Travel Advisory: It may be no fun to go to the United States these days

Here in the Philippines, we’ve grown used to being on the receiving end of "bad reports" and unflattering travel advisories.

And, indeed, while our officials may suffer some embarrassment and our tourism people writhe in agony, who can blame those foreign governments for warning their nationals against braving the perils of our land?

Yesterday, according to a published report, the well-known anti-kidnapping crusader, Teresita Ang See of the Citizens Action Against Crime movement, said on a dzEC radio program that two tourists – a Japanese and a Korean – were recently abducted. Ang See was further quoted as stating that 80 persons have been kidnapped in the first five months of this year.

The most-publicized kidnapping in our area, of course, was the seizure in Valenzuela (Metro Manila) on Thursday last week of dermatologist Charmaine Ong, an heiress to a meat-packing fortune, by three armed men who were said to have acted with almost-military precision, if that isn’t an oxymoron. Equally spectacular was Doctora Ong’s "escape", if escape it was. Was ransom really paid? What’s bizarre is the rumor that the suspected "brains" behind the caper directed the entire operation from his prison cell. Sanamagan. There used to be a popular ditty during my school-days which went: "Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage." In this country, convicts walk in and out of prison without hindrance and, it must be said, this is not the first time criminal gangs have gotten their marching orders from their bosses who happen to be in the clink.

Then there’s the Abu Sayyaf, still mean and deadly, while reputedly on the run. And what about the "Pentagon Gang" and the "Lost Commands" of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the Moro National Liberation Front? Whenever a rebel is caught in kidnap-for-ransom or murderous activities, the insurgent spokesmen immediately claim the culprit belongs to a "Lost Command". The only thing "lost" really is the fact that the hapless victims lose their money, or lose their lives.

This is why I think those "Wow! Philippines" advertisements on television are both brave —- and pathetic. They’re well-distributed. I saw them on cable TV as far away as London, as well as in Milan and Rome in Italy. It’s a pity. We truly have a beautiful country (except, as a caveat, in the "Pollution Belt.") And we do have warm, loving and hospitable people. But it’s the hoodlums, savages and brutes, the grafters and the crooks who hog the limelight and get all the attention. Bad news makes news. That’s the way of the world.

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On the other hand, here’s aTravel Advisory of my own. If you’re planning to go to the United States (as every Filipino, including the anti-Americans, plans to do) this may not be the best of times. Did you know that we are on the list of states which constitute a possible "terrorist" threat to the USA? After all, aren’t we the homeland of the notorious terrorist Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG) and the MILF with links to the al-Qaeda?

As a result, before the end of the month, I hear, the US Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), at all American airports and ports of entry, will be enforcing a mandatory "finger printing" and photo-taking rule on the nationals of all countries on "the list". This, alas, includes us Filipinos.

In short, whenever anyone bearing a Philippine passport approaches an immigration counter at a US airport, he can expect to be instructed to put his hands into a computerized fingerprint-taking machine (I don’t know how they call those new-fangled thingamajigs) and also have a picture snapped by a digital camera, so the arrival’s background can be checked and all subsequent movements traced while in the US. This is in theory, naturally. Remember, it was the INS which granted "visas" to two of the dead terrorists, months after those jihadis had smashed hijacked aircraft into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center.

Will the US government have enough machines in place to enforce this tightened regulation at all airports? What kind of hassles will have to be overcome by arriving Filipinos? If you’re impatient, or easily insulted, my tip to you is: Don’t go to America. At least not in these paranoid times.

Neither, sadly, can I urge our countrymen to stay put in Metro Manila. It’s not safe here, either. If the bad guys don’t get you, pollution will. Or you could even die laughing at the antics of our politicians.

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Yesterday, a suicide-bomber struck again in Israel — this time in Jerusalem itself — with devastating results. At almost 8 a.m. (their time), a bomb was detonated by a Palestinian militant on board a bus packed full of commuters during the rush hour. Nineteen Israelis were killed, and 40 grievously injured, some of them high school students enroute to school.

Israel’s Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, in an unprecedented move, rushed to the scene of the carnage and vowed to oppose even the creation of a temporary Palestinian state, because, he fumed, this would be only a "terrorist state". What effect will this dramatic suicide-bomb attack have on an earlier-anticipated policy announcement of US President George W. Bush. The American chief executive had been expected to push for a renewal of the peace process and hold out the fig leaf of the US promoting the long-stalled idea of a Palestinian state — although Bush had previously brushed aside a proposal by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak that a "timeline" or specific deadline be set for it.

Now, any prospect of "peace talks" seems to be in tatters. Before yesterday’s attack, 220 Israelis had already been slain in suicide-bomb attacks over the past 21 months (some of them in the past two weeks alone). In retaliation, the Israelis have been sending their IDF soldiers, tanks, and helicopter gunships to rampage, repeatedly, all over the West Bank — and, lately, even Gaza. Can such a war of retaliation and attrition ever end?

Although officials of the Palestinian Authority were quick to condemn this latest atrocity, a spokesman of the militant Palestinian Hamas group, while not owning up to it, declared support for the principle of suicide-attack. If he’s not sponsoring these attacks himself, then, it’s increasingly clear that Palestinian President Yasser Arafat has lost control of the activists in his bullet-pocked territory, not the least the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade which is affiliated to his own Fatah. There is too much hatred, suspicion, and distrust on both sides — too much blood has been shed, too many grievances piled up, for there ever to be peace, in my estimation, in the next decade, even in this generation.

It’s said that "hope springs eternal". Can this be true in Palestine and Israel, indeed, in much of the Middle East, where hatreds and blood-feuds are immemorial?

This is the land, after all, where — as Jesus Christ Himself once mourned — they "kill the prophets".

Mr. Bush, unfortunately, is in a bind. He has been trying to drum up Arab support for an attack (there’s no other way to put it) on Iraq, or at least for a drive to unseat the despot Saddam Hussein. Americans have identified Saddam and Baghdad as the source of much of the funding behind terrorist movements, as well as stockpiles of what Bush keeps on calling "weapons of mass destruction". The US hasn’t even gotten support or much sympathy for this initiative from its supposed allies in Western Europe or the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and indications are that, while the Americans deny there are any immediate military plans "on the table", the US may decide to go it alone.

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The Americans are truly under siege everywhere. In the wake of the attack last June 14 in which a bomb-laden vehicle demolished a guard post outside the US Consulate in Karachi (Pakistan’s major port city), killing 11 persons and wounding 45 others, security has become super-tight in all US embassies, consulates and other installations.

In the Karachi bomb-attack, four Pakistani policemen were killed, while the rest were passers-by. Wounded were an American marine and several Pakistani consular employees. The blast not merely torched several cars (traffic was thick in front of the consulate) but blew a three-meter hole in the compound’s wall. What’s dismaying is that subsequent investigation has given rise to the suspicion that it hadn’t even been a suicide-bombing, but that a powerful bomb had been planted in the vehicle unknown to the driver and its occupants, then detonated by remote control as it passed by the target building.

The blast, which occurred on a Friday, was the fourth attack in Pakistan this year, in which foreigners were pinpointed. The two latest incidents (following the kidnapping and murder of Wall Street Journal bureau chief Daniel Pearl last January) were a grenade attack on a Christian Church in Islamabad in March (killing five, including two Americans) and a bomb attack on a Pakistani Navy bus which killed 11 French engineers who were employed in constructing a submarine for the Pakistani military.

Perhaps the US forces should shift some of their troops from guarding the loya jirga in Kabul, Afghanistan, or from Gardez — and send them to Pakistan where they’re under attack.

Locally, the current climate of paranoia in US installations was underscored last Monday, about 6:30 p.m. when a Philippine armed forces general (a very good friend of mine) went to the US Embassy to attend the farewell reception of Col. Steven Moore, the outgoing JUSMAG chief, whom he had known for some years. The embassy’s Filipino guards knew the general well. When his car stopped and he wound down his window, they greeted him by name and saluted him. He showed the next set of guards his invitation, and he was again recognized. However, the guards insisted on searching his car, opening the hood of his vehicle as well as the trunk. He was incensed and offended. So he told his driver to make a U-turn, and left without going in. "In effect they were telling me," he told this writer, "that I could not be trusted in my own country, and didn’t have the alertness to keep my own car safe." He asked me, however, not to make a big thing of the incident.

And yet, in retrospect, who can blame the Americans for their paranoia?

I believe and my friend, the general, agreed with me — we ought to tighten up security, at least in our own military camps, as well. Sus, visiting American generals and admirals, indeed, should have their vehicles searched with equal attention to detail (after all, we’re not a mental colony, are we?) as well as brass and even diplomats from every nation when it comes to our military establishments. Alas, everybody seems to get waved through into Camp Aguinaldo, for instance, with even a friendly salute. I hope that someday we won’t regret that.

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THE ROVING EYE . . . Is President Bush coming to Manila this October or November? It’s too early to tell, but they’re working on that.