Of advice and advisory

"Extending the logic behind travel advisory by Western governments to their citizens, it is the Third World nations that end up questioning the wisdom of foreigners travelling in their countries. Their ‘Red Alerts’ serve only that purpose, if there is any that addresses the people at large, going beyond the law-enforcement agencies at various levels."
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By N Sathiya Moorthy

(July 06, Chennai, Sri Lanka Guardian) Where ‘advice’ does not produce results, an ‘advisory’ would help. Or, so seems the American logic this time round, for a travel advisory for US citizens visiting post-war Sri Lanka. In diplomatic parlance, ‘advice’ may have political significance.. An ‘advisory’ instead has economic consequences. The aim and goal are one and the same – of conveying to the targeting nation, ‘to behave’. Or, so seems to go the American thinking, here again. It is one thing for the US Administration or any other in its place to advice its citizens not to forsake caution in a country whose Government claims to have ‘liberated’ it from terrorism. It is another thing for the very same overseas administration to contest the claims of the host Government, citing data that does not support the travel advisory in any substantive or convincing way.

The advisory has cautioned “American citizens travelling to, or living in Sri Lanka about the potential for continued instability, including possible terrorist attacks.” Despite Sri Lanka’s announcement of victory over the Tamil Tigers, the remnants of the LTTE remained and Sri Lanka’s “security posture remains heightened,” it added, talking further about the “possibility of renewed (LTTE) insurgency” and the continued activity by Government-backed paramilitaries in the North-East.

"In some cases, foreigners of Sri Lankan origin may be detained without their embassy being notified," the advisory stated. Read between the lines, the advisory seems to address the Sri Lankan Tamil Diaspora more than other US citizens. As an addenda, which may be deemed to address American journalists, researchers, aid workers and volunteers wanting to visit Sri Lanka on work, the statement said, their activities “receive particular attention”. The question remains if this was the best time for the US to issue such an advisory – particularly when Sri Lanka was limping back from war – and even victory celebrations, which some tend to dub ‘triumphalism’. There is a need for restoring normalcy of every which kind in the country and the rest of the world has a clear and substantive role to play in this. Who should decide what course suits Sri Lankan recovery and reconciliation seems to be the question.What makes the US advisory even more bizarre is the number and nature of terrorist incidents that it has cited to support its case. The last such incident is dated to 2 January, which the statement acknowledges was months before the ‘comprehensive defeat’ suffered by the LTTE. Others of the kind date back to earlier periods. Plain and simple, you do not cite the 9/11 incidents to argue that the US is still unsafe for foreign travellers or domestic residents – even if a theoretical construct could still be made.

For the US State Department to thus cite incidents from the period prior to the conclusion of the ethnic war in Sri Lanka and to argue the case of a possible continuance/revival of LTTE terrorism not only defies logic. It also lacks sensitivity. It is anybody’s guess if it is a travel advisory to US citizens or is an advice to the Rajapaksa dispensation that not all is still well in the State of Sri Lanka – or, with the State of Sri Lanka, to be more precise, and more so with US-Sri Lankan relations.This is not the first or the only time that the US has used the instrument of travel advisory to send out a political message to a host-nation that has not heard the American message when put out in a subtler, or even a louder fashion. So have other western nations.

A product and champion of consumerist economy and politics, the US seems to have concluded that nations would listen where their economic sustenance and growth are hurt. Recently, after the second Manmohan Singh Government took over, the US issued a travel advisory on India. Washington does not seem to understand that the ‘negative signals’ sent out to a government in power sends out a larger ‘negative vibes’ to the nation’s population.

It is doubtful if any Third World nation has ever issued a travel advisory of any kind to its citizens, about travelling or staying on in another country, starting with and including their known adversaries. In their case, all ‘Red Alerts’ against possible acts of terrorist attacks and other turbulences on the law and order front have related to the domestic situation.

Extending the logic behind travel advisory by Western governments to their citizens, it is the Third World nations that end up questioning the wisdom of foreigners travelling in their countries. Their ‘Red Alerts’ serve only that purpose, if there is any that addresses the people at large, going beyond the law-enforcement agencies at various levels. Extending the logic, it makes the foreign investor to sit up and take notice – though often times, it is from him that ‘travel advisory’ of the US kind often emanates.

It is anybody’s guess if Third World nations, or even First or Second World countries, have evaluated the damage done to their economy by the various internal alerts that they issue from time to time. If they have done at any time and if they continue to consider that there is a need for them to continue with the habit of issuing such ‘Alerts’ still, there should be some reason and logic.

Either these Governments think that the impact of such alerts – or, advisories – on the economy is negligible. Or, they have concluded that the threat perception is as real as can be imagined, and that they could not afford to risk human lives, or the political fallout of such threats coming true to prospects of an economic mirage that may remain just a mirage. There is also the more philosophical and moral line or argument – that a fallen economy can be revived any day, but not a fallen human. Yet, in the case of the current US advisory, it seems to focus more on the ‘fallen LTTE’, instead. Or, there may be those in Sri Lanka who may think – and may want to think – that way.

-Sri Lanka Guardian