Corruption is so rampant here — and American reconstruction efforts so replete with their own mismanagement — that the fate of the computers could have ended as an anecdote in a familiar, if disturbing trend. Iraq, after all, ranks above only Sudan, Myanmar, Afghanistan and Somalia on Transparency International’s annual corruption index.since i was in kazakhstan, i've been thinking a lot about corruption. i don't see how you can rank a country like somalia on a corruption index. when there's no functioning government, how can you determine what payments are corrupt?
imagine you're trying to do business in a foreign country. to complete the deal you need to move goods from point A to point B. a local tells you that you will only be permitted to do that if you pay $100. is that corruption? it depends.
if the person you are talking to is a government official, you need a special license to move stuff around the country and that license has a $100 fee, then no, it's not corruption. governments can charge fees and when they do, it is not considered to be corruption. on the other hand, if there is no legal license requirement, or if there is a license but the license fee is only $50, then the $100 charge would be corrupt. the charge itself is not what makes it corrupt. corruption depends on the legitimacy of the charge.
in a place with no functioning government, by definition, there are no legitimate charges. on the other hand, there are also no illegitimate charges. so while you can say that in a lawless place there is nothing but corruption, you can also say that in such places there is no corruption. an illegitimate charge is only illegitimate insofar as it is contrary to an existing regime of rules. if there are no rules, no charge is going to be contrary to one. any talk of "corruption" or "legitimate" in places like that becomes almost meaningless.
so is lawless somalia a very corrupt place? or a place largely free of corruption because it is largely free of a government (putting aside unrecognized entities like somaliland)? it's both, or neither, or rather concepts like "corruption" don't work in lawless places. much of afghanistan is also outside the control of the recognized legitimate government. so are those areas corruption-free or most corrupt of all? i don't know how anyone can say for sure either way.
