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that the Treasury Department would investigate if Syria’s largest state bank, the Commercial Bank of Syria, should be designated by the US government as a money-laundering institution under the USA PATRIOT Act (which stands for Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism). For those who understood Syria’s economy, this effectively sanctioned the main financial vehicle through which the Syrian government collected the country’s oil revenues, which accounted for about half the state budget. Second, Bush announced that Syrian nationals would now be subject to the International Economic Emergency Powers Act (IEEPA), which would allow the US government to seize the assets of those threatening US national security, as outlined under Executive Order 13338.

While the order’s announcement was heavy on sticks, there were a few specific carrots, too. Bush issued a letter to Congress stating that waivers would be issued in order to facilitate other aspects of US and Western policy on Syria. “Export licenses” would be issued for certain “discrete categories of exports … to support activities of the United States Government and United Nations agencies, to facilitate travel by United States persons, for certain humanitarian purposes, to help maintain aviation safety, and to promote the exchange of information.”6

After a couple of days chasing Syrian reactions to the sanctions announcement, I returned to MAWRED’s office on Thursday, hoping to get some work done before Friday and Saturday, Syria’s weekend. But as I stepped through Syria Today’s office door and heard Leila screaming into the phone, I knew it was going to be a tough day. In fact, it was the beginning of the worst forty-eight hours of my life.

“What do you mean, do we have the money?” Leila shouted into the phone. While this was hardly the first time my day had started with Leila bellowing into the phone at someone, the look on her face told me that this outburst was prompted by fear, not anger.

“How could the money have been allocated, Dunya?” Leila continued. “We don’t have a contract or a term of reference! Are you sure of what you are saying?”

I put down my bag and immediately signaled to Leila to stop the conversation. In all my years in the Arab world, I knew that no conversation dealing with money should be discussed over the phone—especially in Syria. Never one to understand subtlety, Leila immediately parroted, “Please, Dunya, I don’t want to discuss this on the phone—talk to you later,” and hung up.

“What was that all about?” I asked, hoping Leila was just overreacting to some small incident, which she had a tendency to do from time to time.

“Andrew, Dunya says our proposal to build the Women in Syria website has been approved and that we have received the money. What the hell is she talking about?”

The previous autumn, shortly before the opening of MAWRED, Rola had asked me to put together a proposal to build a web portal dedicated to women in Syria. While I had thought a website dedicated to the needs of women in Syria was a good idea, Rola’s request was a little odd from the start. Rola had said an international agency had “a lot of cash” to support media advocacy of development needs in Syria. I knew that starting a conversation by talking about cash was her crude way of getting the usual Pavlovian responses from those who ran projects for her. Stone-faced, I had immediately responded, “Really? What’s the subject?”

Rola had then gone on to do what she did best: use the most elaborate words to describe something that had no details and made little sense. Her proposal was simple: make a website about the lives of women in Syria. She said she knew “for a fact” that there was a huge amount of information out there, but much of it needed to be organized, evaluated, translated, and edited. While this had sounded possible, it was when I started asking basic logistical questions that everything became suspect.

“On what do I base the cost estimates?” I asked Rola. “I don’t know how much material