Red & Dead

Ever since France cut Guinea off without a sou (when Guinea refused to join the French African Community), suave, handsome Premier Sekou Toure has been touring around looking for money. In the midst of a visit to the U.A.R. last week, he suddenly flew off to Jidda to get acquainted with Saudi Arabia's rich King Saud. Saud proffered no money, so Toure hustled back to Cairo to continue his talks with Nasser, found that the U.A.R. President already had another tourist: Indonesia's Sukarno.

For all his equable hospitality to neutralist leaders, Nasser does not feel neutral about them personally. He does not like Sukarno; a devoted family man himself, he was shocked when, on a previous visit to Cairo, Sukarno asked to be provided with feminine companionship. Nasser finds Ghana's Nkrumah stuck-up, Nehru too preachy. But he likes Toure as "a natural man" (and a Moslem who calls himself Ahmad when in Cairo), and last week Toure came away from Cairo with a $16.8 million loan, repayable in seven years at 2 1/2% interest, plus a $5,600,000 barter trade agreement.

That Eastern Look. Back home, Toure's indiscriminate quest for funds to shore up his floundering country has already turned Guinea into the chief Communist foothold in West Africa. It is the price Toure has had to pay for some $110 million in Communist credits for development and construction. With the bankroll have come close to 1,000 Iron Curtain technicians and advisers, including 500 Russians, 125 Red Chinese. Sweltering little Conakry, the capital, has taken on an East European look. The black traffic cops wear little flat-topped caps resembling those of the hated A.V.H. police in Hungary. At the airport, Guinean honor guards for visiting dignitaries sport Russian helmets and Czech machine pistols.

With the technicians came the machin ery of a Communist police state; last year Toure's goons were busily cleaning up the opposition with clubs and guns. The passive Guineans learned the lesson quickly, and today Guinea is docile and orderly. Now Toure is trying to whip up support for his "human investment" program, in which "volunteers" on the Chinese model are supposed to spend their idle hours building highways and schools. But being Guineans, the human investors do more dancing and laughing than shoveling, for hard work is neither traditional nor wise in the West African sun.

Right Face. Other Marxian imports are the nationalized foreign trade agencies. They also have proved a flop, the evidence being bare shop shelves and the sagging value of the Guinean franc. Toure has been forced to trim the power of the state import monopoly, allowing private traders to handle some foreign goods. This right face has led to a sharp split in Guinea's Politburo between Sekou Toure, who seems to be willing to try anything provided it pays off, and his militant half-brother Ismael, who thinks Marxism is the answer to every problem.

The havoc all-out Marxism has wreaked on the nation's economy seems to have given Toure pause. Over his brother's protests, but with the support of Guinea's best bankers and businessmen, the pragmatic Toure has gone out of his way to welcome new U.S. Ambassador Wil liam Attwood, 41 (onetime foreign editor of Look). He has privately begun talks to revive the U.S.-aid program to Guinea, which was stalled by Washington as Toure fell deeper into the toils of the Communists. Attwood cherishes the hope that the U.S.'s standing in Guinea can be enhanced, and that Toure can be persuaded to look West instead of East. He plainly has his work cut out for him. "We're going to give it a hell of a try," he sighs. "There is no place for us to go but up."

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