The (great-grand) mother of drug visas – II

By Kamran Shafi

AS I slowly reveal the twin cases of ‘The FO That Doesn’t Give a Damn’ and the ‘Equatoguinean Shyster and Crook Who Made Monkeys of the FO (Or Did He?)’, our most honourable senators will realise what a very big crime it is not to read the papers every morning. For these two cases have been written about for years now. By none other than I.

Here are this week’s titillations then: The drug smuggler, Santos Pascual Bikomo Nanguande, who made a monkey of the FO and its many ‘core-professionals’ and Mandarins (Or Did He?) and got nine years in a Spanish jail for his pains, was given the status of ‘official guest’ because, in the words of our then ambassador to Spain he was “accompanied by Alogo (no first name, no family name, just Alogo, please note senators) who was known to have visited Pakistan earlier in an official capacity”!

I ask you.

But who in heaven’s name was Alogo, Nanguande’s referrer to the Pakistan Embassy? He was none other than Joaquín María Alogo de Ondo Edu, the son-in-law of the president of Equatorial Guinea, President Teodoro Obiang Nguema! Alogo too was arrested as Spanish investigations into Bikomo’s activities widened in 1997, but was later released. In September 1998, his body turned up in Medellín, Colombia. (courtesy: Global Witness).

Shortly before his death, however, Alogo wrote a confession, subsequently passed to Global Witness, in which he claimed that his “luxury house in Madrid was used as a base for drug trafficking, document forgery and trafficking in Equatoguinean passports!” Quite a beauty, what, this Alogo?

So there you are, sirs, Nanguande’s referrer to the Pakistan Embassy, Madrid, and who himself had once enjoyed ‘official guest’ status to the Citadel of Islam, was a character vile enough to not only be arrested and investigated for drug dealing himself, but who was later bumped off in the world capital of drug smuggling, Medellin, Colombia. Fine company our FO keeps, what?

Nanguande too made a written statement while in jail, effectively nailing his own country’s name to the mast of iniquity and impropriety and the worst possible criminality imaginable. He said that EG was a ‘plaque tournante’ (a revolving door) in a narcotics trafficking network that was based around its foreign missions and use of their diplomatic bag to transport drugs. He also named senior regime figures who, he said, headed and ran the trafficking network. (courtesy: Global Witness).

As if all of this were not enough, a short look at EG’s president, Teodoro Obiang Nguema, in his own words: “I am the one who arranges things in this country because in Africa there are a lot of problems of corruption, the diversion of money. If there is corruption, diversion of funds, then I’m responsible.

“That’s why I’m a hundred per cent sure of all the revenue because the one who signs is me … I find myself forced to personally assume full responsibility as Sole National Paymaster General — even though many people are against this — in order to exercise the necessary control, since as president of the republic, the constitution holds me responsible for the proper functioning of all state institutions.” I ask you.

Incidentally, President Obiang is the nephew of the nation’s first president, Francisco Macías Nguema, whose oppressive regime is estimated to have exterminated or exiled one-third of the country’s population during his 11-year rule and who was tried and executed by his own nephew. They are all beauties are they not?

More juicy bits in the coming weeks, Excellencies, especially on EG the country which is a criminal enterprise if ever there was one. Proving the point that it was, indeed, the Great-Grandmother of All Drug Visas.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the despair I had spoken about last week has turned into hope as we Pakistanis ride, courtesy the Commando, a rickety roller coaster that can go off the rails any time, hurling us to our respective fates. This time the good vibes one felt during the prime minister’s visit to Mr Nawaz Sharif and the Punjab chief minister’s interview with Talat Hussain make one hopeful about the future. The body language of Yousuf Raza Gilani and Nawaz and Shahbaz Sharif was perfect; the things they said in the press conference were what one was waiting to hear.

CM Dost Mohammad Khosa impressed one no end. He was clear-headed, well-spoken and frank, looked his interviewer in the eye, and said all the right things. He was especially good when he defended his party leadership’s input in decision-making and when he repeatedly referred to his and the federal government as ‘coalition governments’. Very well done, young man, and may God keep you in His care.

And now, many felicitations and mubarak to the Sindh government and the federal government, respectively for returning the Hindu Gymkhana to the Hindu community, and considering to convert the death sentences imposed on prisoners to life imprisonment. In the first case, the building should never have been taken over; and in the second this country’s police investigations are just too unfair, too archaic, and one in which money talks too loudly.

Might one say here that Sarabjeet Singh too should be spared the death penalty as just another inmate on death row — his being an Indian national should make no difference. It is no good to leave his fate in the hands of an evidently bamboozled Commando.

In the end, may I once again urge the government to reconsider the appointment of General Mahmud Durrani as adviser to the prime minister on national security? If he must be appointed to a cabinet post for reasons that escape most of us, let him be adviser to the Commando on whatever. Why should someone who is so evidently in the American camp — one who has referred to the well-known American neo-con Shireen Taherkheli as the ‘mother-hen’ who made and then inducted him into the ‘Balusa Group’, an American-funded think-tank — be privy to what the prime minister says to, say, the Chinese or the Russians?

If there has to be an adviser on national security, why not the tried and tested General Naseerullah Babar who knows the tribal area and its norms and customs and sensitivities, and the people who live there, more than he knows the back of his hand? (Please, I have not met the general, nor spoken to him, in at least eight years, even 10).

Bushism of the week: “Let me start off by saying that in 2000 I said, ‘Vote for me. I’m an agent of change.’ In 2004, I said, ‘I’m not interested in change — I want to continue as president. Every candidate has got to say ‘change.’ That’s what the American people expect,” — President George W. Bush; Washington, D.C., March 5, 2008. n

kshafi1@yahoo.co.uk