Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security (38 page)

4.
Dennis Blair, Jon Huntsman, et al.,
The IP Commission Report
(National Bureau of Asian Research, May 2013), http://bit.ly/1jgEEX6, pp. 1–2.

5.
Kevin Casas-Zamora, ed.,
Dangerous Liaisons: Organized Crime and Political Finance in Latin America and Beyond
(Washington, D.C.: Brookings, 2013)

6.
Bayart, Ellis, and Hibou,
Criminalization,
p. 93. See also Linda Polman,
The Crisis Caravan: What’s Wrong With Humanitarian Aid
(New York: Metropolitan Books, 2010).

7.
Thomas Friedman examined this relationship with respect to Syria in “The Other Arab Spring,”
New York Times
April 7, 2012. Note, similarly, the acute water and resource shortages in the north of Nigeria, where Boko Haram is most tolerated.

8.
See Sarah Chayes et al., “Corruption: The Unrecognized Threat to International Security,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, June 2014.

9.
French foreign minister Michèle Alliot-Marie resigned under intense criticism after vacationing in Tunisia as the 2011 revolution was breaking out and accepting transport in a private plane belonging to a member of the Trabelsi inner circle. Kim Willsher, “French Foreign Minister Resigns,”
Guardian,
February 27, 2011.

10.
U.S. Department of the Treasury, Resource Center, Counter Narcotics Trafficking Sanctions, http://1.usa.gov/1eZ7uIH.

11.
U.S. Department of the Treasury, Press Center, Fact Sheet: New Executive Order Targets Significant Transnational Criminal Organizations, July 25, 2011, http://1.usa.gov/ 1ditGT7.

12.
H.R. 4728, “An Act to Support the Independence, Sovereignty, and Territorial Integrity of Ukraine, and for Other Purposes,” title 2, sec. 203(c)(1), pp. 33–34.

13.
“It is the sense of Congress that the Administration should provide expedited assistance to the Government of Ukraine through appropriate United States Government and multilateral programs, including the Department of Justice’s Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative, the Egmont Group, the Stolen Asset Recovery Initiative, the Camden Asset Recovery Inter-Agency Network, and the Asset Recovery Focal Point Initiative, to identify, investigate, secure, and recover assets missing from the Government of Ukraine or linked to purported acts of corruption by former President Viktor Yanukovych, members of his family, other former or current senior foreign political figures of the Government of
Ukraine, and their accomplices in any jurisdiction.” Ibid., title 1, sec. 108(a), pp. 18–19. See also Andrew Marshal, “What’s Yours Is Mine: New Actors and New Approaches to Asset Recovery in Global Corruption Cases”
(Washington, D.C.: Center for Global Development, 2013), http://bit.ly/1fMbHi7
.

14.
“Remarks by the President at the United States Military Academy Commencement Ceremony,” May 28, 2014, http://1.usa.gov/1qC4fyS.

15.
See Sarah Chayes and Frederic Wehrey, “Obama’s Dangerous New Terror War,”
POLITICO Magazine
, June 18, 2014.

16.
Matt Mossman, “Big Dig: How to Hold Miners—and the Governments They Work with—Accountable,”
Foreign Affairs
, January 29, 2014, http://fam.ag/1ezQhob; and Nicholas Shaxson, “Nigeria’s Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative: Just a Glorious Audit?” (London: Chatham House, 2009), http://bit.ly/1jjFq43.

17.
Working Group in the Prevention of Odious Debt,
Preventing Odious Obligations: A New Tool for Protecting Citizens from Illegitimate Regimes
(Washington, D.C.: Center for Global Development, 2010), http://bit.ly/NzW72e.

18.
The rising wave of repression against local civil society organizations and against foreign efforts to support them is highlighted in Thomas Carothers and Saskia Brechenmacher,
Closing Space: Democracy and Human Rights Support Under Fire
(Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2014).

Epilogue: Self-Reflection

1.
Fintan O’Toole,
Ship of Fools: How Stupidity and Corruption Sank the Celtic Tiger
(New York: Public Affairs, 2010), p. 183.

2.
Ibid., p. 217.

3.
Ibid., p. 221.

4.
“Iceland: Cracks in the Crust,”
Economist,
December 11, 2008.

5.
Sarah Lyall, “Smokestacks in a White Wilderness Divide Iceland,”
New York Times,
February 4, 2007.

6.
Daniel Chartier,
The End of Iceland’s Innocence
(Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2011); and Roger Boyes,
Meltdown Iceland
(New York: Bloomsbury, 2009).

7.
Quoted in Boyes,
Meltdown
, p. 2.

8.
Alda Sigmundsdóttir, “The Trial of Iceland’s Prime Minister Is About Democracy, Not Money,”
Guardian
, March 5, 2012. See also Harry Wilson, “Ex-Iceland PM Geir Haarde to Escape Punishment Despite Guilty Verdict Over Banking Collapse,”
Telegraph
, April 23, 2012.

9.
Stórnlagaráo, “A Proposal for a New Constitution for the Republic of Iceland,” March 24, 2012, http://bit.ly/1gFFBEX.

10.
Thorvaldur Gylfason, “Democracy on Ice: A Post-Mortem of the Icelandic Constitution,”
Open Democracy
, June 19, 2013, http://bit.ly/1mcTIbl.

11.
Among the best are Simon Johnson and James Kwak,
13 Bankers
(New York: Random House, 2010); Charles Ferguson,
Predator Nation: Corporate Criminals, Political Corruption,
and the Hijacking of America
(New York: Crown Business, 2012); Neil Barofsky,
Bailout
(New York: Free Press, 2012); and Laurence Lessig,
Republic Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress—and a Plan to Stop It
(New York: Twelve, 2011).

12.
Johnson and Kwak,
13 Bankers,
p. 97.

13.
The White House, Office of the Press Secretary, News Conference by the President, October 6, 2011, http://1.usa.gov/OEB7Zk.

14.
Ferguson,
Predator Nation,
pp. 160, 186.

15.
Ibid., p. 190.

16.
Jed Rakoff, “Why Have No High-Level Executives Been Prosecuted?”
New York Review of Books
61, no. 1 (January 9, 2014).

17.
See Lessig,
Republic Lost
. See also the narrow definition of corruption expounded in U.S. Supreme Court jurisdiction, most recently in
McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission,
572 U.S. 2, April 2, 2014:

We have said that government regulation may not target the general gratitude a candidate may feel toward those who support him or his allies, or the political access such support may afford.

Or p. 19:

[W]hile preventing corruption or its appearance is a legitimate objective, Congress may target only a specific type of corruption—“
quid pro quo
” corruption. As
Buckley
explained, Congress may permissibly seek to rein in “large contributions [that] are given to secure a political
quid pro quo
from current and potential office holders.” 424 U.S., at 26. In addition to “actual
quid pro quo
arrangements,” Congress may permissibly limit “the appearance of corruption stemming from public awareness of the opportunities for abuse inherent in a regime of large individual financial contributions” to particular candidates.
Id.,
at 27; see also
Citizens United
, 558 U.S., at 359 . . . Spending large sums of money in connection with elections, but not in connection with an effort to control the exercise of an officeholder’s official duties, does not give rise to such
quid pro quo
corruption. Nor does the possibility that an individual who spends large sums may garner “influence over or access to” elected officials or political parties.

See also p. 14:

When an individual contributes money to a candidate, he exercises both of those rights [political expression and political association]. The contribution “serves as a general expression of support for the candidate and his views” and “serves to affiliate a person with a candidate.”
Id
. [
Cohen
v.
California
, 403 U.S.], at 21–22. Those First Amendment rights are important
regardless whether the individual is, on the one hand, a “lone pamphleteer or street corner orator in the Tom Paine mold,” or is, on the other, someone who spends “substantial amounts of money in order to communicate [his] political ideas through sophisticated” means.
National Conservative Political Action Comm
., 470 U.S., at 493. Either way, he is participating in an electoral debate.

INDEX

Page numbers listed correspond to the print edition of this book. You can use your device’s search function to locate particular terms in the text.

Page numbers in
italics
refer to diagrams.

Abbas, Kamal, 84–85

ABC, 141

Abd al-Ahad, 4

Abdullah (NGO employee), 24–26, 27, 29, 33

fear instilled by, 26, 31

fraud committed by, 25

Abu Iyadh (Sayf Allah Ibn Hussein), 99–100

Abuja, 123, 124, 125, 129, 130

Abul-Magd, Zeinab, 82

accountability, 11, 127, 200–201, 209

absence of, 61, 84, 94, 122

for leaders, 14, 15, 16, 160, 164

neglect and, 99, 143

under law, 160

see also
command responsibility

accounting, 23, 25

in keeping track of expenditures, 25, 34–35

“Western” vs. “Afghan,” 25

Adams, John, 169

advice literature (“Mirrors for Princes”), 8–19, 26–27, 32, 35, 86, 92, 104, 121, 156–57, 158, 162, 164–65, 167, 182

Afek Tounes, 75, 76

Afghan Border Police, 54, 56

Afghan government, 28 40, 151

absence of integrity in, 62–64

abusive behavior of, 14, 30, 31–32, 41

bribery and, 4, 5, 34–36, 140–42

CIA money given to, 154–55

corruption in, 4–7, 36–37, 40–42, 59–61, 135–36, 137–38, 140–43, 145–46, 150, 177

as criminal organization, 62, 66, 135

insurgency manufactured by corruption in, 6–7, 37, 41, 42, 43, 44, 63–64, 152

internal economic system of, 59–60, 61, 66, 89
n
, 122, 213,
213
, 214

internal protection system of, 60, 66, 141, 146

international community and, 14, 30–31, 42–43, 45, 64

judicial system in, 88, 141, 142

as kleptocratic, 6, 140–41, 149, 153, 155

kleptocratic system of, 59–60, 146

land grabbing by, 4, 11, 151

main objective of, 62, 63

national security council of, 140

power of, 61–62

pre–Soviet invasion political system of, 58–59

Taliban compared with, 61, 64

Taliban fueled by corruption in, 6, 43, 152

U.S. action against, 136, 143

U.S. gathering of information on, 46–47

U.S. seen as responsible for, 14, 165

U.S. used as enforcers of, 31

Afghanistan, 3–7, 83
n
, 91
n
, 97, 99, 102, 124, 175, 195, 205

2005 mosque explosion in, 4, 5

banks in, 34–36

development work in, 43–45

drug trafficking in, 51, 52, 64, 65–66

elections in,
see
elections, Afghan

exploitation of outsiders by intermediaries in, 24, 27

fall of Taliban in, 6, 22, 25

horticulture in, 33–34

insurgency in, 4, 6–7, 29, 41, 42, 63–64, 75, 135, 136, 137, 144, 145, 153

international presence in felt as offensive, 14

Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan in, 117

kleptocratic system in, 58–64, 213

national security of, 7

police checkpoints in, 5

Taliban in, 6, 42, 45, 50, 61, 64, 75, 119

U.K. embassy in, 53

U.S.-backed militias in, 22

U.S. bases in, 20, 52, 53

U.S. embassy in, 28, 48, 50, 64, 145

U.S. financial assistance to, 149

U.S. impact on, 29

U.S. troop deployment in, 61

Afghan National Army, 50, 52, 54, 64, 140

Afghan officials, 31, 138, 141, 154

in capturing development resources, 31, 45

on CIA payroll, 151

extremists generated by corruption of, 37

money paid to superiors by, 59, 66

political corruption of, 41, 45

protection of, 60, 61, 66, 146

symbolic gestures against, 50–51

U.S. military interactions with, 41, 48

Afghan National Police, 5–6, 11, 41, 54, 56

U.S.-trained units of, 49–50, 140, 142, 146

Afghans, 64

attempted meetings with U.S. officials by, 27–29

as caught between Taliban and government, 30, 31–32, 41

corruption as frustrating to, 11, 17, 25, 33, 43, 61

drug dealer loans and, 65–66

as “80 percent,” 30, 31–32

fears of, 22

humanitarian aid given to, 43–45

as information sources, 41, 46

loss of faith in political process by, 42, 43

protection for, 32, 41

U.S. bases barred to, 20

U.S. military’s contact with, 41

U.S. seen as guilty by, 165, 182

voice of, 27–29, 31

Afghan Threat Finance Cell, 49, 140

AfPak, 152

African Peer Review Mechanism, 93

Agence France-Presse, 180

Agency of Automobile and River Transport, 112

Agency for International Development, U.S., 23

Ahmadu, Valkamiya Mary, 120

Aire, governor of, 179

Akrem, Zabit, 5

Akromiyya (association of Uzbek businessmen), 104–6, 116, 120, 230
n

as alternative to corrupt system, 106–7

business integrity of, 104, 105–6

employees of, 105–6, 107

as operating beyond state control, 107

Uzbek government threatened by, 104–7, 117

Albania, 185

Alcoa, 207

Alexandria, 83, 85, 86

Algeria, 20–22, 69, 91, 117, 185

Arab Spring in, 72–73

bribery in, 73

civil war in, 21, 68

construction in, 73

insurgency in, 20, 40–41

military’s direct rule in, 20–21, 68, 90, 125
n
, 197