01 / PRESENT CONDITIONS

The Nigerian government is dealing with a pretender. They uncovered an agency within their own government that doesn’t exist and nobody actually approved.

The Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council (PFIPC) said it was a government council responsible for attracting foreign investment, aid and partnerships to the country.

Now the Nigerian government is claiming it was an illegal ruse.

The group was led by Prince Adeniyi Adeyemi Matthew, who called himself the DIRECTOR-GENERAL. The council was approved to hire hundreds of people in the national budget, had a great Instagram presence and Adeyemi was even going around meeting with other government officials.

Meetings with cabinet ministers, regulators, Nigeria’s anti-corruption chief and even foreign diplomats were happening on the regular. All of this was done from his office inside Abuja’s Federal Secretariat building.

He did this for roughly two years out in the open.

Cover was blown when the Ministry of Foreign Affairs became suspicious after Adeyemi held a meeting with ambassadors without notifying them.

An investigation was promptly launched. Among other blatant problems, authorities say the council created over 30 separate bank accounts, including one at the Central Bank of Nigeria.

Somehow, the council made it into Nigeria’s actual 2026 federal budget. It was listed along with other legitimate government groups with an allocation of about $1 million bucks.

Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu ordered the anti-corruption commission to investigate all of this ruckus. An official report later concluded that Adeyemi had never been appointed by anybody in the actual government.

So now he is being prosecuted for forgery and impersonation. The investigation uncovered additional fictitious agencies, as well as collaborators inside real government institutions. There will be more to come, surely.

Adeyemi denies the government’s version of events here, but he also repeatedly failed to make it to his arraignment, prompting a judge to issue a warrant for his arrest. Police found the self-proclaimed Director-General hiding in a village in Osun State. He is due back in court on September 30.

NIGERIA / GOVERNMENT AFFAIRS/ SEPTEMBER 2026

02 / NEW BUSINESS

VENEZUELA — The United States and (of?) Venezuela have arrived at an enormous new oil agreement, with the US taking a very direct role in developing Venezuela’s oil fields. Delcy Rodríguez insists that Venezuela is still in charge though.

COLOMBIA — The new president of Colombia has been in office a couple of weeks and is deepening military cooperation with the US and celebrating the killing of a major FARC dissident commander.

NICARAGUA — Nicaragua approved a constitutional reform that bars people and organizations deemed “traitors,” “coup plotters,” or foreign actors from participating in elections. It also increases the terms of the co-presidents (Daniel Ortega’s wife) from 6 years to 7, pushing the next presidential election to 2028.

03 / STATE MEMORY

In November 1981, mercenary of legend MAD MIKE HOARE was working to pull off a coup of the government of Seychelles. Mad Mike, famous for commanding mercenaries in Congo, assembled roughly 40 men for the job.

They were looking to get rid of then president France-Albert René and switch him with former president James Mancham. Mad Mike and his boys did not arrive dressed as soldiers. They posed as vacationing rugby players belonging to a charitable beer drinking club called the “Ancient Order of Froth Blowers.”

The Froth Blowers arrived carrying bags of toys supposedly destined for local children’s charities. Underneath the toys were AK-47s.

The plot was foiled at customs. One of Mad Mike’s men accidentally went into the customs declaration line. Easy mistake. The airport staff checked his bag and inside was an AK-47.

All hell broke loose. One pf Mad Mike’s mercenaries assembled his rifle and started blasting right there in the airport, and another was accidentally shot by another member of the team during the chaos.

At some point an Air India Boeing 707 landed. Mad Mike’s men hijacked it. They loaded their dead comrade aboard and ordered it flown to South Africa, where the passengers and crew were eventually released unharmed.

This ended an attempted African coup that had begun with a fake beer-drinking rugby club carrying assault rifles underneath children’s toys and was finished with the hijacking of a passing commercial airliner.

Back in South Africa, Hoare and his Froth Blowers were arrested. The episode was awkward because a later UN investigation found evidence concerning the plot’s preparation in South Africa, including meetings where the mercenaries were taught to dismantle and assemble their guns. Mad Mike was eventually sentenced to 10 years in prison for the aircraft hijacking, serving about 3 before being released.

ARCHIVE / NOVEMBER 1981

04 / BUILDINGS

Please see here India’s National Fisheries Development Board building. The group of 70 or so government employees diligently work out of a giant fish building right in Hyderabad.

It is important you know about this building.

05/ UNFILED

• Papa Doc ordered all black dogs in Haiti to be killed because he believed his enemy had shape shifted into one.

• A diplomatic feast in the woods between Leonid Brezhnev and Yugoslavia’s Tito.

• Vanuatu currently makes more money selling citizenship to foreigners than it does from any individual tax.

06 / REMARKS

Fake it until you make it. How? Just start making shit up, walk around and talk to people, forge documentation, and make sure you have an office to do it all in.

END OF THE PACKET — 09.3.26

This type of activity would usually require an explanation, but not for Papa Doc. That type of stuff was routine within the mythology he created around himself. During his 14 years ruling over Haiti, Papa Doc was busy being a total madman.

Some would say that Papa Doc spoke with spirits while soaking in his bathtub, sometimes wearing a top hat. He once had a severed head of a political opponent flown on ice to the National Palace so he could speak with it and gather information. There were supposedly a few other heads around on trays.

He created an aura around the concepts of Vodou. Usually, he would dress in a black suit, wear dark sunglasses and a little hat associated with Baron Samedi, the Vodou spirit connected with cemeteries. Papa Doc encouraged the idea that removing him might require confronting supernatural forces.

A few actually tried. This is the story of Clément Barbot.

The Enforcer

Clément Barbot was one of Papa Doc’s most important men.

Papa Doc was elected president in 1957 and Barbot soon emerged as a feared regime insider. Nicknamed the “Vampire of the Caribbean” for selling blood plasma gathered from the Haitian people to the United States, he was often described as Papa Doc’s “secretary”, bodyguard and (secret) police chief.

Following a coup attempt in 1958, Barbot helped organize the infamous Tonton Macoute, which were Papa Doc’s secret enforcers. Known for jean jackets and uncontrolled terror, Barbot was put in charge of Papa Doc’s shadow force.

Barbot’s increased power and influence made him dangerous to Papa Doc in some ways. Papa Doc had a heart attack in 1959, and Barbot took the wheel while he was under the weather. When Papa Doc came back to his senses, he viewed Barbot as a weasel who may have been attempting to subvert him while ill.

So Barbot was arrested in 1960 and spent roughly 18 months in prison at Fort Dimanche. When he was freed a few years later, he went straight underground and declared war on Papa Doc.

Snatch the Children

In April 1963, gunmen attacked a car carrying two of Duvalier’s children to school, including the island’s future dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier. A few bodyguards were killed, but the kids escaped unharmed.

Papa Doc was furious and first blamed Lieutenant François Benoit, a former army officer. He accused him of the attack since he was an opponent and a trained sniper.

Tonton Macoutes went to Benoit’s home, set it on fire, and killed members of his family. Benoit himself was not there and escaped the immediate retaliation.

Eventually, Barbot claimed responsibility for the attack on Papa Doc’s children. He claimed credit for killing three palace escorts during an unsuccessful attempt to kidnap Duvalier’s children. TIME reported that Barbot later characterized the attack to Papa Doc as merely “target practice.”

The aftermath of the kidnapping attempt resulted in the execution of more than 100 people, including many army officers.

But Barbot remained alive and in hiding. They even ambushed Duvalier loyalists, stole weapons and continued menacing the regime. Barbot reportedly called the National Palace to warn Duvalier that his coffee had poison in it.

Papa Doc sent back a message: “Barbot, you will bring me your head.”

Kill the Black Dogs

During the chaos, people started saying that Barbot could transform himself into a black dog whenever Papa Doc’s forces were closing in. It is unclear if Papa Doc ordered the black dog hunt himself, but everybody ran with it.

During a massive manhunt, regime enforcers started walking around looking for black dogs to shoot. Nobody is sure how many dogs were murdered.

Robert Heinl, then head of the U.S. Naval Mission in Haiti, later said that “word went out from Duvalier, shoot black dogs on sight” and that “it was months to come before any black dog was safe.”

Eventually, a human version of Barbot was found.

In July 1963, Barbot and his brother Harry were hiding near a sugarcane field not far from the capital, Port-au-Prince. Papa Doc’s forces surrounded the area and set the whole field on fire.

Barbot and his followers had to come out but were mowed down by gunfire. Photographs of their dead bodies were promptly sent to the newspapers, proving that Clément Barbot was finally dead.

The Ghosts Help

Supernatural theater was Papa Doc’s form of control.

There are many stories about his conversations with the dead, severed heads in the palace and Vodou rituals. He liked these stories. Nobody knew for sure if he had Vodou abilities, but it sure seemed like he did. Whether Papa Doc believed Barbot could turn himself into a black dog is impossible to know, but it was a useful story for a Vodou dictator.

Barbot was dead by July 1963, and the black dogs in Haiti were a little safer.

01 / PRESENT CONDITIONS

Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio (LULA) da Silva is feuding with the U.S. Secretary of State, Marco Rubio. So much so that he says he wants to work with Trump instead of Rubio as Brazil heads toward an election in October.

This is an interesting political pie. Lula is seeking another term, and his opponent Flávio Bolsonaro is the son of former president Jair Bolsonaro, who is on house arrest for an attempted coup against Lula himself.

After Rubio said Brazil was unfriendly to American interests in South America, Lula responded with some heat:

“There is a man who does not like Brazil, who does not like Latin America, and who is a pocket-sized leader, the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio…

He does not like [Brazil]. I told Trump:

‘This boy does not like Brazil.’ He is anti-Latin American, or A FRUSTRATED LATIN AMERICAN.”

Relations between the two countries are on the downswing, but Lula seems to like Trump a lot more than he likes Rubio. So he has increasingly tried to deal directly with Trump, with the Financial Times reporting that Lula has described Trump as the easiest person in the building to deal with.

Last week, Lula and Trump spoke by phone for over an hour. The Brazilians said it was a very friendly chat and Trump’s trade representative talked to their trade minister to arrange talks.

Lula is now hoping Trump helps smooth relations and clearly thinks Rubio is a stupid idiot. Is this a U.S. strategy or is Lula successfully slipping by Rubio?

Brazil / Tariffs / August 2026

02 / NEW BUSINESS

SAUDI ARABIA/FRANCE - Mohammed bin Salman and Emmanuel Macron both like manga and they are pals now. There will be Saudi investment toward a €6 billion Dragon Ball Z theme park. Reuters report

EQUATORIAL GUINEA - With 84-year-old Teodoro Obiang's playboy son Teodorín ready to succeed him, there is strain. The government resigned recently after Teodorín publicly blasted them, while BTI's 2026 report notes suspicions of a coup among the big timers opposed to his upcoming promotion.

NORTH KOREA - North Korea is displaying a robust consumer economy these days. There are flashy apartments, smartphones, and department stores with luxury goods. The FT reports that Pyongyang's success is propped up by a military relationship with the Russians. Financial Times report

03 / STATE MEMORY

Muammar Gaddafi was deeply in love with Condoleezza Rice and called her his “African Princess.”

Rice visited Gaddafi in Libya in 2008, becoming the first U.S. secretary of state to visit the country in +50 years. Gaddafi hosted her for a dinner and presented her with $200k worth of special gifts, including a locket with a picture of his beaming face inside and a FAT diamond ring.

He even had a video montage of her meetings with other leaders, accompanied by a song he had commissioned called “Black Flower in the White House.”

His love of Rice was not subtle. In a 2007 interview with Al Jazeera, Gaddafi mumbled “Leezza, Leezza, Leezza… I love her very much.”

Rice said he was strange and thought the song and video was weird. Eventually, Gaddafi’s regime collapsed in 2011 and his love of her further brought to light.

As rebels looted his compound in Tripoli, they found a photo album filled with photographs of Rice. It is weird that there are pictures of people flipping through Gaddafi’s Condoleezza Rice photo album during his downfall. Another bizarre footnote to his life.

ARCHIVE / THE CONDOLEEZZA RICE ALBUM

04 / BUILDINGS

The Russian Embassy in Havana is certainly monitoring the entire Caribbean. You can tell it knows which cruise ship you are on.

People have compared the tower to a sword, and even a syringe, but the building screams SURVEILLANCE.

The Soviets had a big intelligence presence in Cuba during the Cold War. They say that the building was simply a diplomatic meeting space. The Soviet Union fell apart only four or so years after the building was put up but it still remains a Russian embassy today.

05/ UNFILED

• A short note on Brazil’s former president Jair Bolsonaro who narrowly escaped justice due to screwing with a whale.

• Currently reading Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible by Peter Pomerantsev.

• Papa Doc claimed he successfully killed John F. Kennedy via a Vodou curse.

• Cameroon’s 93-year-old President has returned from his unexplained 10 week stay in Switzerland.

  

06 / REMARKS

Go on an extended vacation from your leadership position. Tell no one when you’re coming back and watch them scramble. Then randomly return and see who kept your desk in order.

END OF THE PACKET — 08.27.26

Every dictator must have a planned exit strategy, and I’ve been looking at the escape destinations of deposed rulers to see where they all went. Some places appear again and again.

This is a very brief guide to the preferred retirement destinations of the exiled despots.

01 / The United States of America

The United States has much to offer the exiled strongman. After 1950 or so, roughly a dozen deposed rulers of all sorts ended up there. For some, America was an obvious choice for its vibrant political atmosphere, protection for a price, and a government willing to let them stay.

Ferdinand Marcos — Philippines → United States

Ferdinand Marcos ruled the Philippines from 1965 through 1986 but became increasingly authoritarian after declaring martial law in 1972. Following a disputed presidential election, big demonstrations through the People Power Revolution and the defection of some of the big military leaders, Marcos and his family fled the coop.

They were evacuated by the U.S. military and went straight to sunny Hawaii in February 1986. Marcos remained in exile in Hawaii until he died in 1989.

Lon Nol — Cambodia → California

Lon Nol was running Cambodia from 1970 through 1975, during its civil war with the Khmer Rouge. He was part of the creation of the Khmer Republic, which only lasted a few years.

Classic despotic actions like suspending the country’s government assembly, restrictions on his political opponents and a reliance on hard military rule marked his time in charge. He was especially notorious for corruption during the war against the Khmer Rouge though.

Eventually, the Khmer Rouge forces surrounded the capital, Phnom Penh. His time was UP, so he left Cambodia in April 1975, eventually settling into exile with his family in California. He remained in the United States for the rest of his days, dying in 1985.

Paul Magloire — Haiti→ United States

Paul Magloire was a former army officer who had the top job in Haiti from 1950 through 1956 after pulling off a coup against Dumarsais Estimé. In the beginning the Haitian people were into it. He pumped up the tourism and started modernizing the islands with a bit of much needed infrastructure.

Then came the scandals and economic problems. Hurricane Hazel destroyed Haiti in 1956 and relief money for the people was misplaced.

Demonstrations were rampant and he resigned his post. He left Haiti for exile in 1956, ultimately going up to New York to enjoy the beauty of four seasons. Magloire did return home 30 years later after the fall of Jean-Claude Duvalier, Papa Doc’s fat son.

02/ The Federative Republic of Brazil

Brazil has also proven a reliable landing spot for the recently deposed. Quite a few exiled rulers settled down there in the tropics.

For some, Brazil can offer a reasonable combination of distance and space to disappear into a humid retirement. For Latin American strongmen, it also has the advantage of being close to home without actually being home.

Alfredo Stroessner — Paraguay → Brazil

Alfredo Stroessner ruled Paraguay for nearly 35 years. He turned the country into one of South America’s longest dictatorships mostly through rigged elections, a lot of censorship, tons of torture, and screwing with all of his political opponents.

This ended for him in 1989 when a former ally launched a coup just 6 months into Stroessner’s 8th presidential term. It worked. Stroessner fled to Brazil and was granted asylum, where he spent the next 17 years living quietly in the capital of Brasília. He never returned to Paraguay. He died in Brazil in 2006 at the age of 93.

Marcelo Caetano — Portugal→ Brazil

Marcelo Caetano was the final leader of Portugal’s Estado Novo dictatorship from 1968 through 1974. He maintained political censorship and the regime’s costly colonial wars in Africa despite attempts at reform.

His grip was broken during the Carnation Revolution, when the military seized power and Caetano surrendered after hiding inside a barracks. He was sent into exile in Brazil, where he settled down and taught at a college. He died in Rio de Janeiro in 1980.

Adib Shishakli — Syria→ Brazil

Adib Shishakli was yet another military officer who obtained power in Syria through a bunch of coups and ruled as a dictator in the early 1950s. Like all the other guys, he banned political parties, roughly suppressed opposition, and put down any resistance. Unfortunately, Syria’s Druze people were often a target.

Facing another military revolt in 1954, Shishakli resigned and fled to Lebanon first, but eventually settled in Brazil. It didn’t turn out to be a peaceful retirement. In 1964, a Druze man assassinated Shishakli as a form of revenge supposedly for the deaths of his parents during a bombardment of the Druze region a decade earlier.

03 / UNITED KINGDOM OF GREAT BRITAIN AND NORTHERN IRELAND

The United Kingdom has long been a convenient destination for rulers suddenly in need of a new place to stay. Most arrive from countries where Britain still had deep colonial ties. They come and settle in for rainy weather and a spot of tea.

Yakubu Gowon — Nigeria→ United Kingdom, 1975

Yakubu Gowon seized power in Nigeria following a military coup in 1966 and ruled through the Nigerian Civil War. This is when the breakaway state of Biafra was defeated after nearly 3 years of rebellion and mass famine.

Gowon was attending an event in Uganda in 1975 when his rivals overthrew him in a bloodless coup. He went into exile in London, where he studied at the University of Warwick and earned a doctorate before eventually being pardoned back home. He returned in the 1980s.

Valentine Strasser — Sierra Leone → United Kingdom, 1996

Valentine Strasser was just 25 years old when he took over Sierra Leone in a 1992. He did so through a standard military coup, making him one of the world’s youngest heads of state at the time.

He ran a military junta during the country’s civil war. In 1996, his own team removed him in another coup, reportedly sending him to Guinea before he eventually made his way to the United Kingdom, where he studied at the University of Warwick.

Strasser’s retirement was not great. He later was able to go back to Sierra Leone and was reported to be living in poverty with his mom.

Said bin Taimur — Oman → Britain

Said bin Taimur ruled Oman from 1932 to 1970. At the time, Oman was a very isolated place. Modern development was purposely limited by Said, and everyday life was subject to strict state control.

In 1970, his own son overthrew him in a coup supported by the British. Said was wounded during the event and was flown out to the United Kingdom. He spent the rest of his life living at the Dorchester Hotel in London and died there in 1972.

03 / The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia hasn’t hosted as many deposed rulers as the U.S. or Britain, but it took in one of the most notorious dictators of all time. The Kingdom offers an attractive combination of excessive wealth, discretion, and a government uninterested in sending its guests home if that’s not where they want to be.

Idi Amin, also known as His Excellency, President for Life, Field Marshal Al Hadji Doctor Idi Amin Dada, VC, DSO, MC, Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Seas and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular, ruled Uganda from 1971 to 1979.

This was a bad time for the country. It was Africa’s most notorious dictatorship, marked by mass killings, disappearances, and even the expulsion of thousands of Asians from the country. That is just the tip of the ice berg.

Control started to fracture over time, but after invading Tanzania and promptly losing that war, Amin fled 1979, first to Libya before going to Saudi Arabia. He settled in Jeddah, received a Saudi government stipend, and lived there for +20 years, dying in 2003 without ever facing a trial.

The Last Flight

Someone has to agree to shelter former despots, dictators and strongmen. Maybe it’s an old ally. Sometimes a former colonial power. Sometimes a neighboring dictatorship. And occasionally exile is proactively negotiated because giving an old strongman an airplane and somewhere comfortable to flee is preferable to continuing a civil war.

Now imagine your presidential guard has disappeared; there’s a crowd outside the palace and your jet is waiting on the runway. Where are you going?

01 / PRESENT CONDITIONS

Vladimir Putin recently went to the far eastern edge of Russia and visited a fish plant on an island that Japan says isn't theirs. He didn’t actually go fishing, but he did taste the product.

Putin has been on a press tour lately. He has a few problems, mostly including a huge war, drone attacks at home and keeping up with a wartime economy. This would be a lot for anybody, so he has been out and about showing face throughout Russia.

So he went to the Kuril Islands in the far east and toured a school, hospital and fish plant. A pesky 80-year-old sovereignty dispute with Japan remains a problem. The Japanese were not pleased with the visit.

This photo op happened on Iturup, which is the largest island in the group of four Japan insists are theirs. Japan calls the four islands its NORTHERN TERRITORIES and Russia governs them as part of SAKHALIN OBLAST.

Japan’s Prime Minister, Sanae Takaichi, was not happy about this visit, but the country released a recent defense whitepaper which talks about Japan’s military prowess and happens to list “Russia” 26 times and “Russia’s aggression” 6 times.

The artwork on the front of the defense pamphlet that has got everybody rattled.

Japan is undergoing its biggest military transformation in a long time. Their defense spending is headed towards 2% of GDP, and they are buying long-range missiles. Plus, they are getting loose on arms export restrictions and upping military cooperation with the United States and other countries the Russians don’t like.

I wonder if Putin read their Facebook post on his island visit.

One other interesting thing: the Japanese carrier force that attacked Pearl Harbor assembled at Hitokappu Bay on Iturup before departing for Hawaii in November 1941. Today the bay is called Kasatka Bay

Russia / Disputed Islands / August 2026

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02 / NEW BUSINESS

NORTH KOREA — You up? Donald Trump says Kim Jong Un has finally responded to his attempts to start talking again but he won't say what Chairman Kim said.

ZAMBIA — President Hakainde Hichilema won the Zambian election. The election was saucy, with vote counting suspended because people were roughhousing poll workers, while opposition officials were arrested during a raid involving opposition leader Brian Mundubile. There was some gunfire.

DOMINICAN REPUBLIC — The Dominican government expelled 9 Cuban officials last week and won’t tell everybody why. Cuba says Santo Domingo is listening to Washington’s wishes.

03 / STATE MEMORY

Celebrations are underway for Jiang Zemin, with ceremonies that marked what would have been Jiang’s 100th birthday. State TV aired a 12-part documentary on him and the central bank announced commemorative coins bearing his image. The youth call him THE ELDER.

Jiang was an engineer who emerged from the political unrest surrounding Tiananmen Square to become one of China’s bigtime leaders. Born in 1926, Jiang studied engineering, joined the Communist Party as a youth and began his explosive career as a technocrat.

China sent him to Moscow to train at the STALIN AUTOMOBILE WORKS, which was part of the Soviet effort to help China build out its own industries. Back in China, he subsequently clawed his way up through proving his salt in the factories, research institutes and government ministries.

Jiang’s break came in Shanghai when he became mayor in 1985 and later the Communist Party secretary. Student demonstrations started in 1989, and Jiang handled the unrest without any bloodshed. That is refreshing.

After some internal purges, the Communist Party leadership pumped up Jiang to general secretary. He survived the vicious internal politics, eventually gathering the party leadership, presidency and chairmanship of the Central Military Commission.

Jiang had a fascination with Western culture, and he liked a crowd. He had learned the Gettysburg Address in English as a kid and enjoyed reciting it to people. He also played piano and would sing and dance a little with foreign dignitaries when possible.

During his leadership, China started to embrace market economics, recovered Hong Kong and Macau, entered the World Trade Organization and became more integrated into the world economy. Jiang stepped down from the presidency in 2003 and eventually relinquished control of the military but remained an influential elder within China for years.

04 / OBJECTS

Here is Saddam Hussein and Saudi Arabian King Fahd looking at a golden gun in the 1980s. The gun was a diplomatic gift from King Fahd to Saddam.

There was a lot of money flying around then, mostly spent on weapons. Some say it was meant to symbolize the close relationship between Saudi Arabia and Iraq during the Iran-Iraq War.⁠

05/ UNFILED

• Napoleon Bonaparte’s birthday was on August 15, 1769. He was short but had a robust build.

• Currently reading — Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible by Peter Pomerantsev.

• A mini story on Putin’s career advancement

• Look out for the upcoming Dictator’s Guide to Exile by State Debris next week, with a sneak peek on the idea here.

06 / REMARKS

Burst out in song during your next round of diplomatic relations. This will make everyone a little more comfortable and you will be more likely to succeed.

END OF THE PACKET — 08.20.26

This week, Zambia held an election with a corpse problem. Bougainville would like to become a country, Myanmar’s junta wants to be taken seriously, and we remember Burkina Faso’s Thomas Sankara for being exceptionally well dressed. Also inside, some stylish Mao badges, Fidel’s 100th birthday, other presidential corpse issues, and Leonid Brezhnev driving a new Lincoln Continental.

01 / PRESENT CONDITIONS

Former Zambian president Edgar Lungu died in South Africa in June 2025. Some time afterwards, an odd dispute arose over his body. The Zambian government started to meddle with his funeral arrangements. Lungu’s MORTAL ENEMY, current president Hakainde Hichilema may have been involved.

The family wanted him buried in a South African plot of their own choosing. Against Lungu’s wishes, the Zambian government then fought to repatriate his remains for a formal state funeral and burial as is customary for dead presidents.

The rotting beef began when Hichilema ran for president against Lungu in 2016. He lost but tried to fight the results, which bothered Lungu greatly. Then in 2017, Hichilema’s convoy of vehicles supposedly failed to yield to Lungu’s presidential motorcade. Bold.

Lungu had the cops raid Hichilema’s house and charge him with treason. They sent his ass to prison for months but eventually the case was dropped. Later, Hilchilema challenged Lungu again and finally won the presidency in 2021.

Lungu died in 2025 and the scheduled burial in South Africa was stopped by a Zambian government court action on the day of the funeral. His remains have spent roughly a year in South African morgues while the two sides fought through the courts.

This June, South Africa’s courts overturned a ruling favoring the Zambian government. They said Lungu’s family could bury him wherever they want to. The Zambian government says they will keep fighting for the body.

Zambia held an election for president on August 13th, with Hichilema seeking another term. The major issues of the country involve inflation, debt and the funeral of Hichilema’s dead political opponent.

As of this morning, counting has been halted due to attacks on polling staff. The results are yet to come.

Zambia / Presidency / August 2026

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02 / NEW BUSINESS

MYANMAR — Myanmar’s heavily sanctioned junta man turned President, Min Aung Hlaing seeks international legitimacy in Thailand.

PAPUA NEW GUINEA — The people of Bougainville had a referendum in 2019 that produced a 97.7% vote for independence. The government is preparing for a debate in their Parliament on August 27th. September 1st, 2027 is the intended independence date. I wonder how King David Peii II feels about it all.

BOSNIA — Bosnia still operates under an unusually complicated political system created by the Dayton Accords, with an unelected international official supervising a peace agreement signed at an Ohio Air Force base in 1995. The acting High Rep is currently Louis J. Crishock, but a permanent appointment is yet to be made.

03 / STATE MEMORY

Thomas Sankara

It is August, and in August 1983, a group of junior army officers seized power in UPPER VOLTA and installed a fresh faced Captain Thomas Sankara as the president. He was only 33 years old.

Sankara was a super charismatic revolutionary with a vibrant red beret (cannot beat this style)and reportedly carried around a pear-handled pistol.

He spoke about snapping off his country’s dependence on France and the foreign aid with hooks. He renamed Upper Volta to Burkina Faso which means “Land of Upright People.”

He was about that austerity. Sankara sold off the state’s pack of Mercedes vehicles, replaced them with Renaults, cut some government officials’ fat salaries and viewed presidential luxury as a political problem.

His revolution lasted just 4 years. Sankara was killed in 1987 during the coup that brought his former friend Blaise Compaoré to power.

ARCHIVE / 4 AUGUST 1983

04 / OBJECTS

Mao Badges

Mao Zedong’s face was plopped onto billions of small aluminum badges during his time. Everybody that didn’t want to be a social outcast pinned them to their jackets, uniforms and everything else all across China.

They were a visible demonstration of loyalty to the state, and people even had rarer designs which gave them more clout.

Production eventually became too robust and in 1969 the government moved to curb the craze. The badge making was consuming vast quantities of aluminum and other materials needed elsewhere.

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05/ UNFILED

• Fidel Castro was born 100 years ago yesterday, on August 13th, 1926. He was sporty. Here he is going to straight to the basket.

• Currently reading: Pancho Villa Columbus Raid by Larry A. Harris 1949.

• There was once a plot in Malawi that involved flying another president’s corpse to South Africa and telling the nation he was alive.

• Leonid Brezhnev once visited the U.S. Presidential retreat at Camp David, where President Nixon gifted him a windbreaker and a new Lincoln Continental.

06 / REMARKS

Screw up your enemies’ funeral plans if you can. It will really set them back. Also, badges and berets are the decorations of the state.

END OF THE PACKET — 08.14.26

The Presidential Guard exists to create a hard crust between you, the military and the populace. This guard will defend your interests against all of the plotters and those who create coups. Fortunately, I have created a short and stout instruction manual to insulate yourself from the weasels.

Recruit Childhood Friends and Relatives

You need to focus on loyalty in building an efficient Presidential Guard. Talent comes second. The first step is to recruit people you trust.

A prime candidate would be someone such as a your friend who was decent at football and is still moderately athletic. Dress him up in your uniforms to portray a strong, robust guard. Also, perhaps you have a cousin who owes you money. He can pay you back with service and obtain further riches from you following your orders. Two good examples of friends and relatives that you can use to insulate yourself. You know them, you trust them, and you will pay them.

A good example of smart selection would include Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi Republican Guard. Saddam did not entrust the safety of his palaces to the Iraqi army. His special guard were recruited mostly around the city of Tikrit and included those within Saddam’s extended tribal network. He gave them the good equipment, fattened their wallets and comfortable duties in Baghdad.

The force was commanded at one point by a cousin of Saddam who was also an aspiring actor, Saddam Kamel. In the end the guard was ran by Saddam’s son, Qusay Hussein to ensure utmost loyalty within the ranks.

Another units to study would be Muammar Gaddafi’s Revolutionary Guard Corps. This unit was also stuffed with tribal alliances. At one point, they say it was filled with around 4,000 hand selected men from Gaddafi’s tribal region of Sirte.

A few of their duties involved generally monitoring the populace for suspicious behavior, enforcing ideological compliance, and hording keys to military stockpiles throughout the country.

Find Specialists and Pad the Uniforms

You do need specialists to keep things running smoothly. You can’t always hang with your friends and family and entrust them with the top jobs. Luckily, these people are amongst us and more accessible than you think.

I would recommend speaking with your local GameStop cashier. This type of man is comfortable dealing with unpredictable members of the public. He remains calm during big product launches, knows how to lock doors and keep people waiting. Another sleeper is your mailman. He likely yearns for the spoils of power and would jump at the chance to join your presidential guard. Why this profession? He would possess the extremely valuable knowledge of knowing where everybody lives. Another similar profession would be that of the crossing guard at a nearby school intersection. This person knows the vehicles of those who may become your enemies. Be open minded. You might not know these people personally. Go meet them.

The Kim dynasty in North Korea is famous for both recruiting and training specialists from scratch, many of which end up on the Supreme Guard Command. They employ social classification, physical standards, military selection and more to filter of those undesirable for the most important job in the land.

The Supreme Guard Command supposedly has around 100,000 members in North Korea divided into several different departments. They start their search for these candidates as children. Defectors say they pluck students out of schools with an eye for body physique, lack of scars or identifiers, and of course, a good family history (see SONGBUN).

The most interesting part is that once chosen, they can no longer contact their families for very long periods of time. Some reports say a decade plus. This ensures total loyalty to Chairman Kim.

Overpay Everyone and Share Spoils

Now that you have a solid line up, you must compensate them generously. A Presidential Guard should never wonder what it is like to have a different job. You must pay them very well. They should get the best food, housing, weapons and shiniest pins and uniforms.

Think outside of the box. Of course you need to take care of their families, give them fast promotions, etc. But really try to wow them. I am talking about a sports car here and there, maybe an imported purebred show dog for a top guardsmen. You need to keep them guessing and motivate them to impress you. Importantly, you must insulate them and create a separate social class from the rest of the populace to ensure loyalty. Overall, they have to feel like they are truly on the team.

Papa doc understood that loyalty was easy to keep when you chopped up the privileges. He had his infamous Tonton Macoute, which was a terrifying paramilitary group who dressed up in denim suits and hats, carried guns and routinely extorted, robbed and taxed the people of Haiti. He gave license to his guys to literally walk around and terrorize everyone to the point that the population lived in perpetual fear.

The Tonton Macoute were intertwined with Haiti’s vodou tradition which made Papa Doc’s control of the island very tight. Many of the senior Tonton officers were vodou practitioners themselves, which gave them a spiritual aura that made them even more effective at screwing with the public. Symbolism was key. They often carried machetes which were weapons but also had references to Ogun, a warrior spirit in vodou.

The name of the group was also frightening. Tonton Macoute, means Uncle gunny sack. This comes from a Haitian folktale about a bogeyman who carried bad kids away in his sack. The population had a superstition about a mysterious force that could appear and snatch people.

Rotate and Never Let them Outnumber You

A Presidential Guard shouldn’t become more loyal the bosses than to you. You need to regularly transfer, promote, fire, demote, or reassign members of your Presidential Guard before they build out their own little circles of power. A member of the guard is in charge for too long may begin receiving salutes that should be for you and you only.

Remember your cousin who owed you money? Now that he has a shiny uniform, some coin and sway over the general public, he might feel he owes you nothing. That situation would call for informing him of his new insignificant administrative job in a remote province.

Stalin was very good at this activity. He often would mix shit up and reassign important commanders to less important areas. They say that Stalin’s rule of the country, around 6 to 7 million people were sent into internal exile with most to Siberia.

Now You Know How to Survive

So there it is. A very short but useful guide on what I have learned. Just some quick notes.

A Presidential Guard is only built to ensure you survive. When your palace is threatened, it will probably be by your own army. It is your Presidential Guard who should be there to barricade the doors, and sneak you through the tunnel they made to get you on a gassed up plane to Miami.

Huge Bombs

Chairman Kim did not invent North Korea’s nuclear program. The state’s project dates back to the 1950s, when North Korea began developing nuclear expertise with expert Soviet assistance.

Construction of the Nyongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center followed in the 1960s, and by the 1980s the regime had built the infrastructure needed to produce weapons-grade plutonium. Kim’s grandaddy, Kim Il Sung, laid the foundation for this. Then Kim’s dad, Kim Jong Il, sped up the program after the collapse of the Soviet Union, withdrawing from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 2003 and overseeing North Korea’s first nuclear test in 2006. Then they followed it up with a second test in 2009. By the time Kim inherited the top rocket man position in late 2011, North Korea possessed a small nuclear arsenal and short-to-medium-range missiles.

Kim’s contribution was taking a regional security problem. Over the next decade, North Korea conducted four additional nuclear tests. Missile development accelerated at a very fast pace. New generations of intercontinental ballistic missiles appeared. Over a short period of time, many of the world’s governments started asking “What the fuck are the North Koreans doing today?”

North Korea has historically been viewed as a somewhat dangerous regional actor. But under Chairman Kim, it has become a permanent problem for global strategic planning. Every U.S., South Korean, and Japanese missile defense exercise now assumes North Korea may go wild at any moment. NATO discusses it. The United Nations debates it. Intelligence agencies monitor them more than others. For a small nation, North Korea has made a splash.

Robust Neighborhoods and Buildings

Reinforced concrete is the universal language of governance all over the planet. Chairman Kim has embraced this building material with enthusiasm. Since taking power in 2011, he has overseen the largest wave of construction in North Korea since the post-war reconstruction under his grandaddy.

Kim has favored developments that are impossible to overlook and here are just a few:

Ryomyong New Town

Completed fast, Ryomyong Street became one of Chairman Kim’s signature projects. The district added dozens of high-rise apartment buildings, schools, childcare facilities, commercial space, and the ANGELIC 70-story Ryomyong Apartment Tower to Pyongyang.

Mirae Scientists Street

North Korea built an entire neighborhood for the scientists. Mirae Scientists Street was constructed to house the true custodians of the nation, the intellectuals. These bad boys feature distinctive residential towers, educational facilities, and public spaces. It the capital’s most recognizable modern developments.

Hwasong District

The Supreme Leader drops announcements on new districts like it is nothing. The Hwasong development has become one of North Korea’s largest ongoing residential projects, with plans for roughly 50,000 new apartments across phases. Each year thousands of buildings are ceremonially unveiled, often on holidays.

The Ministry of Construction has motion.

Smartphones of the State

For much of North Korea’s history, telephones were limited to government facilities and a small number of privileged persons. When mobile phones came along, carrying one became a good way to attract the government’s attention, which is undesirable in North Korea.

Chairman Kim is young and cool though. He probably likes to use smartphone apps to pass time. So he built a North Korean version of the smartphone. Today, many millions of North Koreans use domestic devices such as the Arirang, Pyongyang, and Samtaesong phones, connected through the state controlled Koryolink cellular network.

The network was launched in partnership with Egypt’s Orascom in 2008. A nationwide 3G network expands across much of the country. It turns out the State is comfortable with everyone carrying a phone as long as the device remains ideologically compliant. Their systems include features designed to monitor every single thing you do (including some that capture screenshots of your activity). To use a phone means that you have an understanding that someone else may also enjoy reading your messages (just like everywhere else in the world).

Warfare in Europe

North Korea’s military has always been viewed as something that existed for massive parades and blurry satellite photos. Since 2023 though, North Korea has become one of Russia’s important military suppliers, shipping artillery shells, missiles, and other ammo for use in the war in Ukraine. By 2024 and 2025, North Korean soldiers were also deployed to support Russian operations, marking the country’s most significant military involvement since the Korean War.

This represented a big change for the Korean People’s Army. For decades it trained almost entirely within North Korea. Under Chairman Kim, the military found themselves contributing to a major European war.

The arrangement strengthened Chairman Kim’s strategic position amongst his jealous global peers. Russia gained needed ammo and manpower, while North Korea reportedly received food, economic support, new technology cooperation, and elevated diplomatic standing with a permanent member of the UN Security Council.

Chairman Kim’s Juche

Since the Supreme Leader assumed power in 2011, his government has weathered huge international sanctions, navigated serious economic disruption, and has still maintained a total political control over the state as a dictator.

This article was meant to highlight just a few of Chairman Kim’s achievements. There are many more to read about. The main thing is that he persists. It seems like every year analysts announce that the regime has entered dangerous waters. But still the parades continue.

Traoré, ruler of Burkina Faso, also known as THE LION OF AFRICA, or for the purposes of this post, “IB”, announced that the country had snapped off diplomatic relations with France, effective last month. The government accused the French of pursuing “neo-colonial ambitions” and meddling in the country’s affairs. Were they? Surely. It was an abrupt end to years of deteriorating relations.

The decision placed Burkina Faso in a very small club of global bad boys. Alongside North Korea (JUCHE) and Afghanistan, it became one of the only countries in the world without formal diplomatic relations with France.

This is a fun turn of events considering Burkina Faso spent much of the twentieth century under French rule. Back in 1919, France established the colony of French Upper Volta, and incorporated it into the federation of French West Africa. The French controlled all things in the territory. Although Upper Volta became a self-governing republic in 1958, it did not achieve full independence until 1960 when everybody else was doing it too. But the sticky French influence remained. The usual stuff like military cooperation, economic deals, aid, and the CFA franc (THE MONEY) meant that France remained one of the country’s most important partners for another 60 years.

So the relationship between France and Burkina Faso lasted far longer after independence than it did as a colony. I am interested to know if we will see the beginning of a new African model or another military regime that grows fat and corrupt with age.

Coup Country

Burkina Faso has a long precolonial history. But that isn’t what I’ve been reading about. There are a few more recent ghosts to meet.

ENTER Thomas Sankara.

Sankara couped his way into to power in 1983 and renamed the country Burkina Faso the following year, replacing the colonial name Upper Volta with a name supposedly translated as “Land of Upright People.” He was only 33 years old, and stylish a very revolutionary type of way. He was wildly popular.

I’ve read he promoted some good things like women’s rights, land reform, anti-corruption drives, and economic self-reliance. The Sankara history is very deep, but that is a deep dive for another day. In 1987, he was killed in a coup.

The man who popped up from that coup was Blaise Compaoré, Sankara’s former friend and comrade. Backstabber. Compaoré would rule Burkina Faso for 27 years, from 1987 until 2014. His revolution cooled into something more suburban though. It was a slow and steady presidency, with conservative alliances, classic French ties, some regional influence, and a government built around one man staying in power. In 2014, Compaoré tried to update the constitution so he could run again (why not?). The people were not pleased and hardcore unrest came. Compaoré fled the coop.

With nobody at the ships wheel, a transitional government followed and some elections, but the country drifted toward a new crisis. Jihadist violence spread across parts of the country and millions of people were displaced. So it was a big mess.

Here comes IB. He did not emerge from nowhere though. Who was the man dressed like a G.I. Joe who suddenly appeared on television?

Fast Plotting

Burkina Faso’s new civilian government inherited a very dangerous neighborhood. In 2015, jihadist groups linked to al-Qaeda and later the Islamic State came from Mali, targeting neglected rural areas to STIR THE POT. The area quickly grew into one of the fastest growing insurgency hot pots in the world.

The Burkinabè Armed Forces was poorly equipped, and isolated in remote outposts, against an enemy who wasn’t fighting toe to toe. Military bases were falling, convoys ambushed, and garrisons wiped out. Confidence in the government’s ability to provide security slipped away over time. By 2022, Burkina Faso was facing a huge displacement crises. Two million people had been forced from their homes, while armed Jihadist groups operated freely across large portions of the countryside.

These embarrassing defeats killed the morale in the barracks. In January 2022, Lieutenant Colonel Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba seized power, he ALSO WORE A RED BERET. He overthrew President Roch Marc Christian Kaboré. Damiba justified the coup simply. The “government” had failed to stop the crazy Jihadist pillaging the countryside, and only the military might of Burkina Faso could restore security.

Many were willing to give him that chance. Not many other options at the time. Damiba promised to reorganize the army and reclaim the lost territory. Then that would stabilize the country and everyone could go back to civilian rule. Everyone likes to hear that kind of stuff. BUT the insurgency continued to expand. Just eight months after taking power, Damiba figured out he wasn’t winning the war.

In September 2022, another group of officers staged another coup. There were clashes throughout the capital and hoopla ensued. Somehow, Damiba was able to post on Facebook during the crisis. He noted that there had been a “change in mood among certain elements of the national armed forces”. A very polite way to say he was being tossed out.

When the dust settled, we learned that this coup was led Ibrahim, although he did not accuse Damiba of corruption. He accused him of moving too slowly. IB claimed he would crush the rebels fast.

The Lion of Africa

Most people outside Burkina Faso had never heard of IB when he appeared on TV in 2022. He was only in his early 30s, then making him one of the youngest heads of state in the world.

He was born in 1988 in western Burkina Faso and joined the army after studying geology at the University of Ouagadougou. He trained as an artillery officer and developed a reputation as a solid soldier. He later served with the United Nations peacekeeping mission in the Mali War before returning home as Burkina Faso’s situation rapidly deteriorated. Jihadist attacks were intensifying and IB was deployed to some of the country’s most dangerous regions. Others described him as calm, professional, and extremely frustrated by what he viewed as poor leadership from the government. His belief was that the army was being asked to fight a very difficult war without the resources to win.

When Damiba seized power in January 2022, IB initially supported him. A fresh start. But his confidence faded as no ground was gained. Eight months later, he led the next coup that removed him.

IB has carefully cultivated the image of a wartime leader temporarily running the country. He almost always appears in military fatigues and his famous (but not original) red beret. He spends time visiting troops near the front, and his speeches draw comparisons to Thomas Sankara.

He is arguably the most popular leader in African at the moment. The recipe is simple. He is young, social media savvy and willing to fight for Burkina Faso’s independence from Jihadists and former colonial powers. Time will tell. Some think he is just another military ruler concentrating power while postponing a return to civilian government.

Just check out YouTube. He’s got some fanfare.

Governing a War Machine

Running a country at war must be very difficult. Since 2022, Burkina Faso has transformed itself into a wartime state. Nearly every major decision made by the junta has been justified through defeating the insurgency. It makes sense to me. How can you run a country with religious extremists haunting your forests?

The quick expansion of the Volunteers for the Defense of the Homeland (VDP) shows the general population is ready to get after it. Originally established before IB’s coup, the program popped off under his military rule. There are thousands (30,000-100,000) of civilians who have been armed, and given basic training to fight alongside the regular army. Some defend their own plots with the official approval of the government. Others assist military operations.

The military has expanded too. Recruitment campaigns have intensified, new equipment has been acquired, and the armed forces have become the center of political life. Armed allow the military to strike targets in remote areas that were once difficult to reach. Drone footage has become a regular feature of state media, reinforcing the image of an army steadily reclaiming the countryside.

The junta has also emphasized producing more at home. Burkina Faso has invested in expanding weapons manufacturing, arguing cannot depend entirely on foreign suppliers. It fits into IB’s message of sovereignty. Independence means little if every gun must be imported.

A wartime economy comes with trade offs though. Power has become increasingly centralized. Emergency measures have expanded the state’s authority, and elections originally promised after the coups have been repeatedly delayed. The government argues that organizing elections while large portions of the country remain insecure is unrealistic. Opponents say that wars become permanent justifications for postponing civilian rule.

Burkina Faso is no longer attempting to function as a country at peace while fighting a war. It now functions as a country built around the war. This is a gamble.

Hi Neighbor

IB’s government is trying to redefine Burkina Faso’s place in the world.

For decades, France was the country’s dominant foreign partner. French troops trained the soldiers, French companies invested in the economy, and France was deeply involved in regional security. Under IB, that relationship has unraveled. French forces were expelled, military cooperation ended, and in June 2026 Burkina Faso formally severed diplomatic relations. The country isn’t turning inward though. IB is just looking for new friends.

Russia is now around as a security partner and portraying itself as an alternative to Western influence. IB has also strengthened ties with neighboring military juntas. Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger are all currently led by officers who seized power in coups. They have created the Alliance of Sahel States, a new regional bloc built around mutual defense and shared sovereignty rather than dependence on Western partners.

Türkiye has expanded defense cooperation and become an important supplier of military goods, and China keeps building infrastructure. IB appears to be spreading its bets.

On resource management, gold is Burkina Faso’s largest export and a high priority. The government has sought greater control over mining revenues, encouraged more domestic processing, and argued that the country’s mineral wealth should finance its own security and development rather than primarily benefiting foreign companies.

Long Lasting Junta or Fresh Coup?

IB’s popularity isn’t solely propaganda. The people are actually frustrated. To many people in the country, he represents a return of the Sankara myth. The upright soldier in a red beret promising sovereignty and discipline. Social media has amplified this image, turning IB into an African symbol of anti-colonial defiance. This makes some uneasy. Coupers and human rights people argue that this is just another military government restricting criticism, delaying elections, and concentrating power. Not to mention his junta has supposedly foiled six separate coup attempts since 2022, with one happening just last week.

I think this will all boil down to two core scenarios.

1. The junta gradually stabilizes the country and becomes a long-term military government.

2. The insurgency persists and eventually another successful coup materializes.

The question isn’t new, it just looks different today. Can a military government defeat an insurgency, reclaim authority, and remake a country’s political identity at the same time?

The world is watching closely to see whether this experiment produces stability, another entrenched junta, or something in the middle.

Throughout history there have been places where the government existed only as an optimistic suggestion. No tax collectors. No police. No governors. Just jungle or desert. Maybe mountains. Into these places rode a very particular kind of man. Traders. Smugglers. Mercenaries. Banditos. Explorers. History remembers kings and empires. These guys just set up shop and started taking people’s stuff.

TIPPU TIP

The Man Who Owned The Roads

Long before Europeans started sniffing around Central Africa, much of the region was controlled by a very ambitious merchant warlord. Born Hamad bin Muhammad bin Juma bin Rajab el Murjebi around 1837 in Zanzibar, Tipu Tip supposedly earned his nickname from the sound of his guns going off “tip... tip...” during raids. Beginning in the 1850s, he led enormous trading caravans into the Congo searching for ivory and enslaving people along the way. He built fortified trading posts and commanded thousands of porters, soldiers and other travelers. By the 1870s, his influence stretched across vast areas of Central Africa. He negotiated with local rulers, played war games with rivals, collected (took) tribute and controlled most major trade routes. European explorers thought they were entering an empty wilderness. It was actually Tippu Tip’s office.

His influence became so large that the Europeans decided it was easier to work with him than against him. As an eample, explorer Henry Morton Stanley relied on Tippu Tip’s knowledge and manpower during expeditions, while King Leopold II’s Congo Free State appointed him governor of the Stanley Falls District in 1887, hoping to extend Belgian influence into the interior. Tipu Tip remained loyal to his own commercial empire though, which revolved around ivory and slave trading.

As European colonial rule got fatter in the late 1880s and 1890s, his power gradually faded. He retired to the island of Zanzibar, where he completed an autobiography before dying in 1905. For several decades, Tippu Tip had built a private empire so powerful that explorers, kings and colonial officials all had to ask for directions from THE MAN WHO ALREADY OWNED THE ROAD.

MSIRI

The Copper King

By the 1880s, Mwenda Msiri had accomplished something VERY DIFFICULT. He had turned himself from a trader into one of the most powerful players in Central Africa without inheriting anything or buddying up to a European army. Originally coming from what is now Tanzania, Msiri built his power through the copper, ivory and slave trading before establishing the Yeke Kingdom in Katanga (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo), a region rich in minerals. He armed his followers with firearms acquired through trade and gradually brought neighboring chiefs under his control. Eventually, anyone with motion in Katanga had to deal with him first.

Unfortunately for Msiri, he had built up his kingdom at exactly the moment Europe decided Africa was up for grabs. During the Scramble for Africa, both Britain and King Leopold II’s Congo Free State wanted Katanga’s copper. Several expeditions tried to persuade Msiri to accept their authority. He declined. In 1891, the Belgian-backed Stairs Expedition confronted him at his capital. Negotiations deteriorated, and Belgian officer Omer Bodson shot and killed Msiri before being killed himself by Msiri’s warriors. The expedition then CUT OFF MSIRI’S HEAD, mounted it on a pole and displayed it to nearby villages to let everybody know who ran Katanga. It was a grim end to one of Africa’s last big time frontier rulers and an illustration of how the frontier itself was disappearing.

RABAH AZ-ZUBAYR

The Slave Soldier

Rabih az-Zubayr started it all as a slave soldier in the army of the Sudanese warlord al-Zubayr Rahma during the mid-19th century. After his master’s empire was dismantled by the Egyptians in the 1870s, Rabih gathered the surviving veterans and headed west, determined to set up on his own plot. Over the next two decades he carved out an empire stretching across parts of modern Chad, the Central African Republic and Nigeria. Armed with thousands of experienced soldiers and guns acquired through trade, Rabih was on a path of conquest before capturing Bornu in 1893, overthrowing a dynasty that had ruled the region for centuries. At his height he governed hundreds of thousands of people from territory larger than many European countries.

The problem with building your own empire is that eventually someone else will always try to SNATCH IT. By the late 1890s, France was chopping up Africa trying to connect its colonies, and Rabih was a problem. Rather than submit, he made war on the French. In April 1900, at the Battle of Kousséri, Rabih led his army against French forces commanded by Amédée-François Lamy. The battle ended with both commanders being killed.

Like old Msiri of the Yeke Kingdom, French troops severed Rabih’s head and displayed it as proof that another one of Africa’s most frontier rulers was gone. Like so many others, he had spent decades building a state through force of personality, military skill and opportunity only to have the Europeans come and spoil the pot.

WILLIAM WALKER

The Crazy American Who Invaded Nicaragua

In the mid-1800s, there existed a uniquely American profession known as the FILIBUSTER. This was a private citizen who invaded foreign countries without government approval in hopes of establishing a new state. Few were more into this type of work than William Walker. Born in Tennessee in 1824, Walker was a physician, lawyer and journalist before deciding that conquering countries sounded more interesting. After a failed attempt to seize part of Mexico in 1853, he turned his attention to Nicaragua, which was embroiled in a civil war. In 1855, Walker left from San Francisco and landed with just 58 mercenaries, offered his services to one faction and, through a combination of military victories, reinforcements and confidence, took control of the country. By July 1856, he had declared himself President of Nicaragua, a title even recognized by U.S. President Franklin Pierce.

Walker immediately got to work reshaping the country to suit his ambitions. He restored slavery, which Nicaragua had abolished more than 30 years earlier, declared English an official language alongside Spanish and encouraged Americans to immigrate, hoping to transform the country into an English-speaking republic. This did not improve relations with his neighbors. Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador formed an alliance against him, while American shipping magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt, furious after Walker seized his company’s transit route across Nicaragua, helped finance Walker’s enemies. By 1857, Walker had been driven from the country.

Clearly nuts, he launched several more invasions before finally landing in Honduras in 1860, where he was captured by the British Royal Navy and handed over to Honduran authorities. At 36 years old, Walker was executed by firing squad. For one year a random guy from Tennessee had successfully conquered a foreign nation and sat in its presidential palace. Try doing that today.

BOB DENARD

The Mercenary Who Kept Taking Over the Same Country

By the 1960s, the age of colonial empires was ending but Bob Denard was not done with it. Born Gilbert Bourgeaud in France in 1929, Denard served in the French Navy before getting involed with mercenary warfare. Over 30 years or so, he fought in conflicts across the Congo, Yemen, Angola and Benin, earning a reputation as one of the world’s most notorious soldiers of fortune. His crown jewel was the tiny Indian Ocean nation of Comoros. Beginning with a coup in 1975, Denard became the island nation’s unofficial power broker. He helped overthrow governments, install presidents and, after another successful coup in 1978, ran the country from behind the scenes while officially serving as commander of the Presidential Guard. He even converted to Islam, took the name Saïd Mustapha Mhadjou, shacked up with a local woman (women?) and built his own political network. For over a decade, many observers joked that Comoros was less a sovereign state than Denard’s PRIVATE ISLAND FRANCHISE.

He kept getting away with it. Denard participated in or attempted more than TWENTY COUPS during his career, several successful. His operations often relied on just a few dozen highly trained mercenaries armed with speed, surprise and an understanding that under resourced governments were optional. France’s relationship with him remained deliberately ambiguous. Although Paris officially denied involvement, Denard frequently operated in places where French interests happened to benefit, leading many to suspect he enjoyed unofficial protection. His run finally ended in 1995, when he launched yet another coup in Comoros. This time, France wasn’t into it. French special forces landed during Operation Azalée, surrounded Denard’s men without fighting and flew the old mercenary back to France. It was an anti-climatic end for a great frontier boss.

ROMAN VON UNGERN-STERNBERG

The Mad Baron

The Mad Baron was born into a Baltic German noble family in 1886, and served with distinction in the Imperial Russian Army during the First World War before the Russian Revolution turned the empire upside down. While most officers either fled abroad or accepted defeat, Ungern became convinced that he had been chosen to save the old world. Democracy disgusted him. Communism was a disease to him. His solution was to ride east into Asia with what remained of his cavalry and build a new base for a monarchist counterattack. In 1920, leading a super diverse force of White Russians, Cossacks, Mongols, Tibetans and adventurers from across Asia, he crossed into Mongolia and expelled the occupying Chinese army from the capital of Urga (modern Ulaanbaatar). The grateful Bogd Khan, Mongolia’s spiritual ruler, was restored to the throne. Somehow, the Baron effectively commanded the army and held real power afterwards.

For several surreal months in 1921, the Mad Baron ruled Mongolia like a military man with a religious prophecy he wanted everyone to know about. He believed he was destined to restore monarchies across Asia, issued brutal punishments for suspected Bolshevik sympathizers, enforced discipline and prepared his troops for an invasion of Soviet Russia. Some followers viewed him as a mystical warrior but others thought he had lost his mind. Eventually, Soviet-backed forces and Mongolian revolutionaries advanced into the country, while the Baron’s officers, tired of erratic leadership, mutinied. They arrested Ungern in August 1921 and handed him over to the Red Army. After a public trial, he was executed by firing squad in September 1921, aged just 35.

VEERAPPAN

The Forest Warlord

For more than three decades, the Indian forests were home to a thick-mustached bandit named Veerappan. Born in 1952 in the village of Gopinatham on the Karnataka–Tamil Nadu border, Koose Munisamy Veerappan began as an elephant poacher before expanding into sandalwood smuggling, kidnapping and armed robbery. He learned his trade from an uncle and went off on his own when ready.

Operating across the dense forests of India he built a network of informants among remote villages and assembled a gang that knew their way around the remote regions of the country. At his peak, Veerappan was accused of killing around 184 people, including police officers, forest officials and civilians, while smuggling an estimated 65 tons of sandalwood and poaching roughly 500 elephants for their ivory. Entire police units entered the forest looking for him and often came back with nothing.

The Indian government spent years deploying thousands of police and Special Task Force personnel in one of India’s largest manhunts, costing far more than the value of the sandalwood he stole. He taunted authorities with kidnappings, famously abducting actor Dr. Rajkumar in 2000, triggering a political crisis and forcing senior government officials into negotiations with an outlaw hiding in the jungle. His reign finally ended in October 2004 during OPERATION COCCOON, when undercover officers convinced Veerappan he was being driven to receive medical treatment. Instead, the ambulance was surrounded by a Special Task Force, and Veerappan was killed in the ensuing gunfight. For 36 years, one man with a rifle, an encyclopedic knowledge of the forest and an extraordinary intelligence network had turned a patch of southern India into his own unofficial state. The roads belonged to him.

FIN

Frontier bosses rarely wore crowns. They preferred guns and jungle hideouts. They found places where governments had become tired, absent, corrupt or simply too far away to matter. They governed through fear, opportunity and the uncomfortable realization that nobody else was coming (or it would be hard to). Eventually every frontier is discovered though. The frontier boss outcome usually ends the same way. They usually get shot, betrayed or executed. But they do get to be the government for a while.

Week 1: Establish Visual Dominance

Your first objective is to become visually unavoidable. Start with A LOT of official portraits or similar like large and aggressively lit depictions of yourself. They must be hung in government offices first (people won’t fuss as much), then expand to schools, gas stations, grocery stores, public restrooms, everywhere. The goal is volume.

You can add text to these images where appropriate. Use simple phrases that you can come up with quickly:

• THE PEOPLE WILL ALWAYS CHOOSE

• STABILITY THROUGH OUR LEADERSHIP

• HE SEES EVERYTHING AND THE PEOPLE WILL IT

All of this creates an atmosphere. By the end of Week 1, a citizen should encounter your face no fewer than 5 times during a normal day.

In Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya, the visual layer was very heavy and it popped. He was pictured everywhere often in sunglasses, military dress, or theatrical robes. Think highways, government buildings, storefronts, and desert outposts. Portraits weren’t consistent, which was the point. He appeared as soldier, roaming Bedouin, philosopher, and revolutionary simultaneously. The saturation worked well and he achieved a mystical aura in my opinion. Movement meant unavoidable exposure to his face, which made him permanent.

Week 2: Rename Everything

Rename everything. ALL OF IT. Begin with infrastructure (have fun with naming):

• Central Square → Supreme Victory Square

• Port Authority → The People’s Port Authority

• Highway → Highway of the Magnificent Revolution and Riches for the People

Schools, hospitals, and government agencies should be on your list. If a building exists, it should either already be named after you or in the process of becoming so.

Also don’t forget the money. Currency is a priority change and your face needs to be on it. Get your face on the money if you can. Might be hard to mint new currency though.

Mobutu Sese Seko executed one of the cleanest renaming operations on record. He renamed the Democratic Republic of the Congo to Zaire, the Congo River into the Zaire River, and even himself his own name from Joseph-Désiré Mobutu to MOBUTU SESE SEKO KUKU NGBENDU WA ZA BANGA, which roughly translates to:

“the all-powerful warrior who, because of his endurance and inflexible will to win, goes from conquest to conquest, leaving fire in his wake”

Mobutu had an “Authenticité” campaign to bring back the Congolese culture. Citizens were required to adopt African names, and Western dress was not cool with the regime. The population was basically re-coded through Mobutu’s mind.

Week 3: Thrust Yourself Into Daily Life

Now the people need to participate with these changes you have made. Install radios in all public spaces and crank the volume to 11. Broadcasts should be short, always sort of vague, and frequent. You never announce anything specific.

“CITIZENS ARE ENCOURAGED TO MAINTAIN A POSTURE OF INDUSTRIOUSNESS BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 7AM AND 9PM.”

Schools should begin morning recitations. Make the kids repeat:

“WE THANK THE (INSERT YOUR NAME) FOR GUIDANCE AND STABILITY”

Children will normalize repetition faster than adults.

Distribute small items:

• Stickers with your face

• Pins with your face

• Calendar prints that include you in different places every month

• Official stamps with your likeness

None of these need to be high quality. They just need to exist everywhere. At the same time, introduce minor rituals:

• Standing when your name is mentioned at official events

• Opening meetings with a reference to your “vision”

• Closing documents with your signature printed larger than necessary

By the end of Week 3, you should no longer be a distant figure. You should feel like an ambient tableside lamp in all places.

In Cuba under Fidel Castro, his regime was less about imagery and more about presence through voice and ritual. Castro’s speeches sometimes ran for hours. They were broadcasted everywhere across radio and television, filling public and private space alike. Schools, workplaces, and local committees regularly echoed revolutionary slogans and references to his leadership. His absence from daily life was rare. Even without seeing him, you were hearing him. The system ensured that ordinary routines remained anchored to his ongoing narration of the state.

Week 4: Grow Myths and Permanence

Now you transition from leader to inevitability. You need a state biography. Commission stories and great epics:

• Early life anecdotes (real or improved)

• Tales of personal sacrifice

• Accounts of decisive intervention during “uncertain times”

Accuracy is optional but consistency is not. Stick to your story.

Statues should begin going up. They do not need to be good. Slightly distorted or oversized statues often perform better because they suggest scale and maybe your riches.

Introduce titles for yourself:

• Custodian of the Nation

• Guardian of Stability

• Architect of Renewal

Encourage others to use them first. Adoption is more powerful when it appears voluntary.

Finally, begin referencing the future:

• “The Leader’s Next Phase”

• “The Long Plan”

• “Generational Stability”

This implies duration. Duration implies inevitability.

Saparmurat Niyazov (Turkmenbashi) went right into myth-building in Turkmenistan. He authored a quasi-spiritual text that became required reading in schools and even a component of driving tests. Months of the year were renamed after himself and his family. A golden statue of him in Ashgabat was engineered to rotate and always face the sun.

The objective was embedding his identity in governance, education, and the physical environment of his country itself.

FIN

If you implement these ideas into your own regime over 30 days you will have good results. A successful personality cultist does not convince the population they are extraordinary. They remove the need for comparison entirely. A few core tenets:

• Clarity weakens mystique.

• A mediocre slogan repeated 10,000 times will outperform a good one used once.

• It is better to have five different portraits than none at all.

• Loyalists, broadcasters, and minor officials should carry the tone.

YOU ARE THE STATE.

MY GREAT GRAND DADDY’S GRAND DADDY CAME OVER ON THE SHIP FROM THE BABATOES, FIRST TO PETERSBURG, VIRGINIA AND THEN ON DOWN TO NORTH CAROLINA.

The Babatoes? He meant Barbados. So now and then I refresh my memory of the island’s history but this time I stumbled upon the story of Busso the rebel.

THE RIGHT EXCELLEENT BUSSA

Busso, also called Bussa or Bussoe, is believed to have been born in West Africa, maybe of Igbo (Nigeria) descent before being transported across the Atlantic. After arrival in Barbados, he disappeared into the system and one day led a massive uprising.

There are no records of him before the rebellion except that he was a Ranger on Bayley’s Plantation in Saint Philip’s parish. That would have meant he had a leadership role on the plantation amongst other slaves.

Busso and his boys sparked things off on Easter Sunday 1816. The plan was hatched at a bunch of sugar estates, including the plantation where Busso was enslaved. He got together 400 enslaved fighters to kick things off. The rebellion started in Busso’s parish of St Philip, and spread all over the island. Busso was killed early but the rebellion did not stop. His men continued fighting until they were overwhelmed by the First West India Regiment and local militias three days later.

It is reported that 50 slaves were killed in the battle and over 200 executed. Only one British soldier was killed. The rebellion failed and martial law was declared and lifted 3 months later. The carnage continued in the aftermath with many others executed or deported to other colonies months afterwards. Eventually things settled down again.

Today, Busso is a statue. In 1985, the Emancipation Statue was unveiled in St. Michael. Most people just call it “Bussa’s Statue”. In 1998, he was named one of the national heroes of the island.

I like that I have a very distant connection to THE BABATOES. Since many of my ancestors were enslaved, their pasts and histories are very hard to find.

This ancestor of mine was from Barbados and came to North Carolina way before this rebellion happened, but I am sure he wouldn’t have been surprised to see Busso start stirring it all up.

I hope to visit it someday.

A profitable roadside checkpoint can be established almost anywhere with a few loyal friends, plastic chairs and confidence. I’ve created a short guide based loosely on some completely dysfunctional real-world examples.

THE CORE COMMODITIES

Choose a commodity more stable than your national currency and start getting as much of it as you can at your checkpoint. During the Yugoslav Wars, cigarettes moved like parallel currency across regions and black markets. Everyone wanted cigarettes. In your own operation, cartons of Marlboros may serve as reserve backing for the “Free Highway Security Zone” or whatever you want to name it.

A disciplined checkpoint commander understands that cigarettes are not merely a vice, they are portable taxation units, morale boosters, diplomatic tools, and emergency payroll reserves. One carton can calm an argument, settle a transit dispute, or prevent your hired thugs from defecting to a rival roadblock.

STEAL SOME OF THE FUEL

Fuel is very important. In wartime Liberia, fuel skimming became a business model. If your checkpoint removes only 1 gallon from each passing truck, you are now operating a regional energy ministry. Just a little fuel skim off the top will add up very quickly. Don’t take all of it though. More on that in a second.

Gas and diesel is effectively liquid cash. Generators need it, trucks need it, smugglers need it, everybody needs it. After several months, your checkpoint may possess more strategic petroleum reserves than the recognized government nearby.

SIPHON THE AID

Aid leakage is an economic opportunity. In Somalia, flour, cooking oil, and UN food aid regularly entered shadow markets. A disciplined checkpoint commander understands that humanitarian supplies are simply for the taking.

Every relief convoy is a potential wholesale distributor for your growing roadside enterprise. A few diverted sacks of flour today can become payroll tomorrow, while powdered milk and cooking oil help establish your checkpoint as a respected (feared) regional commercial hub.

TAX A LOT

Maintain reasonable taxation rates. Truck drivers crossing remote roads in the Democratic Republic of the Congo have historically paid informal “fees” in beer, batteries, cigarettes, or canned food. Excessive extraction discourages commerce though. Sustainable corruption matters. Be thoughtful.

Think long term. If drivers begin taking alternate jungle routes to avoid your roadblock, your strategy will suffer. The goal is to create an atmosphere of MILD financial annoyance, not total economic collapse. Predictable bribery builds customer loyalty. They will all just get used to it.

FORECASTING AND AESTHETICS

If you focus on these simple checkpoint functions, you will create a diversified reserve system. If local currency collapses, the cigarettes become money, sacks of rice become payroll, fuel is an investment, even warm soda can become a bargaining tool. Take as much as you can. As an example:

• A checkpoint taxing 50 trucks, cars and motor bikes daily at the equivalent of $10 per crossing (in all goods) quietly generates over $180,000 annually before spoilage, theft, or annoying rival militia disputes.

But to make this work, you need a look that commands respect. Your aesthetics are critical. I would recommend the following equipment:

• several faded plastic chairs

• camouflage jackets regardless of climate

• handwritten or spraypainted warning sign naming your checkpoint

• Old weapons (clubs and bats are fine)

The roadblock is simply a government office with fewer forms.

So that is it. In the end, a checkpoint is just a tiny state with its own taxation system, customs enforcement, strategic reserves, and questionable accounting standards. If things go to really shit where you are, someone will soon be standing beside a road collecting cigarettes and siphoning diesel from passing trucks.

But things were often unstable, improvised, and strange. Check out a hundred years of stylish Emperors. Just a quick run through of the 1871-1974 leadership of Ethiopia.

YOHANNES IV ዮሓንስ ፬ይ / HOUSE TEMBIEN / RULE 1871-1889
A soldier-emperor who spent most of his reign in active campaigns. He viewed Islam as an issue and converted half a million people to Christianity. He was killed in battle against the Islamic Mahdist State forces, and they took his body to Sudan as a trophy. They chopped off his head and paraded it through the streets on a pike.

This fit says a lot. It looks very heavy and comfortable. I bet he just floated around places.

MENELIK II / HOUSE SHEWA / RULE 1889-1913
He really created what we know as Ethiopia today by force. Cozied up to the Europeans for the latest tech. Menelik was good at playing the European powers against each other. Signed treaties, bought weapons, imported advisors but kept the door open just enough to modernize, never enough to be controlled. The real claim to fame was defeating Italy at Adwa and killing 6,000 Italian soldiers.

Later suffered strokes and effectively disappeared from public life while courtiers ruled in his name. This colorized image shows a similar style to Yohannes IV. Heavy cloak, crown and scepter. A classic you can’t go wrong with.

LIJ IYASU ኢያሱ / HOUSE WOLLO / RULE 1913 -1916
He was a crownless Emperor and wasn’t interested in doing the work and led the elites to all form their own opinions. He kept Melenik’s ministers and called them my Grandfather’s Fat Sheep.

So the Fattened Sheep started plotting and accused of converting to Islam because he hung out in a Muslim town over Easter. Deposed before he could consolidate power and spent years moving between captivity and flight.

Evidence for dethronement:

• Had 4 Muslim wives

• Spent government money to build multiple mosques in Jigjiga

• He gave the Ethiopian flag to a foreign consul in Addis Ababa on a Muslim holiday

• He was seen in a worship service in a mosque wearing a Somali outfit

• Seen reading the Quran

• His bodyguards wore uniforms with an Islamic banner

• He restored a church land to Moslems in Harar after 32 years since gave it to priests

• He gave his daughter to a Muslim guardian.

• He traced his family tree to the prophet in rejection of his Solomonic origins

• When Menelik died he was at a horse show instead of mourning

What do you think?

He was kept prisoner for a long time and eventually disappeared under the watch of Haile Selassie. The fit looks unassuming, but from the pictures I saw he had a varied style.

ZEWDITU ዘውዲቱ / HOUSE SHEWA / RULE 1916-1930
A daughter of old Menelik II, she was one of few empresses and one of the first modern female head of a African nation. She took the throne after a childless marriage with a son of Yohannes IV from earlier, but they placed the future Haile Selassie as her regent and the heir apparent. Zewditu was deeply religious, mostly withdrawn from direct governance with Selassie leading most projects and reform in the country. She felt guilt about the imprisoning of Lij Iyasu who mysteriously died in her prisons.

Power operated around her, not always through her. Eventually her husband led a rebellion to get rid of Selassie and he lost. He was killed and she died within two days. Nobody really knows how. Sources at the time reported that the Empress had a bad fever and was dunking herself in a large container of freezing cold holy water to cure her illness. Supposedly she went into shock, and died. Sounds like she was poisoned or something.

Her crown is robust to say the least. Robes matching the carpet is also a power move.

HAILE SELASSIE ቀዳማዊ ኃይለ ሥላሴ / HOUSE SHEWA / RULE 1930-1974
Here he is. The master of imperial image. Haile Selassie knew all about carefully staged appearances, a sprinkle of diplomacy, and general symbolism. While he ruled famine and unrest eroded the whole system.

He becomes a messianic figure in the Rastafari movement as a global spiritual symbol. After +40 years of rule, he was eventually deposed by his own military (the Derg) and died in custody under unclear circumstances.

Selassie died in custody, officially “natural causes.” Later accounts point to suffocation. His body was hidden for years under a palace floor.

No crown in this image. That is definitely a helmet.

All of these Emperors had a different story. Yohannes IV the campaigner. Menelik II the builder who wasted away on the throne. Lij Iyasu who mixed it all up with his religious relations. Zewditu the religious empress of devotion over control. And a master of image overtaken by events, Haile Selassie.

I can’t find an official roster of “Gaddafi camp graduates.” The camps were informal constantly shifting, but here are some notes on known alumni and suspected attendees of those Libyan training networks.

CHARLES TAYLOR - LIBERIA

Charles Taylor trained in Libya in the 1980s, returned to launch the National Patriotic Front of Liberia and ignited the Liberian Civil Wars, later becoming president.

Taylor built a cross-border network from the Ivory Coast that blurred war and business. His warlord economy ran on timber, diamonds, and weapons (the usual). He ran it all like a private enterprise, with checkpoints manned by child soldiers, radio stations, and loyal commanders. Most accounts place Taylor in Libya around 1984–1985.

FODAY SANKOH - SIERRA LEONE

Fodoy Sankoh received Libyan support and went on to found the Revolutionary United Front, fueling the Sierra Leone Civil War (1991-2002) through diamond insurgency. He was aligned closely with Charles Taylor, using Liberian territory as a rear base while exporting diamonds out and importing weapons on the reverse.

Like many warlords, he operated like a roaming extraction unit. His people captured mining zones, stripped the value, then moved on. Sankoh is generally believed to have been in Libya for training in the late 1980s. He died in 2003 while on trial for war crimes. 50,000 people were killed in the war he was a key player in.

BLAISE COMPAORE - BURKINA FASO

Compaoré was linked into Libyan-backed revolutionary networks in the 1980s and helped orchestrate the 1987 coup that killed Burkina Faso’s President Thomas Sankara. He also introduced Charles Taylor to his friend Gaddafi. He settled into power for decades afterwards, facilitating conflicts in neighboring states, including Liberia and Sierra Leone. He was found guilty in the killing of President Sankara in 2022 but had fled the country. He did not return for the trial.

HISSENE HABRE - CHAD

Hissène Habré was in the Libya conflict environment in the 1970s before breaking from Gaddafi and positioning himself as his main enemy in Chad. He seized power in 1982 and built a security state, relying on classic intelligence networks and detention systems to maintain rule while fighting off the Libyans in the north in the Toyota War. His government operated as a counterweight to Libyan expansion.

He was overthrown in 1990 by Idriss Déby, fled to Senegal, and decades later was tried and convicted of crimes against humanity. He died in custody in 2021.

IDRISS DEBY - CHAD

Idriss Déby came up through the same Libyan-adjacent war circuits, broke with Hissène Habré (above), and takes the capital of Chad in 1990. Another famous leader from the Toyota War.

He earned the nickname “Idriss the Brave” after personally commanding troops from the front in desert convoys rather than behind a desk. A true warlord. Maintained power through a hybrid system of formal government and loyal armed factions, constantly balancing internal rivals and external backing.

LAURENT-DESIRE KABILA - DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO

Laurent-Désiré Kabila spent decades as a rebel in eastern Congo, and was involved in the Libyan backed revolutionary orbit in the 1970s–80s. In the mid-1990s, he showed up with external backing, swept across the country, and kicked out Mobutu Sese Seko. At one point in the 1960s, Che Guevara tried to support Kabila’s early rebellion and reportedly left because it wasn’t very organized.

Kabila was assassinated in 2001 by one of his own bodyguards (a former child solider) inside the presidential palace.

PRINCE YORMIE JOHNSON - LIBERIA

Prince Johnson grew from the same rebel pipeline as Liberia’s Charles Taylor before breaking off to form his own faction during Liberia’s collapse. Often clashing with Taylor during the conflicts, he controlled territory through a personal zone of influence built on loyalty and visibility. He filmed the torture of Samuel Doe while sitting nearby drinking beer, which was insane footage at the time. Eventually he transitioned into politics and served as a senator and died in 2024.

SAM BOCKARIE - SIERRA LEONE

Sam Bockaire was known as “Mosquito,” and rose through the Revolutionary United Front under Foday Sankoh (above), shaped by the same Libyan-linked insurgent pipeline as everybody else in here. He operated across Sierra Leone and Liberia as a mobile commander, and and exploited resource zones before moving on. His nickname came from his reputation for being persistent and always reappearing after setbacks. He was killed in 2003 under murky circumstances in Liberia, possibly on orders from Charles Taylor himself.

THE LIBYAN DESERT CONNECTION

I don’t pretend to be an expert on all of these people. I just think it was very interesting to learn that they all are connected to the same Libyan desert. They came back and shook up their countries as warlords and politicians, often both.

In 1960, a province in the Congo fat with minerals broke away from the newly independent First Congolese Republic, and called itself the State of Katanga. The country was granted independence by Belgium in 1960, but over a third of the country’s revenue came from mining in Katanga and the private business interests pushed the region to secession.

Belgian businessmen preferred their mining companies under stable management, and Katanga declared itself independent under Moïse Tshombe.

KATANGA

Katanga was able to breakaway during the independence movement primarily because it had a very large group (+30,000) of Belgian settlers and the strongest economic base in the country, driven by mines with copper, cobalt, and more.

Due to the robust eceonmy in the area, the Belgian mining company the Union Minière du Haut Katanga was calling the shots during the independence movement. The company had a lot of Belgian military advisers wandering around and created an army for Tshombe with some aggressive Rhodesian mercenaries.

The big breakaway project lasted just under three years. Declared in 1960, Katanga was gone by early 1963. It was reabsorbed after pressure and military action backed by the United Nations. But they did make some Round Boys.

CURRENCY IS TEMPORARY

I have a few Katanga francs in my Strategic Reserve. I enjoy the bananas and they feel chunky in your hands. If you had a bag of these to carry around you’d feel rich.

They are mostly made of bronze and not rare. You can buy them on the internet.

But there’s is a rare version. Gold 5 francs pieces exist but they are expensive. For a couple thousand bucks you can buy a gold coin from an African government that barely made it to its third birthday.

Buy one and impress your friends. Actually buy a bag of them.

NO RECOGNITION

Katanga was never fully accepted as a legitimate state. The central government of the Congo was backed by the United Nations and they treated it as a problem to be resolved, not a new country to be acknowledged.

Peacekeeping operations followed. Then a little escalation.

By 1961, Tshombe was importing mercenaries to keep Katanga alive. Belgian officers were already embedded, but they were quickly supplemented by hundreds of foreign fighters including British, French, Rhodesian, and South African. Many of them were veterans of various wars. There were clashes with United Nations forces and open fighting, sometimes engaging peacekeepers directly.

By 1963, Katanga was folded back into the Congo. The francs stopped mattering immediately. Katanga was formally reintegrated into the Democratic Republic of the Congo with a signature and a piece of paper.

Tshombe did alright. He briefly served as Prime Minister. In 1965, Mobutu Sese Seko took power and pushed him out. Tshombe soon fled into exile in Spain.

In 1967, his plane was hijacked and diverted to Algeria, where he was detained by the government. He died there in 1969.

FIN FIN FRANC

Katanga is a really interesting story. I collect coins that outlive the places that minted them. Katanga’s francs are what’s left of a state that tried to price itself into existence.

Small bronze coins for daily use. And somewhere above them, a gold coin insisting everything was under control. It was not.

The man on the coin is Henri Christophe, the first and only King of Haiti, sort of.

JUST A DRUMMER BOY

Henri Christophe was born into slavery in Grenada (probably) in 1767 and ended up as the only king Haiti ever had somehow. He was brought to Saint-Domingue, now Haiti, as a child. The story goes that in 1779 he was a drummer boy in the Chasseurs-Volontaires de Saint-Domingue and was only twelve years old when fought in the American Revolutionary War in the 1779 siege of Savannah with the French forces.

When he got home, he did a lot.

There was a slave uprising in 1791 and he became free and made his mark as a fighter. He fought with Toussaint Louverture during the Haitian Revolution and obtained some good military titles. They put him in charge of the north part of Haiti. The dust didn’t really settle after the revolution though, and Louverture didn’t last long. He was tricked and deported to France where he died in a prison cell.

In 1805, Christophe outlasted Napoleon’s attempt to retake the island fighting for Jean-Jacques Dessalines, war hero and the first Haitian Emperor (different title than king). Soon after Dessalines was assassinated and dismembered by a violent mob. There was a big political reshuffling and Christophe clawed through the chaos after independence to crown himself Henri I in 1811 in the north.

He got an archbishop to crown him. Check out these great titles he got.

• KING OF HAITI

• SOVEREIGN OF TORTUGA, GONAVE, AND OTHER ADJACENT ISLANDS

• DESTROYER OF TYRANNY

• REGENERATOR AND BENEFACTOR OF THE HAITIAN NATION, CREATOR OF HER MORAL, POLITICAL, AND MARTIAL INSTITUTIONS

• FIRST CROWNED MONARCH OF THE NEW WORLD

• DEFENDER OF THE FAITH

• FOUNDER OF THE ROYAL MILITARY ORDER OF SAINT HENRY

Once the crown was in place. He got real busy, fast. He built six châteaux, palaces, and a mountain fortress called the Citadelle Laferrière with walls 140 feet high and 200 cannons. My favorite landmark is Sans-Souci, the royal palace.

He also spent a lot of time creating a noble class to mimic the European royalty. He wanted Haiti to be respected and permanent in the eyes of the Old World.

The only problem with all this motion was that he used forced labor. Ironic after the revolution. He ran his kingdom on corvée, which is essentially the plantation system with different paperwork. He was a man who had been enslaved, building a free Black nation on the backs of people he was forcing to work. Everyone was very pissed off about this.

THEY DID NOT TAKE HIM ALIVE

In 1820, Christophe had a stroke. He was partially paralyzed, barely able to speak. Word spread fast and everyone started closing in on him.

His soldiers mutinied. His generals were conspiring. Nobody was chanting his name in a good way. Some of his closest aides brought him to the Citadelle Laferrière to wait it out.

At some point he decided he was done. He ordered his attendants to bathe him, dress him up in his military uniform, pull out his favorite chair, and leave. On October 8, 1820, Henri Christophe shot and killed himself. They say the bullet was silver.

Whether it actually was silver is disputed. The facts are unclear, the witnesses were not neutral, and the story feels like a big legend. Ten days later, his sixteen-year-old son, Victor-Henry, was bayoneted to death after being crowned Henri II. So technically there were two kings but it depends who you ask. The Haitian monarchy lasted exactly nine years.

THE ROUND BOY’S STORY

Anyway, the 1 Crown was just a test strike, never put into circulation. It was made to show what could be. A coin from the end of a reign that was already collapsing when it was struck. A man who survived slavery, revolution, and twenty years of war had strong opinions about what keeps you alive. In October 1820, he chose a third option.

Like all round boys, they don’t change. Everything around them does. I haven’t been able to score this one for my collection yet, but hope to.

THANKS FOR READING STATE DEBRIS.

Amin expelled the country’s commercial class to consolidate power, reward loyalists, and called it “economic liberation.” What use is a coin if there is nothing to buy with it?

Amin’s Grand Strategy

In 1972, Amin ordered the expulsion of roughly 50,000 to 80,000 Asians from Uganda. They were primarily South Asian. Mostly people of Indian descent, along with smaller numbers of Pakistani origin. He allowed each family to take £50 and limited personal belongings. Thousands were left stateless, forcing countries like the UK and Canada, along with the UN, to step in. In Kampala, families lined up outside the British High Commission to confirm their citizenship as the expulsion unfolded in real time.

Most were Ugandan citizens and many had lived there for generations. They were given 90 days to leave.

This wasn’t random. Amin was paranoid, and obsessed with foreign interference of his country. Ugandan Asians ran most of the shops, boosted trade, managed distribution networks and operated all sorts of small industries. They were the commercial layer of the Ugandan economy and Amin did not like it.

After his decree, Amin handed the stolen businesses to his crew, which were just the soldiers, political loyalists and people with no experience running them. These people promptly looted the businesses and sucked them dry over time until they couldn’t function anymore.

After the Asian expulsion, Uganda’s economy dropped off real fast. Real GDP per capita fell by roughly 30–40% over the decade, manufacturing output collapsed in some sectors by more than half.

As an example, Coffee, which accounted for a huge percentage of export earnings at the time, became increasingly smuggled rather than officially traded, starving the state of tax revenue. Inflation surged, goods disappeared, and black markets filled the gap. The commercial capability of Uganda was basically was removed.

When you arbitrarily remove an economic engine the result is simple:

• The goods disappeared because no one was importing them anymore.

• Prices spiked because there were less goods.

• Black markets expanded for those that had access.

• Basic services degraded because nothing is working.

Simple maths.

Back to the Coin

Idi Amin wrecked havoc on Uganda throughout the 70s. There are many many more crazy stories about his activities, but eventually he was ousted from power in 1979 after a bunch of stuff fell apart. A really unsuccessful war on Tanzania was a big catalyst. He lived in exile for the rest of his life.

Most regimes try to control the economy but Amin removed the people who were the economy. No reform involved, he just pressed the subtract button.

The coin came in right before this all this happened. It is interesting because this small object is from a moment right before the system broke. Like all round boys, they don’t change. Everything around it does.

In 1969, just one year after Equatorial Guinea’s independence from Spain, Francisco Macías Nguema put his face on the new 50 pesetas coin. An extreme cult of personality came into effect for a man referred to as "Unique Miracle” or even better, the “Grand Master of Education, Science, and Culture”

The country had just emerged from Spanish rule. There was, briefly, the outline of a functioning country with a central government and a population that hadn’t yet fled, but what followed was an extreme internal breakdown.

The Jungle Path

I’ve read Francisco Macias Nguema came to power because he acted as an arm of colonial Spain. After his fourth try at getting into the civilian service, he was made an interpreter and helped the government fix trials. Over time, he was fast promoted through the colonial system by being an extremely corrupt court translator.

When talk of independence came, he was a local leader and sided with Spain initially granting the country autonomous status. The Spanish viewed him as a presidential candidate because his popularity, but once he got some press the strangeness started to reveal itself. As an example, in a press conference to discuss the coming independence from Spain, he ranted about Hitler’s desire to get rid of colonialism in Africa, but said Hitler was confused and tried to take over Europe instead.

He was actually elected the first president in a free and fair election (the country hasn’t had a free one since), mostly by promising rural villagers that they would be able to marry Spanish women if he won. Well, he did win, and he immediately started doing insane stuff.

Here is a quick list of well known examples:

• He executed 150 opponents of his government in a soccer stadium on Christmas Eve while the Mary Hopkin’s song “Those Were the Days” played over the stadium loudspeakers.

• Some that were executed were buried up to their heads in sand to die from exposure or to be eaten by red ants.

• Priests were ordered to thank him before Mass although he eventually outlawed Christianity and set the national motto to “There is no other God than Macias”.

• In 1969, he arrested his foreign minister and “defenestrated” him “good Bohemian style”. It just means they threw him out the window to his death.

  • I had no idea that throwing people out of building windows was a defined execution method.

• He also killed the governor of the central bank and moved all of the physical money to the new “treasury” in his personal villa in the hinterland.

  

After almost ten years of insane cult rule, he was more openly crazy. He stopped living at the presidential palace, moving to his home village of Mongomo in a fortified campus. He preferred the jungle, and he visited the capital rarely. Due to constant plots against him, his family was sent to North Korea to live under the protection of his pal Kim Il-sung (totally normal).

His servants say that he wandered around repeating the names of people he killed. He also worshipped a collection of heads that were supposed to grant him power. One time, he once had dinner for eight guests, but it was just him alone talking to empty chairs.

How does this end?

His rule eventually collapsed in on itself through paranoia and isolation. After ordering the execution of members of his own family, including a nephew, he was overthrown in 1979 by another nephew, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo.

Macías fled into the jungle, with all the money with him and literally burned $100 million of it so it couldn’t fall into anyone else’s hands.

He was eventually found by an old lady who said he was just sitting under a tree eating sugarcane with a pile of burnt cash nearby.

Fast forward to his trial, Nguema’s regime was estimated to have killed 20,000 to 50,000 people which was roughly 10-30% of the population, with some estimates reaching 80,000 deaths. In just over 10 years of his rule:

• Over half the population had been arrested or at least had a relative killed

• Per capita income fell from about $1,420 (1968) to roughly $70 (1975)

• Infant mortality rose to 60%

• Life expectancy dropped to 30 years

They decided he needed to be executed too. He was so terrifying that local soldiers refused to execute him due to fear of being cursed, so they hired a bunch of Moroccans for the firing squad. He was killed in Black Beach Prison in 1979.

Back to the Coin

Macias put himself on the money and just ten years later, the country was barely functioning and everyone was dead. His nephew and successor Teodoro, has now been president for over 40 years and is an autocratic leader himself, although its hard to get away with went on in the 70s these days.

This coin isn’t rare at all. The 1969 50 pesetas of Francisco Macías Nguema was a standard circulation issue, with a lot minted at the start of independence. Most are cheap, usually in the $5 to $20 range. I just bought one to remember the story.

That is it. Hopefully you know more about this mad mad than you did before, or ever.

They usually trade anywhere from a few hundred to a couple thousand dollars, depending on condition, mint marks, and how much of the original detail is still intact. And a few years later, it would still be in circulation when an American showed up and declared himself president of Nicaragua.

The Backstory

By the 1850s, the regions of Central America didn’t have clean borders, stable governments, or unified economies.

Before the republic existed, the region had been operating on Spanish colonial money for centuries. As part of the Spanish Empire, everyday transactions were conducted in silver reales, especially 8 reales, often called the first global currency. After independence, Mexico continued minting similar coins, and those Mexican reales flowed back into Central America through trade. By the time the federation formed, people already trusted these coins. Even after the republic collapsed, that habit stuck. Mexican and older Spanish silver remained the backbone of circulation, long after the political structures behind them disappeared.

When the republic formed in the 1820s, it issued its own silver reales to replace the colonial system. These coins, like the 8 reales with the sun over mountains design, were meant to signal a new, unified state. But while the imagery changed, they were still struck to match the weight and silver content people already trusted from Spanish and Mexican coins.

In practice, they didn’t replace older money, they joined it. Even after the federation collapsed, these coins kept circulating and functioned as everyday cash in countries that no longer shared a government. All in all, there wasn’t one currency. Just circulation.

Enter William Walker

William Walker was born in Tennessee and trained as a doctor, lawyer and journalist but never really settled into any one profession for a long period of time. He moved through New Orleans and San Francisco in the 1850s, pulled toward the expansionist (Manifest Destiny) energy of the time. The idea that private individuals could carve out power abroad wasn’t fringe.

In 1853, he made his first real attempt at it in Mexico, by recruiting a bunch of followers and briefly seizing control of Baja California. He called it the “Republic of Sonora”. It didn’t last. Resistance mounted and he was eventually forced to go home. Failure didn’t stop him and he turned his attention to Nicaragua a few years later.

Walker had already tested the model. Bring a small force to an unstable region, set up shop and tell everyone you are in charge.

In 1856, Walker arrived in Nicaragua with a private army, without government representation or any sort of permission. He inserted himself into a civil war between the Legitimist Party and the Democratic Part (who actually asked for his help).

By 1857 he declared himself president after a fraudulent election, reinstated slavery and actually received brief recognition from the United States by President Franklin Pierce.

A foreign national running a sovereign country. He was an opportunist and took over a system already held together loosely by weak institutions, fragmented authority and no unified monetary system.

He couldn’t really build anything new and didn’t have enough time in power to issue a new currency so his team started issuing military scripps.

He also used what was already there, which were coins like the Federal Republic of Central America 8 Reales. Silver from a dead federation, moving through a living country taken over by a crazy American obsessed with Manifest Destiny.

Nicaragua did have some of its own coins by then, but they were small copper pieces with limited runs. You can create currency, although it takes time for the population to absorb it. You need minting capacity, metal supply, distribution and acceptance. Time is also really important, which Nicaragua didn’t have.

Walker’s rule in Nicaragua collapsed after he alienated locals and provoked a coalition against him. Costa Rica and neighboring states drove him out in 1857.

He kept trying the same playbook, and in 1860 was captured in Honduras and executed by firing squad.

What This Coin Really Is

Federal Republic of Central America 8 Reales weren’t supposed to last. They were issued by a country that collapsed, yet they kept circulating as everyday cash even as governments changed around it. By the time William Walker declared himself president in Nicaragua, coins like this were still part of the system.

I’ve started collecting coins like this as a way into the history itself. I have been focusing on coins tied to unstable places where governments were weak, borders were fluid, and currencies overlapped. The more I learned about these places, the more I realized the coins were still out there, sitting on eBay, carrying stories. They call this numismatics.

So now before I buy a coin I look into who issued it, who used it, and what happened. This coin led to a weird event in Central America in the 1850s. That’s the point of the collection. You can read about history, or you can hold something that moved through it. I’m doing both.