WHERE THERE'S HARASSMENT, THERE'S VETTING. AND M.O. 21.

Before I arrived in country USAID required that I read two documents.

The first related to sexual harassment in the workplace. Now, this is a topic with which I am well familiar. Not because I've needed to remediate it, ha ha, but rather because my workplace has interpreted the law to mean that anyone in any supervisory role, including attending physicians, be required to take this sort of training (although, with regard to "supervisory", you and I know that people barely listen to what I have to say to them, if at all, even though I'm almost always not wrong).

The first sessions began, oh, maybe six years ago? And at the time the powers that be at work (TPTBAW) decided to call it "Sexual Harassment Training", quickly realizing that the last thing they wanted to do was to train people to sexually harass. That the videos they used in the training sessions featured the same circa-80s actors with porn-staches who probably starred in porn didn't help. The following round of courses (they're required every couple of years) they caught on and decided to call it "Sexual Harassment Awareness Training", quickly realizing that, well, simple awareness that harassment was ongoing did nothing to help the situation, and that the course was now unfortunately abbreviated "S.H.A.T.", which, for obvious reasons, made a lot of people (okay, me) giggle. Subsequent to that round, TPTBAW finally decided upon "Sexual Harassment Awarness and Prevention Training" (italics mine), a title that finally conveyed more or less what they intended from the course and had the unwieldy but non-giggle provoking acronym of "S.H.A.P.T."

And here we are. So now, having been trained in S.H.A.P. previously, I felt quite comfortable with concepts, or rather the idea of the concepts, or that in concept that these things are wrong - oh, you know what I mean. I guess it speaks well of me (or at least to my extreme naivete) that my first reaction to the news that I'd have to read this material before leaving for Palestine was, ewwww, who in the world would want to harass someone else, but especially in the field! A thought which was quickly followed by a second one, oh my, they must have mandated the training based on prior unfortunate experiences.

Last night, however, I realized how much this idea made sense. Not because I harassed anyone (nor was I harassed). Rather, last evening there was an informal after-work reception for all of the FNGs in the office, including yours truly (for all of you unfamiliar with this acronym, the "NG" stands for "New Guy", and if I tell you that it's a military acronym, y'all can pretty much guess what the "F" stands for). In attendance were a number of the local USAID contract workers, and these people were really cool, very nice, and this was when I had my epiphany. Aid workers tend to be Young, Fabulous and Bulletproof - they're often in their mid-to-late twenties, well-educated, urbane, attractive, the cream of the crop, cosmopolitan people who are also wildly romantic because, of course, they're all out to save the world, right? If it tells you anything, they were starting to make me feel old, and given that I'm sort of Dorian Gray, that's hard to do. But all of a sudden the need for S.H.A.P.T. for all of those out in the field started making a lot of sense.

This evening reception dovetails nicely on the second document I was required to read, Mission Order 21 (M.O. 21), which was the topic of some heated discussion during the party. To wit, M.O. 21 requires that all parties to whom USAID offers assistance undergo a process of vetting in order to ensure that they do not "inadvertently provide support to entities or individuals associated with terrorism."

Now, at first blush, that makes a lot of sense - why should my hard-paid tax dollars go to a terrorist when they could be bailing out Goldman Sachs? I'd prefer that we vet the heck out of these people! So here's the response: imagine that you approach a local agency, say, a Palestinian NGO, one that's got a terrific reputation for doing really excellent development work here, and you tell them, hey, you've got a great thing going on, and we'd really love to partner with you. Oh, one thing: we're just going to put you through a vetting process to make sure you don't support terrorists.

Has it sunk in yet? It took me a couple of tries too. But think about it - what if you were on the receiving end of that little speech? It presumes that you're guilty until you can prove your innocence. We won't work with you until you can prove to us that you're not guilty of terrorism. And if you're just a guy trying to make his homeland better and happen to speak arabic, perhaps this approach seems, say, a little judgmental. Plus, it's deeply unAmerican.

Your response may be, hey, we've got every right to make sure that the terrorists don't win! And you've got half a point. Because to assume that people are guilty until they can prove themselves innocent flies in the face of our modern American system of justice. Fear made us willing to compromise on some of our values, it's not very smart, and you can see how it'd be difficult to "capture hearts and minds" when we treat our local partners with suspicion.

What would have been really smart, at least I think, is to presume that these agencies or people who work with USAID are innocent. This presumption, however, doesn't mean, by any means, that we have to fold and perhaps accidentally give terrorists money - NO WAY, especially because I'm a total cheap-skate and I don't want a penny going to Osama, by accident or not. No, first you partner with an agency, because that gives you access to their world, and you can then begin to actually document what occurs, and if you discover that they really are in the wrong, then pow! you freeze their assets, make a legal case based on the evidence you now have (which you never could have collected by refusing to deal with people until they submit to vetting), and then you have a legitimate conviction of actual guilt, one which can send them to prison for a long, long time, during which they can contemplate the error of their ways and undergo a righteous punishment.

I'd begin by making them undergo S.H.A.P.T. sessions.