The Governor's solution : how Alaska's oil dividend could work in Iraq and other oil-rich countries : an oil-to-cash reader
Reliance on natural resource revenues, particularly oil, is often associated with bad governance, corruption, and poverty. Worried about the effect of oil on Alaska, Governor Jay Hammond had a simple yet revolutionary idea: let citizens have a direct stake. The Governor's Solution features his first-hand account that describes, with brutal honesty and piercing humour, the birth of the Alaska Permanent Fund dividend, which has been paid to each resident every year since 1982. Thirty years later, Hammond's vision is still influencing oil policies throughout the world. This reader, part of the Center for Global Development's Oil-to-Cash initiative, includes recent scholarly work examining Alaska's experience and how other oil-rich societies, particularly Iraq, might apply some of the lessons. It is as a powerful reminder that the combination of new ideas and determined individuals can make a tremendous difference --even in issues as seemingly complex and intractable as fighting the oil curse.
What Have We Learned about the Resource Curse?
Since 2001, hundreds of academic studies have examined the “resource curse,�? meaning the claim that natural resource wealth tends to perversely affect a country's governance. There is now robust evidence that one type of mineral wealth, petroleum, has at least three harmful effects: it tends to make authoritarian regimes more durable, to increase certain types of corruption, and to help trigger violent conflict in low and middle income countries. Scholars have also made progress toward understanding the mechanisms that lead to these outcomes, and the conditions that make them more likely. This essay reviews the evidence behind these claims, the debates over their validity, and some of the unresolved puzzles for future research.
Bombers, Bank Accounts, & Bleedout. Al-Qa'ida's Road In and Out of Iraq
Abstract : This report is the second by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point to assess the demographics, procedures, finances, and leadership of al-Qa'ida's foreign fighters, especially those currently fighting in Iraq. This report analyzes al-Qa'ida in Iraq's (AQI) operations from spring 2006 to summer 2007 and is being issued with a trove of AQI documents captured by coalition forces near Sinjar, Iraq. The documents include almost 600 AQI personnel records for foreign fighters crossing into Iraq, AQI contracts for suicide bombers, AQI contracts for fighters leaving Iraq, narratives written by al-Qa'ida's Syrian smugglers, and AQI financial records. The CTC also acquired demographic information on all Third Country Nationals (TCNs) in detention at Camp Bucca, Iraq. Most of this data has not previously been released to the public.