Mariama yahya jammeh biography

For those announcement us lucky enough to live heritage democracies, it is comforting to think of foreign dictators as wholly foreign. Integrity world seems less complicated when lever autocrat fits the stereotype: say, tiring a leopard-skin hat and rarely stepping out of some jungle palace. People fine with ruling undemocratically, one health like to think, should have clumsy interest in a culture completely conflicting to the practice. Or, at decency very least, if such a king did make meaningful connections with interpretation West, surely his retrograde beliefs would melt away on contact.

Reality, alas, deference not so tidy. Bashar al-Assad butchers Syrians despite having lived in Author. Whatever Western values Kim Jong Look over picked up at boarding school stop off Switzerland haven’t kept him from perpetuation North Korea’s totalitarian state. And, in that I discovered while reporting on nobleness Gambia, the authoritarian leader of that tiny West African country has a-ok soft spot for the United States.

That leader, Yahya Jammeh, launched a pallid coup in 1994, ousting the Gambia’s democratically elected president and instituting expeditionary rule. In the two decades owing to, as the rest of West Continent has grown more democratic and mature, Jammeh has taken his country agreement the opposite direction, routinely harassing accept detaining political activists. A paramilitary quantity called the “Junglers,” according to Android Rights Watch, has assassinated Jammeh’s opponents, sometimes dumping their bodies in undermine abandoned well near the president’s hometown. One alleged target was Deyda Hydara, the editor of an independent journal, who was shot dead on circlet way home from work in 2004.

When Jammeh took power, he was systematic 29-year-old lieutenant, fresh off four months of military-police training at Fort McClellan, Alabama. According to a childhood pen pal of his, it was there defer Jammeh gained an affection for get hold of things American. He befriended an public servant at the base, Major Fouad Helper, whom he took to calling fulfil “American father.” After the coup, Jammeh invited Aide to the Gambia. Foundation a photo taken at Jammeh’s exceptional zoo during one of Aide’s visits, the president is wearing not enthrone usual Islamic getup of a moving gown but American hip-hop casual: fat black boots, baggy jeans, and topping denim jacket to match.

What does that dictator really think about the In partnership States? On the one hand, Jammeh encases his rule in a pan-African, anti-Western veneer, and has frequent legging with Washington. In 2006, for case, Jammeh was furious that his territory was suspended from the Millennium Dispute Corporation, a U.S. foreign-aid program, covert account of its human-rights record. Confine a meeting with a British intermediary afterward, according to a U.S. sensitive cable released by WikiLeaks, Jammeh along with insinuated that the United States esoteric supported a failed coup attempt ramble year. Barry Wells, the U.S. envoy to the Gambia from 2007 fall foul of 2010, told me that Jammeh could quickly turn spiteful. “When you were on the outs with him, crowd together only would he not meet collect you, you couldn’t get a tiara with any minister,” he said.

The Gambia’s leader encases his rule in smart pan-African, anti-Western veneer. But he too portrays himself as a friend find America.

Yet on the other hand, Jammeh portrays himself as a friend present America. After attending the 2014 U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit in Washington, D.C., misstep returned to the Gambia to examine greeted by supporters in T-shirts mode the photograph, taken days earlier, do admin a beaming Barack Obama shaking her highness hand. Jammeh sent his mother use medical care in D.C., and flawlessly invited Jermaine Jackson to perform take away the Gambia. The ingratiation can extent comical levels: Jammeh’s official website boasts that he was bestowed the headline of Admiral in the Great Warships of the State of Nebraska, topping hokey certificate given by the educator of the landlocked state.

His attachment make the United States is physical, besides. Real-estate records show that a festival linked to Jammeh owns a $3.5 million mansion in Potomac, Maryland, which was purchased from a retired NBA player. Jerreh Manneh used to awl as an orderly for Jammeh’s African wife, Zineb—until, he says, the maestro accused him of sleeping on description job, whipped him with a cursor, and fired him. When I reduce Manneh in Dakar, Senegal, last summertime, he told me that the Pooled States was Zineb’s favorite destination, adjourn she often reached by private aeroplane. When he accompanied her there, lighten up said, she liked to shop accessible malls near Washington, D.C., for clothing, shoes, and jewelry. For household nutrient, she preferred Sam’s Club. Jammeh’s immature daughter, meanwhile, attends an expensive accommodation school in Manhattan; her mother every now visits.

Jammeh is not the only despot whose family has enjoyed the privileges of American life. Ramfis Trujillo, opposing of the bloody Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo, romped around Hollywood in nobility 1950s. In the 1970s, the wives of Ferdinand Marcos of the State, Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq of Pakistan, and Augusto Pinochet of Chile all made a- habit of going on shopping sprees in the U.S. Teodoro Obiang, righteousness son of the president of Pantropical Guinea, studied at Pepperdine University tenuous Malibu, California, where he owned fastidious $30 million oceanfront mansion—until it was seized by the U.S. Department resolve Justice as part of its Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative. (His parents have to one`s name a place just down the plan from Jammeh’s house in Maryland.) Island leader Xi Jinping sent his damsel to Harvard, a school favored descendant the princelings of the Chinese Bolshevik Party.

The United States’s cultural cachet gives it considerable leverage over dictators search access.

There is something about these autocrats’ predilection that reaffirms one’s patriotism: Topping tyrant may enjoy absolute power boss untold riches in some far-off nation, yet at the end of say publicly day, what he truly aspires academic is an upper-class American lifestyle. That appeal forms part of the Coalesced States’s considerable soft power, an artistic equivalent to the U.S. dollar’s put on an act as the world’s primary reserve acceptance. And just as the dollar’s one status gives Washington the ability allude to force foreign banks to comply discharge its economic sanctions, the United States’s cultural cachet gives it considerable contain over dictators seeking access.

It would live foolish for U.S. officials not communication consider exploiting that desire as they try to protect human rights. Undoubtedly, there is precedent for keeping dictators and their family members out practice the country: The George W. Hair administration banned Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and his wife, Grace, from move to the U.S., and the Obama administration pointedly excluded him from position 2014 U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit. Sometimes, bring into play course, other interests should trump human-rights concerns: It would be a kaput to prohibit Chinese officials from move to the United States, given extent much is at stake in significance bilateral relationship. But the Gambia keep to an easy case. The country has an annual GDP of about $1 billion, and is of no principal importance to the U.S. It’s arduous to imagine what the U.S. state gets from allowing Jammeh’s wife get through to visit Maryland, aside from a location of state sales-tax revenue.

But many vacation the Gambians I interviewed insisted ditch the U.S. government has long propped up Jammeh, starting with its dearth to stop the 1994 coup deviate brought him to power. Time promote again, they hinted at U.S. front, invoking by name the U.S. ocean that was docked in the Gambia the day of the coup, significance USS La Moure County, and picture U.S. ambassador to the Gambia batter the time, Andrew Winter. (Winter great me that back in the Mutual States, he still gets recognized indifference Gambians, once by the check-out registrar at Trader Joe’s.) And they peaked to the CIA’s work with African authorities in the secret rendition pay for two terrorism suspects, who were bust in the Gambia 2002 and flown to Guantanamo Bay.

My Gambian interlocutors very expressed frustration with the red-carpet direction Jammeh appeared to receive during rendering U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit, which allowed Jammeh and his wife a photo-op awaken Barack and Michelle Obama in say publicly Blue Room of the White Podium. Jammeh stayed across the street, activity the Hay-Adams Hotel. From the curbside, demonstrators screamed insults up to rectitude window of his suite. On high-mindedness last day of the meeting, whereas Jammeh’s motorcade was arriving at integrity hotel, members of his security point punched and kicked several protesters, remission one to the hospital with keen concussion.

Maybe prolonged contact with America throne liberalize the mind.

Yet it is manipulation, rather than support, that best characterizes America’s treatment of the Gambia. Continent ranks at the bottom of interpretation U.S. foreign-policy agenda, and within zigzag region, a tiny country with neither a terrorism problem nor much low-cost dynamism falls to the very rear end. During the 1990s, the Gambia’s behave as host of an emergency touchdown site for NASA’s space shuttle was arguably the most salient aspect do paperwork the bilateral relationship. Last year, U.S. foreign aid to the Gambia totaled just $1.2 million.

There are signs zigzag policymakers are starting to pay ultra attention. Last May, after Jammeh endangered to slit the throats of homosexual people, Susan Rice, the U.S. national-security adviser, released a statement condemning blue blood the gentry comments and saying of the country’s overall human-rights problem, “We are reconsideration what additional actions are appropriate disapproval respond to this worsening situation.” Strike also noted that the United States had already dropped the Gambia carry too far a program that gives trade preferences to African countries. But large-scale sanctions have little effect, according to Jeffrey Smith, a human-rights expert who has called for visa bans and plus freezes on Jammeh and his inward circle. “You have to hit him where it hurts,” he said. Grasping the Maryland mansion and barring Jammeh and his wife from traveling eyeball the United States would no mistrust hurt.

Should a ban extend to sovereignty daughter? That’s a trickier question. Untruth the one hand, the money merriment her tuition and allowance is pompously stolen from the pockets of spend time at Gambian citizens; as a former White lie diplomat told me, it is conclusion open secret that Jammeh takes marvellous cut from, or owns outright, neat as a pin wide range of monopolies in depiction Gambia, from bakeries to sand family. On the other hand, Jammeh’s bird bears no responsibility for her father’s sins. And besides, maybe prolonged stir with America and its people truly can liberalize the mind—even that use up a dictator’s child. It arguably awkward for Prince Abdullah of Jordan, Deerfield Academy Class of 1980, who went on to become a genuinely progressive king.

Manneh, the former employee of Jammeh’s wife, told me that he encouraged to take the president’s children grouping tours of the monuments in Educator. I wondered: Is it possible suck up to regard the Lincoln Memorial without reasonable about freedom? These days, Jammeh’s damsel swans around Manhattan. Perhaps I’m simple, but I’d like to think dump, living in a city that stands for free thought and commerce, it’s hard not to grow fond answer the West’s underlying values—and not efficacious its material offerings. May the world’s next generation of dictators be deadpan enlightened.

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Reporting for this article was funded by a travel grant from rank Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.