US travel advisories

There are further points to be made on this issue. Bangladesh has been by and large free from any major or even minor acts of terrorism since the days of 9/11. There have been unsubstantiated charges, some appearing even in some highly credible magazines as Time, suggesting, as the Canadians have come up with now, that Bangladesh is a hotbed of international terrorism.

Against this baseless assertion, there have been no acts of terrorism in Bangladesh, nor has any suspected international terrorist been located in our country. The surest sign of terrorist activity in any country now is the presence of the US agencies fighting Mr. Bush's war on terrorism. Has there been any large or small number of officials of the US security agencies visiting Bangladesh since 9/11? I don't know but if they have not been, as I think is the case, then Bangladesh is not a spot for international terrorism.

Then, what is the point of issuing these travel advisories? How many US and Australians (excepting the Bali case for Australians) have been killed or kidnapped overseas? Do these advisories serve any purpose in saving lives? If we look into the numbers, we will see that these advisories serve little purpose at all. They nevertheless cause immense economic hardships to countries such as ours that are now on the verge of being marginalised in the so-called move towards globalisation. A few US and Australian lives that are in presumed risk are considered more valuable than putting into actual risk millions of lives in our parts of the world. Why don't the US and Australian governments issue travel warnings for their soldiers in Iraq? Seriously, if the US and the Australians had not been in Iraq, then their citizens would not have been at serious risks anywhere save from traffic accidents and the like.

Sadly, actions such as travel advisories by the rich and developed nations increasingly motivate us to doubt the call for globalisation. We are in truth moving towards a world where the line is being drawn where US lives (and lives of people of the developed nations) are immensely more valuable than say Afghan or Iraqi lives or ours for that matter, where globalisation means total and unequivocal subservience to what the West thinks as right.

As one watches the unfolding US presidential election, one cannot help observing how Mr. Bush and indeed many other candidates have made Christian ethics as the core of their campaigns. To add to our pessimism, the global world could as well be a world dominated by Christian ethics!! Let us also not forget what is happening in France with the hijab!!

So, the editorial notwithstanding, why would the US or Australia care about what a travel advisory does to the teeming millions in Bangladeshi or its image?