The Foreign Service Journal, May 2008

productivity and even reduces the pool of wealth available to those who would steal it. Cultural relativism does not apply here: the pilferage is flagrant and visible on any street corner in the form of trickle-down graft as gen- darmes hit up taxi drivers, pedestrians and fruit sellers for their meager earnings. All clans suffer. There are many countries, both in Francophone Africa and beyond, where one can see the kleptocracy in action. These eyewitness accounts happen to stem from my last overseas post, Cameroon, though they are commonplace elsewhere, as well: • A security guard at the American embassy, working on a salary of $80 per month, is hit up for a $250 bribe to register his teenage daughter in public school. • The manager of a tiny hair salon, after bribing her way into the rear annex of an automobile repair shop, is approached by self-appointed tax collectors who threaten to cordon off the salon if she does not pay, on 24 hours’ notice, a quickly improvised impôt de bail (renter’s tax) on the rent she has already paid for use of the premises. She borrows the 50,000 FCFA ($100, a month’s income) to keep her precarious microbusiness alive. She then pays an impôt libératoire (estimated tax on business profits) on the income received, and yet another tax on the actual use of the rented space. The total comes to one-third of her yearly income of $2,000, in exchange for zero services ren- dered by the state. • Gendarmes stop a hundred taxis per day in December, in plain view in the city’s busy social center, to provide money for Christmas gifts to their families. The armed “mange-milles” (thousand-franc scavengers) — who demand the equivalent of $2 — are cordial to those who pay up, threatening to those who don’t. • A local restaurateur has his papers confiscated by gendarmes three times in one evening as he drives his pri- vate vehicle through a prosperous section of the city to visit friends. He pays $10 and spends an hour each time to retrieve his documents. • A citizen from the northern part of the country gives up a week’s earnings to endure a 20-hour bus trip to the capital, in order to obtain a national ID card that will enti- tle him to vote, travel to neighboring countries and obtain a bank account. After five days in the sweltering heat of an outdoor facility (no water, no bathroom), the citizen must either return home empty-handed or pay hefty bribes to four officials along the bureaucratic chain who can “facilitate” the issuing of the document. • A 23-year-old victim of three muggings in six weeks seeks to report her losses to the police, who turn her away. She travels at the cost of a month’s income to her native village, where she must give local officials $100 for a copy of her birth certificate as proof of identity. Who Will Bell the Cat? These abuses will shock no reader of this publication. That the system of corruption helps maintain the wide gap between a tiny, obscenely rich elite and the mass of impoverished citizens, cannibalizing the middle class, is well understood. But such anecdotes remind us that while corruption in rich nations leaves a bitter taste, in poor countries it destroys lives. And they also lead us to ask why the U.S. does not act resolutely to redress this scourge with the tools at hand — in particular, Proclamation 7750. Official words and declarations have had little effect. Intercepting illegal financial transactions is praiseworthy; but it is highly technical, difficult to do and ineffectual while other countries siphon off the lucre that we bar. Legal action requires confidentiality and stealth. But 7750’s use, together with more public discussion of the subject, would cost little, energize and encourage victim- ized majority populations, and create a badly needed deterrent. To his credit, Ambassador R. Niels Marquardt broke the sound barrier on the corruption issue in Cameroon on Jan. 19, 2006, in a public statement in Yaoundé that changed the tenor of public discourse in that country. Willing to use the C word, he noted in a televised state- ment: “It saddens me to say that a well-developed culture of corruption appears to have taken root … over recent years. No institution seems to be immune from this scourge.” The ambassador continued: “With the war [on corrup- tion] declared, the authorities must have the tools to fight it. It is not enough to publish the names of those sus- pected of corruption or even to fire them from their posi- tions. Those accused must be investigated, formally charged, tried in court and sentenced if found guilty.” Amb. Marquardt’s popularity in Cameroon soared, ramparts were breached, and conversation at all strata and in every milieu scarcely strayed from the topic for more than two months. Six minor local officials were brought to trial and, under Western eyes, sent to the slammer. The familiar names of the most corrupt, pillars of the elite, F O C U S M A Y 2 0 0 8 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 45