Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security (34 page)

6.
Paul Fishstein and Andrew Wilder, “Winning Hearts and Minds? Examining the Relationship Between Aid and Security in Afghanistan” (Medford, MA: Feinstein International Center, Tufts University, 2012), http://bit.ly/1eTl3z5.

7.
Colin Camerer,
Behavioral Game Theory: Experiments in Strategic Interaction
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), pp. 42–81.

8.
Rakoff, “Financial Crisis,” p. 6; David Gomez, “Spies Like Them: How Robert Mueller Transformed—For Better and for Worse—The FBI into a Counterterrorism Agency,”
Foreign Policy
, May 31, 2013, http://atfp.co/1gCLlna; Sarah Chayes, “Blinded by the War on Terrorism,”
Los Angeles Times,
July 28, 2013.

9.
Major General Mike Flynn challenged the intelligence community to begin addressing this gap. See Major General Michael T. Flynn, Captain Mike Pottinger, and Paul D. Batchelor,
Fixing Intel: A Blueprint for Making Intelligence Relevant in Afghanistan
(Washington, D.C.: Center for a New American Security, 2010), http://bit.ly/1qPUjSw.

10.
Erasmus,
Education of a Christian Prince,
ed. Lisa Jardine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 65.

11.
The list of targeted insurgents was called the Joint Prioritized Effects List (JPEL).

Chapter Five: Vertically Integrated Criminal Syndicates

1.
For conventional wisdom, see former State Department senior adviser Barnett Rubin’s
Afghanistan from the Cold War Through the War on Terror
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), which contains passages such as “Politics is highly personalized, tending to crystalize around powerful men and their patronage networks” (p. 299), and “Reforms based on professionalism and merit will take years to create effective security agencies and ministries for service delivery. In the meantime there are only two alternatives to fill the gap: international provision of security and services, and reliance on mechanisms of patronage that became strengthened and took on new forms during decades of war” (p. 177).

2.
On July 9, 2014, U.S. Special Representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan James Dobbins suggested “that the new [Afghan] government will continue to rely on patronage, in the manner of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, to stabilize the fault lines in Afghan society. ‘You had a country with very weak institutions that didn’t project much beyond the capital, and [Karzai] had a country that was divided into two languages, different religious structures, different tribal and ethnic structures, and he held it together very successfully through a process of distributing patronage.’” Joshua Rosenfeld, “US Envoy: Candidates’ Support of ‘National Unity’ Is Key to Next Afghan Government,” Asia Society, July 10, 2014, http://bit.ly/1rGbpn5. And: “Karzai’s best asset is that he knows how his country works, with loyalties transacted on the basis of kinship, faith and cash,” according to Alex de Waal, “The Price of Peace,”
Prospect,
November 17, 2009, at http://bit.ly/1kFBlua. A senior U.S. official is quoted saying Karzai and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton “have a very good relationship, they can speak together as politicians and they can talk in terms of not just the policy dimensions of things, but also the political ramifications,” in Kim Ghattas, “Will Hillary Clinton’s Gamble on Karzai Pay Off,” BBC News, November 20, 2009, http://bbc.in/1jltmkf.

3.
Alissa Rubin, “Karzai Vows Corruption Fight, but Avoids Details,”
New York Times,
November 3, 2009.

4.
This expression contains religious overtones: to pray, a Muslim must be wearing clothes that are ritually clean, untouched by blood, urine, or feces or by such impure animals as dogs or cats. The expression suggests the conceptual convergence between corruption and ritual impurity evoked throughout this book.

5.
John of Salisbury,
Policraticus,
trans. Cary J. Nederman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), bk. 6, chap. 1, p. 108.

Chapter Six: Revolt Against Kleptocracy

1.
Erasmus,
Education of a Christian Prince,
ed. Lisa Jardine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 34, 74–75.

2.
The Sea of Precious Virtues: A Medieval Islamic Mirror for Princes,
trans. Julie Scott Meisami (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1990), p. 298.

3.
Erasmus,
Education,
p. 28, 74. See also John of Salisbury’s description of the pope: “The
Roman pontiff himself is burdensome and almost intolerable to everyone, since . . . he erects palaces and parades himself about not only in purple vestments but in gilded clothes.” John of Salisbury,
Policraticus
, trans. Cary J. Nederman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), bk. 6, chap. 24, p. 133.

4.
Niccolò Machiavelli,
The Prince
, trans. (into French) Marie Gaille-Nikodimov (Paris: Librairie générale française, 2000), p. 131.

5.
By 2014, the pattern was even visible to the mainstream
Economist
Magazine. See “Our Crony Capitalism Index: Planet Plutocrat,” March 15, 2014.

Chapter Seven: Variation 1

1.
Shana Marshall and Joshua Stacher, “Egypt’s Generals and Transnational Capital,” Middle East Research and Information Project 262: Spring 2012.

2.
Robert Springborg, Naval Postgraduate School professor, quoted in Cam Simpson and Mariam Fan, “Egypt’s Army Marches, Fights, Sells Chickens,”
Bloomberg Businessweek,
February 17, 2011, http://buswk.co/1mh6qaN.

3.
For a rare example of a dispute, see Merrit Kennedy, “A Big Battle over a Tiny Isle in the Nile,” NPR, March 9, 2013, http://n.pr/1dak1xX.

4.
Zaineb Abul-Magd, “The Generals’ Secret: Egypt’s Ambivalent Market,”
Sada,
December 24, 2012, http://ceip.org/1gKA6FE.

5.
Information from multiple interviews in Cairo, July 2013. See also Yezid Sayigh,
Above the State: The Officers’ Republic in Egypt
(Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, August 2012).

6.
Syria’s ruling crony-capitalist network resembles that branch of Egypt’s dual civilian-and-military kleptocracy. Bashar al-Assad, who actually did succeed his father rather than just being poised to do so, plays the role of Gamal Mubarak. He abruptly liberalized Syria’s economy in the 2000s, with his network—which included some of the Sunni business elite as well as his own Alawites—getting privileged access. Syria, however, lacks the separate and competing military kleptocratic structure, and it features a critical sectarian divide, amounting to minority rule, shared with Bahrain, but not Egypt.

7.
U.S. Embassy cables are generally supportive of privatization, only rarely highlighting the favoritism and lack of transparency.

8.
“Egypt Labor Strikes Break Out Across the Country; Protesters Defiant,” AP/
Huffington Post
, liveblog, February 9–May 25, 2011, at http://huff.to/1cVBjOS and similar coverage for the role of factory strikes in fueling the 2011 revolution’s momentum. “The destructive practice of privatization, in particular, often promoted as ‘modernization’ or ‘liberalization,’ has been a source of mass discontent in Egypt for years; widespread disapproval of this policy . . . played a significant role in the revolt that toppled the Mubarak government. For example, in 2003–2004, Gamal Mubarak, President Mubarak’s son, sought to ‘modernize’ Egypt’s economy by undertaking a secretive privatization campaign which many Egyptians claimed was rife with corruption. Multiple companies were sold at a fraction of their values to foreign investors. Gamal took over the Economic Policy Committee of his father’s party, the National Democratic Party, and . . . began modernizing,
or
privatizing,
Egypt’s economy.” (And see the specific example of the Omar Effendi retail chain in the rest of the blog.) Michael Termini, “Egypt Privatization and the Sordid Tale of World Bank Managing Director Mahmoud Mohieldin,” Government Accountability Project, August 10, 2011, http://bit.ly/1pSStlC.

9.
Erasmus,
Education of a Christian Prince,
ed. Lisa Jardine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 79.

10.
John of Salisbury,
Policraticus,
trans. Cary J. Nederman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), bk. 5, chap. 10, p. 88.

11.
Nathan Brown, “Why Do Egyptian Courts Say the Darndest Things,”
Washington Post
, March 25, 2014.

12.
Gamal Amin,
Egypt in the Era of Hosni Mubarak
(Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2011), p. 8.

13.
“Underlying the movement’s economic views is a conviction that the old order was run on the basis of corruption at all levels: crony capitalism at the top seeping down to lower-level coping mechanisms of those left out of the scramble to exploit state resources for private ends. What the Brotherhood offers as a remedy is virtue.” Nathan J. Brown,
When Victory Becomes an Option: Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood Confronts Success
(Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, January 2012), p. 15. A BBC interviewee described the Muslim Brotherhood as “untainted by sleaze, corruption, and cronyism” in “Egypt Election Results: Your Views,” BBC, June 24, 2012, http://bbc.in/Ot5ORd. See also U.S. Embassy cable, “MB Platform Calls for ‘Mixed’ Public-Private Economy,” August 26, 2011, http://bit.ly/OyES29.

14.
Ayman al-Zawahiri, “The Facts of Jihad and the Lies of Hypocrisy” al-Saheb, August 4, 2009, at http://bit.ly/1gCR50l.

15.
Interview conducted by Mokhtar Awad.

16.
Sarah Chayes, “The Egyptian Restoration,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, August 1, 2013, http://ceip.org/1icUq6R; Rick Gladstone, “Cairo Attacks Were Intended to Provoke, Some Say,”
New York Times,
August 17, 2013; Robert Zaretsky, “Egypt’s Algerian Moment,”
Foreign Policy,
August 20, 2013; Daniel Byman and Tamara Wittes, “Now that the Muslim Brotherhood Is Declared a Terrorist Group It Just Might Become One,”
Washington Post,
January 10, 2014. See also Dominic Tierney, “Bashar al-Assad and the Devil’s Gambit,”
The Atlantic
, July 16, 2014.

Chapter Eight: Variation 2

1.
“Tunisia, under your leadership, is fully engaged in modernity, benefiting from the riches that are at the foundation of progress, what is known as ‘The Tunisian Miracle,’ for over fifteen years,” observed French president Jacques Chirac. “Discours de Jacques Chirac à Tunis,” Voltairenet, December 3, 2003, http://www.voltairenet.org/article11464.html. See also Francisco Rodriguez and Emma Samman, “The North African Miracle,” in
UNDP Let’s Talk Human Development,
November 12, 2010, http://zunia.org/post/the-north-african-miracle.

2.
David D. Kirkpatrick, “Behind Tunisia Unrest, Rage over Wealth of Ruling Family,”
New York Times,
January 13, 2011; Elaine Ganley and Jenny Barchfield, “Leila Trabelsi,
Former Tunisian First Lady, Despised by Nation,”
Huffington Post,
January 17, 2011, at http://huff.to/1p84C0A.

3.
Lotfi Ben Chrouda,
Dans l’ombre de la reine
(Neuilly-sur-Seine: Michel Lafont, 2011), p. 43.

4.
Walter of Milmete,
On the Nobility, Wisdom, and Prudence of Kings,
in
Political Thought in Early Fourteenth-Century England: Treatises by Walter of Milemete, William of Pagula, and William of Ockham,
ed. and trans. Cary J. Nederman (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2002), p. 47. And according to the mid-twelfth-century Persian
Sea of Precious Virtues
: “Whoever takes more than [what is required to seek a wife, build a dwelling, and obtain a mount] from the public treasury, to make a separate stable for his horses or a chamber for his slaves, or to seek cups of gold and silver, brocades, and silks, or to amass silver, He will come to God on Judgment Day burning and gasping.”
The Sea of Precious Virtues: A Medieval Islamic Mirror for Princes,
trans. Julie Scott Meisami (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1990), p. 112. The trusty John of Salisbury advised against appointing “those who cannot, or indeed disdain to, be content with a little,” for they will commit the worst extortions. John of Salisbury,
Policraticus,
trans. Cary J. Nederman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), bk. 5, chap 10, p. 87. See also Crystia Freedland,
Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else
(New York: Penguin, 2012). For a powerful description of money addiction from someone who suffered it, see Sam Polk, “For the Love of Money,”
New York Times,
January 19, 2014.

5.
On the African Peer Review Mechanism, see: http://aprm-au.org/

6.
Béatrice Hibou,
La force de l’obéissance: économie politique de la répression en Tunisie
(Paris: Éditions la Découverte, 2006), p. 79. For an in-depth study on how the Trabelsi family’s manipulation of investment laws and other business regulations advantaged their private sector investments, see Bob Rijkers, Caroline Freund, and Antonio Nucifora, “All in the Family: State Capture in Tunisia.” The World Bank, Policy Research Working Paper #6810, March 2014.

7.
Hibou,
La force de l’obéissance
, p. 34.

8.
Ibid., p. 35, 44.

9.
Ibid., p. 50.

10.
Ben Chrouda,
Dans l’ombre,
pp. 43–47, 54, 84–92, 94–95ff.

11.
Hibou,
La force de l’obéissance
, pp. 197–98.

12.
“The representatives of the central power did not hesitate to use the banking sector to transmit their messages of disapproval or their punishment of groups or individuals suspected of independence.” Ibid., p. 81.

13.
John of Salisbury,
Policraticus,
bk. 5, chap. 14, p. 95.

14.
Hibou,
La force de l’obéissance,
pp. 125–30.

15.
John of Salisbury,
Policraticus
, bk. 6, chap. 1, p. 105. And Erasmus wrote: “Many laws have been introduced quite justifiably, but have been put to the worst uses by the corruption of officials.”
Education of a Christian Prince,
ed. Lisa Jardine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 86.