Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security (33 page)

In the late medieval Catholic Church, priests and mendicant friars paid a cut of their take up the line. The money traveled in a similar fashion all the way up the vertically integrated system to the Vatican. In return for the vast kickbacks, Rome sent benefices and dispensations to subordinate officials, as well as an implicit license to extort money from parishioners, or threatened them with excommunication (punishment) if they got in the way. At the lowest level, money was extracted from ordinary people by means of the Church’s monopoly over a desperately desired commodity: salvation.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A
CKNOWLEDGEMENT PAGES
are a conundrum. It’s sort of like wedding invitations. Either you invite everyone, and the party’s too loud and the value of the invitation declines, or you don’t, and people are offended. In that spirit, those of you whose names escaped this list, please accept true apologies for my absentmindedness, or please feel snubbed, or relieved, depending on your worldview.

Thanks to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, whose remarkable collegiality took my breath away when I first walked through the doors. President Jessica Mathews, of course, of abiding insight; Tom Carothers, a rigorous thinker and admirable manager and role model; Marwan Muasher; George Perkovich; and next-door friend and incisive observer of India, Milan Vaishnav. Along with my peers, I have learned enormously from our dynamic junior fellows—experts all at “managing up.” Reedy Swanson, ostensibly assigned to the South Asia program, enthusiastically plunged into literature and leads on Uzbekistan. Mokhtar Awad’s acute powers of observation and rigorous analysis opened my eyes in Egypt. Yusuf Ahmed was invaluable in helping me prepare for and think through Nigeria. He has also been a mainstay of the Corruption and Security Initiative related to this book. Program Assistants Tiffany Joslin, Molly Pallman, and Anisha Mehta have raised the team’s bar on fun, professionalism, and intellectual content. Crack librarians Keigh Hammond and Chris Lao-Scott unearthed treasures, including pamphlets in strange typeface from the Library of Congress—unusual fare for a policy think tank. Wise Mr. Gill has kept me grounded in plain reality.

The U.K.’s Department for International Development is remarkable for its investment in deep thought and analysis that can contribute in
creative ways to the improved delivery of foreign assistance, and foreign policy writ large. Grateful thanks for its support of Carnegie’s Democracy and Rule of Law Program.

Along with treasured others, deep and abiding appreciation goes to:

Penetrating Kathy Anderson. Anyone who needs a literary agent, if you have something worth writing, call Kathy. She will look inside you and find the core of it.

Norton’s Tom Mayer. I can’t thank him enough—not just for his editing, but most importantly for having the imagination to believe in this book.

The inimitable Sally Donnelly. Yes, there it is, your name spelled out in the daylight. Many of the events recorded here would never have transpired without Sally.

Adm. Mike Mullen, most abidingly for his friendship. Also for precious intellectual collaboration. And for being a prince and tolerating my jagged shards of mirror.

Abd al-Ahad, Fayzullah, Nurallah, Pashtoon, Sarwar, Shafiullah, and Sultana, who shared their country and their hearts with me.

Jeff Dressler, the finest Junior ’Scope.

My sisters, Eve and Angelica, irreplaceable fellow-travelers, literally as well as figuratively. Eve plunged into the Arab Spring with me, her artist’s eye and profound intuition fraying a path, and helped me hash out many of the core ideas in this book. Angelica’s wonder at Uzbekistan stoked mine. Her general insight, lifelong, is unparalleled. All the best thinking arises in that rich space in the middle that we populate together.

And, of course, my brilliant, indomitable, ever-evolving Sainted Mother.

Finally, thanks to my father, and to his memory. For, among other things, shedding a guiding light on what constitutes a well-lived life.

NOTES

Chapter One: “If I See Somebody Planting an IED . . .”

1.
See Sarah Chayes,
The Punishment of Virtue: Inside Afghanistan After the Taliban
(New York: Penguin, 2006).

Chapter Two: “Lord King, How I Wish That You Were Wise”

1.
See, for example, Miles Unger,
Machiavelli
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011).

2.
Niccolò Machiavelli,
The Prince,
trans. (into French) Marie Gaille-Nikokimov (Paris: Librairie générale française, 2000) chap. 19, p. 131.

3.
Ibid., chaps. 17 and 19, especially pp. 125–26 and pp. 131–32. See also Machiavelli,
Discourses on Livy,
trans. Harvey C. Mansfield and Nathan Tarcov (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), bk. 3, chap. 6, p. 219.

4.
Machiavelli,
Prince,
chap. 15.

5.
Allen Gilbert,
Machiavelli’s Prince and Its Forerunners
(Chapel Hill: Duke University Press, 1938), p. 4.

6.
For example, one passage reads:

Tell him, it is through the truth of the ruler that plagues, great lightnings are kept from the people.

It is through the truth of the ruler that he judges great tribes, great riches.

It is through the truth of the ruler that he secures peace, tranquility, joy, ease, comfort.

. . .

It is through the truth of the ruler that abundances of great tree-fruit of the great wood are tasted.

It is through the truth of the ruler that great milk yields of great cattle are maintained.

It is through the truth of the ruler that abundance of fish swim in streams.

7.
In the end, a different son, Charles, succeeded James on the English throne. He was tried and beheaded as a tyrant in 1649. See Chapter 12.

8.
James VI and I, “Basilicon Doron,” in
King James VI and I: Political Writings,
ed. Johann Sommerville (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 1.

9.
Nizam al-Mulk,
Traité de gouvernement,
ed. and trans. (into French) Charles Schefer (Paris: Sindbad, 1984), pp. 36, 379ff.

10.
Ibid., p. 90.

11.
Ibid., p. 64.

12.
Ibid., p. 87.

13.
Ibid., p. 44.

14.
Ibid., p. 45.

15.
Ibid., p. 59.

16.
Crimes “were ordered, committed, or condoned by government personnel in Afghanistan . . . who would not have come to power without the intervention and support of the international community.” Human Rights Watch,
Killing You is a Very Easy Thing for Us
(2008), p. 9. ISAF officers in contact with Taliban detainees reported that the activities of the Afghan national security forces were at least indirectly attributed to ISAF, leading to growing sympathy for militant attacks against ISAF personnel and facilities.

17.
Jonas d’Orléans,
Le métier de roi (“De institutione regia” ),
ed. and trans. (into French) Alain Dubreucq (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1995), pp. 42, 49, 199–201.

18.
Ibid., pp. 209, 199.

19.
Ibid., pp. 191, 213.

20.
John of Salisbury,
Policraticus,
trans. Cary J. Nederman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), bk. 4, chaps. 1 and 2, pp. 28, 30.

21.
Ibid., title of bk. 8, chap. 20.

22.
William of Pagula,
The Mirror of Edward III,
in
Political Thought in Early Fourteenth-Century England: Treatises by Walter of Milemete, William of Pagula, and William of Ockham,
ed. and trans. Cary Nederman (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2002), pp. 81–82

23.
Ibid., p. 86.

24.
Ibid., p. 89.

25.
Ibid., p. 109.

26.
Erasmus,
Education of a Christian Prince,
ed. Lisa Jardine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 40–41.

27.
Ibid., p. 85.

28.
“Care must be taken, meanwhile, that discrepancies in wealth are not excessive: not that I would want anyone to be forcibly deprived of his goods, but some system should be operated to prevent the wealth of the many from being allocated to the few.” Ibid., p. 75.

29.
Ibid., p. 34.

30.
Machiavelli,
Discourses,
bk. 3, chap. 6.

Chapter Three: Hearing the People’s Complaints

1.
As was the case in Tunisia and Egypt, after their dictators were overthrown in 2011.

2.
Nizam al-Mulk,
Traité de gouvernement,
ed. and trans. (into French) Charles Schefer (Paris: Sindbad, 1984), pp. 46–47.

3.
Ghazali,
Book of Counsel for Kings (Nasihat al-Muluk),
trans. F. R. C. Bagley (London: Oxford, 1964), p. 95.

4.
The Sea of Precious Virtues: A Medieval Islamic Mirror for Princes,
trans. Julie Scott Meisami (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1990). See also Jonas d’Orléans,
Le métier de roi (“De institutione regia” ),
ed. and trans. (into French) Alain Dubreucq (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1995): “In ancient times, judges held court at the city gates so that no citizen would have difficulties accessing them, or suffer violence or calumny” (p. 207).

5.
Nizam al-Mulk,
Traité,
p. 47.

6.
See, for example, Thomas Carothers and Marina Ottoway, eds.,
Uncharted Journey: Promoting Democracy in the Middle East
(Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2005).

7.
John of Salisbury,
Policraticus,
trans. Cary J. Nederman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), bk. 5, chap. 10, pp. 85–86.

8.
Paula Loyd, then working alongside soldiers as a member of a Human Terrain Team, died in 2009, after suffering a gruesome attack in a village west of Kandahar. A local she was interviewing suddenly drenched her with gasoline he was carrying and lit her on fire. She succumbed to the burn wounds weeks later at the Brooke Army Medical Center. Paula, her life, and its end are chronicled in
The Tender Soldier
, by Vanessa Gezari (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2013). Family and friends established the Paula Loyd Foundation (www.paulaloydfoundation.org) in her name. It is dedicated to the education of Afghan girls, future leaders of their country.

Chapter Four: Nonkinetic Targeting

1.
William of Pagula,
The Mirror of Edward III,
in
Political Thought in Early Fourteenth-Century England: Treatises by Walter of Milemete, William of Pagula, and William of Ockham,
ed. and trans. Cary Nederman (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2002), pp. 76, 94. John of Salisbury concurred: “If a person knows something and does not act upon it, he is accused not by reason of ignorance, but by reason of malice.”
Policraticus,
trans. Cary J. Nederman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), bk. 5, chap. 11, p. 92. So did Nizam al-Mulk: “People will say . . .‘If [the king] is informed [about the exactions that take place in the kingdom] and makes no effort to end them, he is no different from the oppressors, and he approves the tyranny.’”
Traité de gouvernement,
ed. and trans. Charles Schefer (into French) (Paris: Sindbad, 1984), p. 118. References to this principle are frequent throughout the Mirrors for Princes literature.

2.
Jed Rakoff, “The Financial Crisis: Why Have No High-Level Executives Been Prosecuted?”
New York Review of Books
61, no. 1 (January 9, 2014), p. 4.

3.
It blamed “not only a resilient and growing insurgency; there is also a crisis of confidence among Afghans—in both their government and the international community—that undermines our credibility and emboldens the insurgents.” The new strategy the controversial assessment outlined defined its call to “prioritize responsive and accountable government—that the Afghan people find acceptable—to be on a par with, and integral to, delivering security.” Stanley McChrystal, “Commander’s Initial Assessment,” August 30, 2009, http://wapo.st/1lLh5HI. Four years later, outgoing ISAF commander General John Allen briefed President Obama that “corruption is
the
existential, strategic threat to Afghanistan.” His successor, General Joseph Dunford, initiated a study on corruption whose first words are: “Corruption directly threatens the viability and legitimacy of the Afghan state. Corruption alienates key elements of the population, discredits the government and security forces, undermines international support, subverts state functions and rule of law, robs the state of revenue, and creates barriers to economic growth.” (U.S. Joint Staff, Joint and Coalition Operational Analysis, “Operationalizing Counter/Anti-Corruption Study,” Washington, February 28, 2014.)

4.
Ghazali,
Book of Counsel for Kings (Nasihat al-Muluk)
, trans. F. R. C. Bagley (London: Oxford, 1964), p. 76.

5.
In early July 2014, with large swathes of Iraq conquered by Islamist militants allied with disenfranchised Sunnis, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki appealed to the same logic. He rebuffed international calls for a government expanded beyond the confines of his tightly-knit ruling network. “The battle today is the security battle for the unity of Iraq,” he said in a speech broadcast on state television. “I don’t believe there is anything more important than mobilizing people to support the security situation. Other things are important, but this is the priority.” (Quoted in Rod Nordland, “Iraqi Premier Places Unity Second to Fighting ISIS,”
New York Times
, July 2, 2014.)