, according to the National Intelligence Council, to as high as 25 percent by 2015.
============================================================

There's been virtually no public discussion or debate about America's growing appetite for West African oil, though it has significant economic, military and geopolitical implications. While these countries are not Islamic regimes--a fact frequently emphasized by American strategists--US allies in West Africa are not especially attractive. In Angola, petroleum revenues have allowed the government of José Eduardo dos Santos to build a vast military and internal security apparatus. Other than oil, Angola produces little besides artificial limbs for war victims, but dos Santos has become by some estimates one of the world's fifty richest people. Nigeria, though it formally made the transition from military dictatorship to democratic rule in 1999, is also a disaster. The army has committed several massacres of civilians since President Olusegun Obasanjo took power, and a parliamentary report recently accused his administration of corruption and ineptitude. "The Middle East presents a number of problems, but most West African regimes are neither stable nor democratic," says Terry Karl, a professor of political science at Stanford University and author of The Paradox of Plenty: Oil Booms and Petro-States. "Oil development in that context is likely to buffer authoritarian rule and foster corruption, instability and environmental destruction."

None of this has dimmed West Africa's allure in foreign policy circles. In January the Council on Foreign Relations hosted an event on the growing importance of Africa ("America's Response to Terrorism: Managing Africa's Oil Revenues in a Changing Global Climate"), and Wihbey's institute held a similar affair. The latter, at downtown Washington's tony University Club, was attended by oil company executives, Bush Administration officials, corporate lobbyists and representatives from a number of African embassies, including Teodoro Biyogo Nsue, Equatorial Guinea's ambassador to the United States (and General Obiang's brother-in-law). Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Walter Kansteiner gave the introductory talk, which had the vague ring of a revival meeting sermon. "African oil is a national strategic interest," he told the crowd. "It's people like you who will...bring the oil home." Other speakers included Lieut. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, an Air Force officer assigned to the Defense Secretary's office, who said the United States needs to step up military training for African oil producers so that those countries can "secure their property, their investment and our investment."
=====================================================================

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.

The Thaw

Just a few weeks after the embassy closed its doors, several US companies found significant petroleum reserves off the coast of Equatorial Guinea. Subsequent discoveries led firms such as ExxonMobil and Chevron, as well as small independents like Ocean Energy, Vanco and Triton, to invest a collective $5 billion in Equatorial Guinea. Sweetening the deal for the oil companies is the fact that the Obiang regime gave them as much as 87 percent of the oil receipts. (That figure has now dropped to about 75 percent, but it's still far above what they get in much of the Third World, which is frequently 50 percent or less.)

As US economic interests grew, a slow political shift in Washington-Malabo relations emerged. In June of 2000, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation approved $373 million in loan guarantees for construction of a methanol plant in Equatorial Guinea, its largest program ever in sub-Saharan Africa. Two US companies--Noble Affiliates and Marathon--together hold an 86 percent share in the plant. Five months later, Louisiana Representative William Jefferson led the first-ever Congressional delegation to Equatorial Guinea, taking along representatives of Baton Rouge-based Shaw Global Energy Services. Several Congressional staffers also traveled to the country, among them Malik Chaka, a top aide to Representative Ed Royce, chairman of the House Subcommittee on Africa. "There's still a great deal of room for improvement in terms of democracy and transparency, but they are desirous of closer relations with the United States," he says. "We need to take advantage of that by working with them."

In general, though, the Clinton Administration did little to improve relations with Obiang. The primary reason, according to oil company officials, was opposition from Susan Rice, Clinton's Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs. "Obiang began to reach out in the late 1990s to improve his image, but there was little to suggest that there was any substance to it," she recounted during a recent interview. "Equatorial Guinea was a poster child of undemocratic practices."

All independent observers of Equatorial Guinea share that assessment. Freedom House, the conservative human rights organization, lumps the country in a group with North Korea, Burma, Iraq and a few other pariahs as the world's most oppressive regimes. The State Department's human rights report states, "The government's human rights record remained poor.... The security forces committed numerous abuses, including torture, beating, and other physical abuse of prisoners and suspects."

A Bush official I spoke to said he didn't see any signs of improvement in the Obiang regime's practices, and he asserted that the Administration will not ignore human rights violations to accommodate the oil industry. "Our policy is to advance human rights and democracy," he said. "There's no trade-off here."

Despite such talk, there's been a marked if unpublicized improvement in Washington-Malabo ties since Bush took office. Last November Bush quietly authorized the opening of a new US Embassy in Malabo (one site being considered is on land owned by the oil companies), a huge victory for the Obiang regime. A well-placed government source told me that the Administration will soon remove Equatorial Guinea from a list of fourteen African nations that are barred on human rights grounds from receiving trade benefits under a bill passed by Congress in 2000. Meanwhile, the State Department has given the green light--barring unforeseen Congressional opposition--to a program under which Military Professional Resources Inc. (MPRI), a private firm led by high-ranking Pentagon retirees, will train a Guinean Coast Guard that can protect the offshore oilfields. "They do have a poor human rights record, but so did the Nazi government, and we did pretty well with Germany after World War II," says retired general Ed Soyster, a former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency who works at MPRI.

The political thaw has come in response to intense lobbying from the oil industry, which has sought to portray Obiang as a born-again reformer and, more credibly, Equatorial Guinea as a potentially huge new source of oil. "For a long time our relationship with Equatorial Guinea revolved around human rights," one oil company official told me. "That's a legitimate concern, but now that the energy picture is changing, that introduces something to balance out the dialogue."

It helps that the companies active in Equatorial Guinea have close ties to the Bush Administration. In addition to political heavyweights like ExxonMobil and Chevron, those firms include CMS Energy (which recently sold its holdings in Equatorial Guinea to Marathon). CMS's CEO, William McCormick, gave $100,000 to the Bush-Cheney 2001 Presidential Inaugural Committee. Ocean Energy's consultant on its Malabo operations is Chester Norris, a former ambassador to Equatorial Guinea under George Bush Sr. Perhaps best connected of all is Triton, whose chairman, Tom Hicks, made Bush a millionaire fifteen times over when he bought the Texas Rangers in 1998. Hicks's leveraged buyout firm, Hicks Muse, is Bush's fourth-largest career financial patron, according to the Center for Public Integrity.

Bush's decision to reopen the US Embassy was taken soon after he received a plea to do so from the oil industry. "It is important to underscore that most of the oil and gas concessions awarded in Equatorial Guinea to date, have been awarded to US firms," said a memo drafted on behalf of the oil companies and sent to Bush last year. "This is in stark contrast to neighboring countries in the region, where the United States has consistently lost out to French and other European and Asian competitors." Sisinio Mbana, first secretary at Equatorial Guinea's embassy in Washington, told me that at least four Bush Administration officials have consulted with Guinean leaders, including two from the State Department who have met discreetly with Obiang. "The oil companies have done a lot for us," Mbana said. "The State Department gets its information about Equatorial Guinea from them."

In addition to direct lobbying, the oil industry sought to improve Obiang's image by hiring the services of Bruce McColm, a former head of Freedom House who now runs the Institute for Democratic Strategies (IDS), a Virginia-based nonprofit whose stated mission is "strengthening democratic institutions." The Obiang regime's most tireless champion, McColm works closely with the government, which now pays him directly. (According to its latest nonprofit tax form, the IDS spent $223,000 in 2000, of which all but $10,000 went toward its Equatorial Guinea work.) In 2000 McColm sent a team of observers to monitor Equatorial Guinea's municipal elections, which it reported to be basically free and fair. "Electoral officials should be recognized for discharging their responsibilities in an effective and transparent manner," said an IDS press release at the time. "Observers generally felt that the positives of this election far outweighed the negatives." This was in marked contrast to a UN report that said the electoral campaign "was characterized by the omnipresence of the [ruling] party, voting in public and the intimidating presence of the armed forces."

The oil companies have also worked through the Corporate Council on Africa, which represents companies with investments on the continent. Last year the council published a "Country Profile" of Equatorial Guinea, which was paid for by six oil companies and AfricaGlobal, a DC lobby shop that at the time represented Obiang. The guidebook not only promotes the country as a new investment hot spot but also claims that the Obiang regime "has taken significant measures to encourage political diversity and address human and worker rights issues." On February 8, the council sponsored a private luncheon for Obiang, who was visiting Washington with a small entourage. The event was held in the chandeliered dining room of downtown Washington's Army-Navy Club, and each of the roughly fifty guests in attendance received a biography of Obiang, prepared by McColm's IDS, that describes him as the country's "first democratically elected president" and a man who has "embarked on the total physical reconstruction of his country and the improvement of the welfare of all its citizens."
=====================================================================

Spot any major new construction project or prominent business in Equatorial Guinea and it's almost certainly owned by or built for the benefit of Obiang and his cronies. The terminal at the Malabo International Airport is a dilapidated shack, yet a few hundred yards away sits a gleaming new presidential wing. On the road into town, soldiers guard two vast homes sitting across the road from each other: Obiang resides in one and the First Lady in the other. (Obiang has two wives; the second, who hails from São Tomé and has lesser status, lives in a large if less ostentatious home a short distance away.) Gabriel Obiang lives in a new mansion that sits across from Paraiso, a gaudy new restaurant and club for the elite that also boasts a swimming pool, weight room and disco. It is owned by one of the president's brothers, as is the Hotel Bahia, which offers Malabo's finest if decidedly humble lodging. (It's also where Frederick Forsyth wrote The Dogs of War, his 1974 book about a small band of mercenaries who overthrow a corrupt African regime.) Rich Guineans live in a few exclusive communities, like Pequenha Espanha--Little Spain--which has a hilltop view of the ocean. SUVs are parked in front of the neighborhood's homes, and satellite dishes shine from the roofs. Cleaning, gardening and guard duty are handled by slum dwellers.

Yolanda Asumu, a South Carolina native who moved here eleven years ago with husband Severo--he handles government relations for Triton and is a close friend and tennis partner of Obiang's--says that oil has brought many benefits. When she arrived there were just a few dozen cars on the whole island; now the roads teem with vehicles. Communications a decade ago were so backward that making a long-distance call required ringing the operator in Bata, the biggest city on the mainland, who called back when a line was free. Today cell phones are considered de rigueur by the rich. "There are a lot more flights in and out of the country, so it's much easier to get to Europe or the United States," she says. "Life here is better."

Few of the poor, who make up 90 percent of the population, would agree. I traveled through a good chunk of the poorer neighborhoods in Malabo and didn't see any sign of government investment. The oil companies pay extremely well by local standards--between $500 and $1,000 a month--but they have created relatively few jobs, as only a handful of Guineans have the training for the highly technical offshore work. Much of Malabo's population is unemployed, or they work as street vendors. In the Los Angeles neighborhood there's a huge open market where hundreds of sellers sit under stalls topped with corrugated metal and sell shriveled tomatoes, pineapples, bananas, papaya and okra, as well as dried fish, and chicken feet and necks. Homes here--tiny wooden shacks or stucco structures that run back-to-back along the dirt roads--don't have running water, so residents rise at 5 am to trudge to a well about a kilometer away.

Most people who live in Los Angeles can't afford electricity, so when the sun goes down, the shantytown is pitch dark apart from the candles and lanterns glowing behind windows. With the heat in the 80s even at night, just about everyone seeks relief outdoors. "Why look for work when there isn't any?" replied one 25-year-old woman sitting on a stool outside her home when I asked if she had a job. Her family--two kids and her husband, who drives a cab--eats a full meal once a day, typically a stew of yucca, plantains and malanga (a type of potato), with a sardine sauce. "There's only one way to find a better life, and that's to get out," says the woman, who hopes to join relatives who have left for neighboring African states or, better yet, a sister who married a German and moved to Frankfurt.

There's one paved road leading out of Malabo, and within twenty minutes you're traveling through lush forest. Conditions here and in other rural areas, where 70 percent of the population lives, are infinitely worse than in the city. Many villages don't have a school, and production of coffee, cocoa and other agricultural commodities has collapsed. People survive by hunting and gathering fruit in the woods, a state of affairs that has prompted a flood of migrants to move to the slums of Malabo in the remote but alluring hope of finding work with an oil company. In one roadside village of half a dozen houses, a few residents sell bunches of crabs hanging from wood posts, plantains and papayas. An old man returns from the forest carrying a basket full of snails over one shoulder and a bag filled with wild rats--killed by one well-placed whack to the ear with a machete--over the other. When I ask him how oil has changed life here, I get a blank face for an answer.
=====================================================================

Democracy appears to be spreading about as slowly as the oil wealth. Guineans can choose among two TV and two radio stations--in both cases the government operates one and Teodoro Obiang the other. There are no daily newspapers, and the few publications that do circulate offer fawning praise of the regime. La Gaceta de Guinea Ecuatorial, a glossy monthly, is filled with interviews with government officials and local businessmen. The ministry of information sells Ebano, a thin newsletter; the issue I bought, for about $1, hailed Teodoro as "the minister most loved by the people for his pragmatic, humanitarian and very dynamic character." Criticism of the government is rare but tolerated--one article in Ebano denounced official corruption and said some officials "consider themselves to have won the lottery"--but direct criticism of Obiang is forbidden.

Obiang did legalize political parties in the early 1990s, though by then many prominent opposition figures had fled abroad and remained fearful of returning. The government has also banned a number of parties, and others have waited years to be recognized. Of twelve authorized opposition parties that do function, eleven have aligned themselves with the Obiang regime, after receiving cash payoffs and other blandishments.

Rafael, a tall man with flecks of white in his beard, belongs to the Convergence for Social Democracy (CPDS), the one opposition group that has refused to work with the government. Until a few years ago, he said, it was a crime to greet a member of the opposition. Obiang has lifted that law, as well as one that banned opposition members from owning a business or working (public-sector jobs and some private-sector positions still require ruling-party membership). "The government has taken some important steps," he says. "At least they are willing to talk to the opposition."

Rafael escorted me to an interview with the CPDS's leader, Placido Mico, who was jailed and tortured in 1993 and has been detained periodically since then. We met at party headquarters, a few rooms on the second floor of a run-down residential building. There's a desk at the front of the main room, upon which sits an old manual typewriter, and about fifteen school chairs. This, pretty much, constitutes the party's assets. Mico, 38, a short man neatly dressed in slacks and a short-sleeved dress shirt, and wearing glasses with one lens cracked, looks like a high school teacher, which is what he was before he ran afoul of the authorities. He is dubious of the government's political "opening," particularly as the oil bonanza has left Obiang less dependent on the kindness of foreign donors. "When you need aid you are more sensitive to international criticism," he says. "The government now has its own money and doesn't have to listen to anyone."

Mico's party has virtually no access to the media. It does put out its own publication, La Verdad (The Truth), a few times a year. The latest issue has been set to go to press for a week, but the party hasn't been able to print it because the city has been virtually without electricity. CPDS members can generally circulate freely in Malabo and Bata, but not in the rest of the country. And even in Bata, two party members have been in jail for the past four months, charged with "defaming the head of state." "If we send people to villages, the authorities will ask them for authorization papers," Mico says. "There's a climate here of intimidation and fear."

In many ways, that intimidation is directed more at the general population than at the political opposition. I heard an eyewitness account of a recent incident that took place in the small town of Luba. There a soldier shot a man drinking in a bar after he complained about the city's shortage of electricity. The man lay bleeding in the street for an hour before security forces allowed him to be moved to a hospital, where he died a short time later.