Could Asia Be a Dangerous Place?

Last month, the American Embassy School in New Delhi received word of a bomb threat. Luckily it was Sunday and no students were around. But when the local cops arrived, with their bomb squad and sniffer dogs, school director Robert W. Hetzel received an interesting lesson. When you get a bomb scare, the police said, the worst thing you can do is send the students running off the campus. That makes them targets for terrorists who might be waiting outside—and who may have called in the threat for exactly that purpose. Instead, you “sweep” a playing field or parking lot and herd the kids onto safe ground while the rest of the school is checked out.

The greater lesson: outside of their walled and guarded compounds, expats in certain stretches of Asia may be on dangerous ground. This is particularly true of Americans, of course—or anyone who could be confused for one. And while it is still safe for foreigners living or traveling in Tokyo, Singapore and just about anywhere in China, a war in Iraq could heighten the danger for those in Pakistan, the Philippines and Indonesia, where terrorists are more organized and might see an invasion of Iraq as a further call to arms. Thai authorities say they’re monitoring Iraqi diplomats and nationals following police reports that terrorist cells might launch reprisals against U.S. and British citizens in Southeast Asia once a war begins. Even previously safe havens could get risky, precisely because of that reputation: they provide terrorists with “soft targets” such as schools or resorts, which aren’t usually well protected. “We don’t know if there are sleeper cells that are poised to do things if hostilities start with Iraq,” says a Western diplomat in Jakarta. “We have to hope that won’t happen, and plan for the fact that it might.”

Pakistan is probably the most perilous posting. Most of its American, British and Australian diplomats were sent home after 9/11; those remaining are separated from their families and warned not to go out to restaurants. Expats in Karachi drive to work followed by cars of armed guards. Some are shelling out $75,000 to armor-plate their vehicles. “It’s not a big deal,” says a security consultant, “when you consider the risks.”

Even where the security alert is low, expats may be in for a less chummy cross-cultural experience after war breaks out in Iraq. “It’s hard not to develop antipathy toward the U.S. in such a situation,” says Cho Eun Jung, a 22-year-old political science student at Seoul’s Yonsei University. Ray Keys, a 52-year-old Englishman who was a senior executive with a pharmaceutical multinational and is now retired in Malaysia, says he’s not yet worried enough to avoid bars and restaurants. “But if you were caught somewhere and people were angry and they thought you were American or English, it might get nasty.”

The consoling news is that, following 9/11 and the Bali bombings in October, security for expats in Asia has never been stauncher. After attacks on a Christian church and an expat school in Pakistan, New Delhi’s American Embassy School installed a 24-hour surveillance system and embassy security staff check school buses for bombs each morning at dawn. Reckons director Hetzel: “I think we’re now the safest place in India.”