Crude World (38 page)

“Should all his ambitions”:
A transcript of Cheney’s speech is posted at
www.georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/
news/releases/2002/08/20020826.html

“Anesthetizes thought, blurs vision, corrupts”:
Ryszard Kapuscinski,
Shah of Shahs
, p. 35.

One version of events:
Sadr’s involvement was mentioned in a report by an Iraqi judge who investigated the killing. “Take him away and kill him in your own special way,” Sadr said, according to the judge’s account. See “Sword of the Shia,” by Jeffrey Bartholet,
Newsweek
, December 4, 2006.

“Oh, occupier”:
The slogan was mentioned in Anthony Shadid’s August
30
, 2005, story in the
Washington Post
, “Sadr’s Disciples Rise Again to Play Pivotal Role in Iraq.”

About $zoo million:
The $200 million figure comes from the
New York Times
story “Iraq Insurgency Runs on Stolen Oil Profits,” March 16,
2008, and “Billions in Oil Missing in Iraq, U.S. Study Says,”
New York Times
, May 12, 2007.

Until the Iraqi army:
“Oil, Politics and Bloodshed Corrupt an Iraqi City,”
New York Times, June
13, 2006.

8 Alienation

On a warm spring evening:
The reception, held on May 16, 2005, was sponsored by the U.S.–Saudi Arabian Business Council.

Naimi was born in 1935:
Details of Naimi’s early life come from John Lawton’s “Naimi: ‘I Hope to Tell Him “Objective Accomplished,”’” published in
Saudi Aramco World Magazine
, May/June 1984, and “The Arabs,” by David Lamb (New York: Random House, 1987), pp. 276–78.

The country’s founder:
Dilip Hiro,
The Essential Middle East: A Comprehensive Guide
(New York: Basic Books, 2003), p. 2. There are many estimates on the number of wives; Hiro’s number is seventeen, but there appears to be no consensus.

He finally arranged:
For a colorful account of the negotiations, see Daniel Yergin’s
The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power
, pp. 289–92.

“The oil concession”:
Madawi al-Rasheed,
A History of Saudi Arabia
, p. 93.

After news of the discovery:
See Wallace Stegner’s
Discovery!: The Search for Arabian Oil
, an excerpt of which, detailing the moment of oil being found, was published in
Saudi Aramco World
magazine in January/February 1969; and “Well Done, Well Seven,” by Mary Norton, in
Saudi Aramco World
magazine, May/June 1988.

The only Americans:
Anthony Sampson,
The Seven Sisters: The Great Oil Companies and the World They Shaped
, p. 91.

“What does it concern them”:
Abdelrahman Munif,
Cities of Salt
, p. 29.

“The moment has come”:
Yergin,
The Prize
, p. 606.

“petrodollars actually sever the very link”:
Terry Lynn Karl and Ian Gary, “The Global Record,”
Foreign Policy in Focus
, PetroPolitics Special Report, January 2004.

He died in
1953
:
See Rachel Bronson,
Thicker Than Oil: America’s Uneasy Partnership with Saudi Arabia
, p. 75.

Long before Hollywood A-listers:
See “Abramovich Spending Goes Sky-High on Flying Palace,” London
Times
, August 22, 2004, and Joe Havely, “Air Force One: The Flying White House,” CNN, February 15, 2002.

“A jungle inhabited by beasts of prey”:
The cables have been posted on the Web site of the Campaign Against Arms Trade, at
www.caat.org.uk/issues/saudi-bribery.php
. The Guardian newspaper has also published them at
www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/
jun/07/bae18
.

“misused or got corrupted with $
50
billion”:
The interview was broadcast in a 2001 PBS documentary,
Looking for Answers
. A transcript of the interview was posted at
www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/
terrorism/interviews/bandar.html
.

The prince, whose vacation compound:
Kirk Johnson, “A $135 Million Home, but If You Have to Ask …,”
New York Times
, July 2, 2007.

A former fighter pilot:
See David Leigh and Rob Evans, “The Bandar Cover-Up: Who Knew What, and When?,”
Guardian
, June 9, 2007, and Nelson D. Schwartz and Lowell Bergman, “Payload: Taking Aim at Corporate Bribery,”
New York Times
, November 25, 2007.

Even the advent:
The television protest, as well as the introduction of women’s education, is described by Peter W. Wilson and Douglas F. Graham in
Saudi Arabia: The Coming Storm
. London: M.E. Sharpe, 1994, p. 55.

The revolt of the alienated:
My account of the siege is drawn from a number of sources, foremost among them Lawrence Wright,
The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11
, pp. 88–94.

In the final battle:
For a description of the use of CB gas, as well as the executions, see Yaroslav Trofimov,
The Siege of Mecca: The 1979 Uprising at Islam’s Holiest Shrine
, pp
. 191
–92 and 238–40.

An American think tank:
See “The Saudi Connection: How Billions in Oil Money Spawned a Global Terror Network,”
U.S. News & World Report
, December 9, 2003. The $70 billion estimate came from Alex Alexiev of the conservative organization Center for Security Policy. On June 26, 2003, Alexiev cited the estimate in testimony before the Senate Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Homeland Security; a transcript is posted at
www.kyl.senate.gov/legis_center/subdocs/
sc062603_alexiev.pdf
.

With a population:
For Saudi funding as the proportion of the faith’s costs, see Lawrence Wright,
The Looming Tower
, p. 149.

The oil boom enriched:
The biographies of Mohammed bin Laden and his seventeenth son are well known by now. Some of the latest sources I drew on include Wright’s
Looming Tower
and Steve Coll’s
The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century
, as well as Coll’s earlier
Ghost
Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001
.

Although his wealth:
See Coll,
The Bin Ladens
, pp. 351–52.

The Sudanese all but fleeced him:
See Wright,
Looming Tower
, pp.
196
–97 and 222–23.

At times, bin Laden and his followers:
Ibid., p. 248.

“The Saudi Arabian government spares no effort”:
Amnesty International, “Saudi Arabia: A Secret State of Suffering,” March 2000. Posted at
www.amnesty.org/en/
library/info/MDE23/001/2000
.

More than 30 percent:
Employment statistics issued by the Saudi government are regarded as unreliable, downplaying the actual numbers of the jobless. The estimates I use come from an article by Eric Rouleau in the July/August 2002 issue
of Foreign Affairs
(“Trouble in the Kingdom”). Later estimates have not varied significantly from the figures used by Rouleau.

The crucial thing:
See “Petroleum, Poverty and Security,” an excellent report issued by Chatham House in June 2005. The report notes, “Petroleum output per head is a primary measure of petroleum resource flow, in the same way that GDP per capita is a measure of economic wealth.” Copy posted at
www.chathamhouse.org.uk/
files/3254_bppetroleum.pdf
.

In the early 1980s:
See “Leisure Class to Working Class in Saudi Arabia,” by Neil MacFarquhar,
New York Times
, August 26, 2001.

The rhythm of life:
For population figures, see “Young and Restless,” by Afshin Molavi,
Smithsonian
, April 2006. The story notes that not only are 75 percent of the population under thirty years of age, 60 percent are under twenty-one and more than one in three is under fourteen.

Addled on illicit drugs:
See Josh Martin, “Arab Traffic Jam,”
The Middle East
, March 1, 2005.

I was not surprised:
The URL is
www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJup NDIKkEk
.

9 Empire

By 2004, Moscow counted more billionaires:
“Moscow Overtakes New York as the Billionaires’ Capital of the World,”
Independent
, May 14, 2004.

The local media:
“It Isn’t Magic: Putin Opponents Vanish from TV,”
New York Times, June
3, 2008.

As democracy shrank:
On life expectancy, see Nicholas Eberstadt, “Rising Ambitions, Sinking Population,”
New York Times
, October 25, 2008.

In the late 1950s:
See Yegor Gaidar, “The Soviet Collapse,” published by the American Enterprise Institute, April 19, 2007, as well as Gaidar’s
Collapse of an Empire
,
chapter 3
.

“Without the discovery”:
Stephen Kotkin,
Armageddon Averted: The Soviet Collapse, 1970-2000
, p. 15.

But the impact:
See Peter Schweizer,
Victory: The Reagan Administration’s Secret Strategy That Hastened the Collapse of the Soviet Union
, pp. 217–20. Also see Marshall I. Goldman,
Petrostate: Putin, Power, and the New Russia
, pp.
49-
-
54
.

At the end of 1985:
For a description of the Saudi production increase, see Yergin’s
The Prize
, pp
. 748
—751.

“Gorbachev’s incipient perestroika”:
Stephen Kotkin, “What Is to Be Done?”
Financial Times
, March 5, 2004.

According to Yegor Gaidar:
Quoted from Gaidar’s “The Soviet Collapse.” Gaidar has noted that oil revenues propped up the Soviet economy for decades. In
Collapse of an Empire
, he wrote, “The hard currency from oil exports stopped the growing food supply crisis, increased the import of equipment and consumer goods, ensured a financial base for the arms race and the achievement of nuclear parity with the United States, and permitted the realization of such risky foreign policy actions as the war in Afghanistan;” see p. 102.

“Nothing is free”:
Paul Klebnikov,
Godfather of the Kremlin: The Decline of Russia in the Age of Gangster Capitalism
, p. 194.

Roman Abramovich, an oil multibillionaire:
Details on Abramovich’s acquisitions are from “Abramovich Purchases Equal of Air Force One,”
St. Petersburg Times
, May 25, 2004; “A Roman Retreat,”
Time
, November 24, 2003; and “I’m No Napoleon, Says Abramovich,”
Daily Telegraph
, July 6, 2003.

A few days earlier:
See “Advertisers Doubt NFQ Rival Killed Goldman,”
Moscow Times
, April 14, 2004.

Putin reportedly amassed:
See Luke Harding, “Putin, the Kremlin Power Struggle and the $40bn fortune,”
Guardian
, December 21, 2007.

Since Putin had come to office:
See Michael A. McFaul and Kathryn Stoner-Weiss, “The Myth of the Authoritarian Model: How Putin’s Crackdown Holds Russia Back,”
Foreign Affairs
, January/February 2008.

Khodorkovsky was also challenging Putin:
See Marshall I. Goldman,
Petrostate: Putin, Power and the New Russia
, pp. 111–13.

When a Chinese firm tried:
See “Chinese Company Drops Bid to Buy U.S. Oil Concern,”
New York Times
, August 3, 2005.

Under the post-Communist rule:
There are a number of excellent books about this period in Russian economic history. One of the best is
Sale of the Century: Russia’s Wild Ride from Communism to Capitalism
, by Chrystia Freeland. See also
The Oligarchs: Wealth and Power in the New Russia
, by David E. Hoffman, and Paul Klebnikov’s
Godfather of the Kremlin
.

“Putin arrived on the scene”:
See Michael McFaul and Kathryn Stoner-Weiss, “The Myth of Putin’s Success,”
International Herald Tribune
, December 13, 2007.

Not long afterward:
See “Russia Plans to Sell Bonds in
2010
, Seeks Loans from World Bank,” by Paul Abelsky,
Bloomberg
, April 27, 2009. The story, attributing its information to Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin, stated that “the country’s Reserve Fund, one of its two sovereign wealth funds, may be exhausted by the end of this year.”