Your tax dollars at work, for real
In a week when it’s hard to think about much else besides income taxes, is there anything that could possibly make you feel better about paying them? We found the answer to that question in this godforsaken corner of the Earth.
A former republic of the Soviet Union, Azerbaijan has lived through 10 miserable years since independence, when a repressive regime run from Moscow was replaced by a corrupt cabal homegrown in the oil-rich capital of Baku. People whose jobs, housing, health care and education were once provided by the all-powerful state now find themselves bereft of everything — and there’s a war on to boot.
A battle with Armenia over a region bordering both countries has made refugees, or “internally displaced persons,” out of about 800,000 Azeris. They flooded out of the battle zone into towns and villages too poor to support the people who already lived there, much less hundreds of thousands of newcomers who arrived with no place to stay and no food to eat.
Gradually, the emphasis of the international community has shifted from emergency relief to development. That’s where our tax dollars come in. Foreign aid – that most hated and least understood of government programs – is making it possible for the displaced people of Azerbaijan to improve their lives.
Working through non-governmental organizations such as Save the Children, American dollars help fund such basic projects as drilling for water, installing electricity, and building or repairing schools and medical facilities. But the actual work, and some of the money, is supplied by the people of the area themselves in a cooperative effort. Providing the impetus for that cooperation might be the single greatest contribution the United States is making to the Azeris in need.
Small community organizations serve as islands of civic society in this chaotic country. Chosen by their neighbors, but with the requirement that women comprise 40 percent of the groups, these mini-counsels decide what is most urgently needed in their community and go about raising some of the money to fund the projects deemed worthy.
A woman designated as the spokesperson brought us into the school building to show off new textbooks and a computer. Then the children performed a skit to illustrate the recently created child-to-child education program. Humorous enough to be understandable in any language, the performance included lessons in hygiene, nutrition and dental care.
In a part of the world where the two-child family is the norm, the only means of birth control under Soviet rule was abortion. The entire thrust of the American taxpayer-funded program is to convince women to stop having abortions by letting them know there are other alternatives, and by working with pharmaceutical companies to supply those alternatives. One woman we talked to had had eight abortions before she went to one of the informal family-planning classes taught by her neighbor.
Tens of thousands of people’s lives are being helped by the work U.S. dollars are doing in this Muslim nation. And the price tag is negligible: Out of a federal budget of $2 trillion, about $9 billion went to foreign aid last year. Our question: Why doesn’t the Muslim world know the good that Americans are doing? And why don’t Americans know, either — especially when tax time is here?
(Cokie and Steven Roberts are syndicated columnists.)