Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security (35 page)

16.
A number of leading Islamists, including members of the government elected in 2012, were castrated in prison.

17.
Interview conducted by Mokhtar Awad.

Chapter Nine: Variation 3

1.
Sultan Zahir ud-Din Muhammed Babur, The Baburnama,
Wheeler Thackston, ed. and trans. (New York: Modern Library, 2002), p. 3.

2.
Human Rights Watch,
“Bullets Were Falling Like Rain”: The Andijan Massacre, May 13, 2005
(June 2005), p. 30, http://bit.ly/OyHZHi. Among the best accounts of the massacre are this report; OSCE/ODIHR,
Preliminary Findings on the Events in Andijan, Uzbekistan 13 May 2005
(Warsaw, June 20, 2005), http://bit.ly/1lLqmzs; Galima Bukharbaeva, “Blood Flows in Uzbek Crackdown,” Institute for War and Peace Reporting, May 13, 2005, http://bit.ly/1fWFVno; Galima Bukharbaeva, “No Requiem for the Dead,” Institute for War and Peace Reporting, November 20, 2005, http://bit.ly/1qQ6xdS; and International Crisis Group,
Uzbekistan: The Andijan Uprising,
Asia Briefing No. 38 (Brussels: May 25, 2005), http://bit.ly/Nr5X6v. For an analysis that places the events in a broader context, see Sébastien Peyrouse, “Tensions sociales et politiques en Asie Centrale: Retour sur l’insurrection du 13 Mai 2005 en Ouzbékistan,” in Marlène Laruelle and Sébastien Peyrouse, eds.,
Islam et politique en ex-URSS
(Paris: L’Harmattan-IFEAC, collection Centre-Asie, 2005).

3.
Human Rights Watch,
“Bullets Were Falling Like Rain,”
p. 14.

4.
OSCE/ODIHR,
Preliminary Findings,
p. 15.

5.
Human Rights Watch,
“Bullets Were Falling Like Rain,”
p. 25. “People had waited for this moment for so long . . .We were waiting for the officials to come to the meeting, we wanted this so badly . . . Finally, after all this time [the people] could express their problems. The whole population had been waiting for this moment” (p. 22). Bukharbaeva, in “No Requiem for the Dead,” quotes a leaflet she picked up from the scene of the protest: “Let the region’s governor come, and representatives of the president too, and hear our pain. When we make demands, the authorities should hear us.”

6.
Jonas d’Orléans,
Le métier de roi (“De institutione regia” ),
ed. and trans. (into French) Alain Dubreucq (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1995), p. 211.

7.
Nizam al-Mulk,
Traité de gouvernement,
ed. and trans. (into French) Charles Schefer (Paris: Sindbad, 1984), pp. 87, 95, 59. And Jonas warned: “If he doesn’t do so . . . it will be proof of his negligence and lack of justice. People will say: ‘It’s six of one, half dozen of the other. Either the king knows, or doesn’t know about the disorder and exactions that take place in the kingdom. If he is informed and makes no effort to make them go away, he is no different from the oppressors, and he approves the tyranny. If he doesn’t know what’s going on, he’s feckless and ignorant.”
Le métier de roi,
p. 118.

8.
On Bloody Sunday in 1905, St. Petersburg protesters were shot while attempting to submit a petition to Tsar Nicholas II. The episode is seen as one of the events that led to the Russian Revolution.

9.
Akram Yuldashev,
Yimonga Yul
(“The Path to Faith” ), Russian translation from Uzbek, http://bit.ly/PMk606.

10.
Human Rights Watch,
Burying the Truth: Uzbekistan Rewrites the Story of the Andijan Massacre
(September 2005), p. 13, http://bit.ly/1fWJs58.

11.
OSCE/ODIHR,
Preliminary Findings
, p. 9.

12.
Islam Karimov, “Press Conference by the President of the Republic of Uzbekistan on Events in Andijan,” Tashkent, May 14, 2005, http://bit.ly/1iA0HtL.

13.
OSCE/ODIHR,
Preliminary Findings,
p. 12. Bukharbaeva, in “No Requiem for the Dead,” further quotes the leaflet recovered from the scene: “If you have a government job, your salary is not enough to live on. If you earn a living by yourself, they start envying you and putting obstacles in your way.”

14.
Human Rights Watch,
“Bullets Were Falling Like Rain,”
p. 19.

15.
Alisher Ilkhamov, “The Phenomenology of ‘Akromiya’: Separating Facts from Fiction,”
China and Eurasia Forum Quarterly
4, no. 2 (2006), p. 42, http://bit.ly/1hx0chb.

16.
Human Rights Watch,
“Bullets Were Falling Like Rain,”
p. 7.

17.
“They used money from a mutual support fund that they had set up to engage in charitable work, and regularly transferred savings to children’s homes and schools. . . . These Islamic businessmen had calculated the actual minimum living wage in Andijan (which turned out to be equivalent to 50 U.S. dollars, or almost ten times the official minimum wage) and had agreed to pay their employees a higher wage than that.” Igor Rotar, “Uzbekistan: What is Known About Akramia and the Uprising?”
Forum 18 News Service,
June 16, 2005, http://bit.ly/1eORuZw.

18.
Human Rights Watch,
“Bullets Were Falling Like Rain,”
p. 8. “The independence of the group, detached from state control and patronage, is most likely to be the key concern for the authorities.” Ilkhamov, “Phenomenology,” p. 42. Human rights investigators concur that the crackdown and the subsequent torture and interrogation of members of the group and other Andijan residents were directed by officials from the capital, Tashkent, not by local officers.

19.
U.S. Embassy in Tashkent, “Uzbekistan: Gulnora Karimova’s Geneva U.N. Appointment May Reflect Concerns About the Future,” September 18, 2008, WikiLeaks, http://bit.ly/1dauvNN.

20.
Camille Polloni, “La justice française s’intéresse a la fille du dictateur ouzbek,”
Le nouvel observateur,
July 31, 2013, http://bit.ly/1p8bF9D.

21.
John Davy, former Ucell CFO, on Swedish Public Television’s
Uppdrag granskning
(Mission Investigate), broadcast May 22, 2013, http://bit.ly/1l0La8I. See among other cables, “Skytel Scandal: Fiasco in the Making,” WikiLeaks, February 24, 2005, http://bit.ly/1hx3AZc

22.
U.S. Embassy cable, “Gulnora Karimova Provides Grants in Hope of Improving Image,” November 3, 2005, http://wikileaks.org/cable/2005/11/05TASHKENT3019 .html. In February 2013, when I was in Tashkent, U.S. officials and major donor agencies attended a gala event organized by Karimova for one of these organizations, the Fund Forum.

23.
U.S. Embassy cable, “First Daughter Lola (Karimova) Cuts Loose,” November 26, 2004, http://wikileaks.org/cable/2004/11/04/TASHKENT3180.html.

24.
The 2010 liquidation of the Karimova-controlled conglomerate Zeromax, with significant energy holdings, may indicate competition by the SNB for the natural resource sector.

25.
“Corruption is used on a systematic basis as a mechanism of direct and indirect administrative control over higher education institutions. Informal approval of corrupt activities in exchange for loyalty and compliance with the regime may be used in the countries of Central Eurasia for the purposes of political indoctrination.” Ararat Osipian, “Feed
from the Service: Corruption and Coercion in the State-University Relations in Central Eurasia,” October 1, 2007, MPRA paper no. 10818, http://bit.ly/1fFnIpu.

26.
John of Salisbury,
Policraticus,
trans. Cary J. Nederman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), bk. 5, chap. 10, pp. 86, 93. He also wrote that “among the ancients it was considered among the forms of sordid behaviour if one did for a price that which ought to be free on the basis of obligations of office. Also, they broadened the interpretation of this ‘price’ to the extent that it encompassed not only all kinds of money, but also all services and works that were not otherwise owed.” Ibid., bk. 5, chap. 15, pp. 94–95.

27.
Nizam al-Mulk,
Traité de gouvernement,
ed. and trans. (into French) Charles Schefer (Paris: Sindbad, 1984), p. 73.

28.
Reliable figures are extremely hard to derive because of the lack of transparency of the Uzbek economy in general and especially this sector, which is a main revenue stream for the kleptocratic networks. Nodir Djanibekov, Inna Rudenko, John P. A. Lamers, and Ihtiyor Bobojonov report 13 percent in “Pros and Cons of Cotton Production in Uzbekistan,” in Per Pinstrup-Andersen and Fuzhi Cheng, eds.,
Food Policy for Developing Countries: Case Studies
(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2010), http://cip.cornell.edu/dns/gfs/1279121771. For the higher estimate, see Alisher Ilkhamov, “Uzbekistan’s Cotton Sector: Financial Flows and Distribution of Resources,” Open Security Foundations, 2014 (draft, cited with permission of the author), p. 9.

29.
William of Pagula,
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. 78, 83.

30.
“A significant factor that differentiated the 2012 cotton harvest from previous years was the reduction in state-sponsored forced labor of children under the age of 15. . . . The scale of coercive mobilization of high school students increased compared to previous harvests. . . . During the 2012 cotton harvest, the government shifted a significant share of the burden of the cotton harvest to citizens over the age of 18, by forcing greater numbers of university students, government employees, private sector businessmen and low-income residents to contribute to the harvest.” Uzbek-German Forum for Human Rights/Cotton Campaign,
Review of the 2012 Cotton Harvest in Uzbekistan
(UGF, December 20, 2012), p. 4, http://bit.ly/1g7hx3u. Workers at the GM plant also had to go, or risk losing their jobs if they refused, according to an unpublished Cotton Campaign interview with a GM worker. See also
Le travail forcé des enfants en Ouzbékistan: des changements mais sans amélioration
(Grenoble: École de Management, Centre d’Études en Géopolitique et Gouvernance, March 2012); and U.S. Embassy cable, “Uzbekistan: UNICEF Shares Results of Child Labor Assessment,” October 30, 2008, WikiLeaks, http://bit.ly/1nBlstt. For a surreal assessment of the Uzbek cotton industry, in which no mention is made of forced labor, see Stephen MacDonald,
Economic Policy and Cotton in Uzbekistan
(Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service, October 2012), http://1.usa .gov/1cVUh84. See also Ilkhamov, “Uzbekistan’s Cotton Sector,” pp. 22–25.

31.
See also Ilkhamov, “Uzbekistan’s Cotton Sector,” pp. 16–22.

32.
In fact, according to Ilkhamov, “Uzbekistan’s Cotton Sector,” the entire profit from cotton production and sales is not transparent, as “profits are appropriated not simply
by the government, but by a single government fund, the
Selkhozfond
of the ministry of finance, an entity which . . . is only accountable to a narrow circle within the leadership.” The estimated $640 million in annual profit from the sale of cotton is entirely off budget. “An analysis of available data shows that the state budget receives practically nothing from cotton export earnings or from the sale of cotton except for taxes on land use.” Pp. 7, 37.

33.
http://www.hizb-uzbekistan.info/index.php/yangiliklar/zbekiston/913-g-karimovaning -onga-sajokhati-kha-ida, accessed April 2014.

Chapter Ten: Variation 4

1.
U.S. Department of State, media note, “Terrorist Designations of Boko Haram and Ansaru,” November 13, 2013, http://1.usa.gov/1dc2sMu, and special briefing, “Background Briefing on Designation of Boko Haram and Ansaru as Foreign Terrorist Organizations and as Specially Designated Global Terrorists,” November 13, 2013, http://1.usa .gov/1j1ywlx.

2.
International Crisis Group,
Northern Nigeria: Background to Conflict
(International Crisis Group, December 20, 2010), p. 36, http://bit.ly/1gAfkbh; Andrew Walker, “What Is Boko Haram?” U.S. Institute of Peace, June 2012, p. 4, http://bit.ly/1g0qwm7; and John Campbell, “To Battle Nigeria’s Boko Haram, Put Down Your Guns,”
Foreign Affairs
, September 9, 2011. See also Kyari Mohammed, “Matters Arising from the Boko Haram Crisis,” n.d., http://bit.ly/1eS3mds.

3.
Human Rights Watch,
“Everyone’s in on the Game”: Corruption and Human Rights Abuses by the Nigeria Police Force
(August 2010), pp. 24, 25, http://bit.ly/1l73Qnk.

4.
Ibid., pp. 29, 32–39, 42–54.

5.
Daniel Jordan Smith,
A Culture of Corruption: Everyday Deception and Popular Discontent in Nigeria
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2008), p. 63.

6.
The Sea of Precious Virtues: A Medieval Islamic Mirror for Princes,
trans. Julie Scott Meisami (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1990), pp. 83, 120, 138.

7.
See United Nations Development Program,
Human Development Report, 2013: International Human Development Indicators,
http://bit.ly/OxsVdf

8.
Oil-producing states get an extra 13 percent, and oil companies such as Chevron build much of the local infrastructure, schools, and hospitals in the states where they operate.

9.
“Nigeria’s NNPC Must Account for $10.8 billion oil revenue: finance minster,” Platts McGraw Hill Financial News, January 20, 2014, http://bit.ly/1gQBcj9.

10.
“Transcripts from Senate Hearing on Missing Funds: Sanusi, Iwealla, Diezani and Yakubu (Opening Remarks),” Press Release Nigeria, February 13, 2014, http://bit.ly/ 1d0FusA; and Adam Nossiter, “Nigerians Ask Why Oil Funds Are Missing,”
New York Times,
March 10, 2014.

11.
Tim Cocks, “UK Police Probing Shell, ENI Nigerian Oil Block Deal,” Reuters, January 24, 2013, http://reut.rs/1gbzVIA.

12.
Benoît Faucon, “Nigerian Oil Theft Prompts Shell to Act,”
Wall Street Journal,
April 12, 2013.

13.
Christina Katsouris and Aaron Sayne,
Nigeria’s Criminal Crude: International Options to Combat the Export of Stolen Oil
(Chatham House, September 2013), http://bit.ly/1n7lMKW. Though the report leads with the dramatic statement that “Nigerian crude oil is being stolen on an industrial scale,” (p. 1) critics complain that the published version was sanitized, to focus primarily on small-scale bunkering, rather than on the wholesale involvement of the Nigerian oil sector and the highest reaches of government.