Sylvia's Journal

The US Government is trying to make it very hard for US tax dollars to slip into the hands of warlords, taliban and, of course, al qaida. Yet everyone knows that many millions of dollars have. The irony of our government measures is that it probably doesn’t affect these big and bad players all that much as there are, and always have been, clever ways to keep things opaque so one cannot get caught. When you are wealthy beyond wealthy you can always buy unscrupulous and clever lawyers and other people whose business it is to maximize money in the pockets of the one who employs them.

For us the measures complexify things enormously. We have to go to a special USG website and search for the name of a vendor, the one who provides our catered lunches at workshops, worth less than 5 dollars a head, or who fixes our hot water heater, sells us toilet paper or matchsticks. This to make sure the company or the individual is not on the ‘excluded list,’ and therefore a vendor we can do business with and pay, after services rendered, with US taxpayer dollars.

At our weekly staff meeting we were shown the website. We tried some searches and typed in the names of some of our Afghan colleagues; names that are the same or resemble those of people on the terrorist wanted lists. When the search came up empty we cheered because it meant the person (or company) is clean and we can hire and then pay them.

Back at her desk M. later typed in Osama’s name into the search engine. It produced a ‘0 results’ which, according to the explanations we received, means that we can do business with him. It’s like a special net that lets the big fish through but catches the little ones.