Western companies, expatriates in Asia on alert as war nears
Western companies, expatriates in Asia on alert as war nears
Jason Szep, Reuters, Singapore
Expatriates in Indonesia are dusting off evacuation plans. Air travel for some is off limits in parts of Asia. Security checks at offices for Western companies in Malaysia and China are getting tougher.
The prospect of war in Iraq is forcing multinational companies in Asia, home to the world's largest Muslim population, to review security plans amid fears of reprisals by extremists.
"There is a concern about a possible increase in terrorism," said Marcus McRitchie, Asia-Pacific security director at Singapore-based International SOS, which helps companies plan for evacuations or to make other contingency security arrangements.
"Terrorist groups in the region might use this opportunity, while attention is focused on the Middle East, to increase their activity," he said. "Generally, companies are brushing up on their various response plans."
Most companies in Asia strengthened security after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, and bolstered those plans after bomb blasts on Indonesia's resort island of Bali killed 202 people, nearly all Westerners, in October.
In Pakistan, where the search for terror mastermind Osama bin Laden has intensified in recent weeks, most expatriates working at multinational companies left immediately after Sept. 11 and the subsequent war in Afghanistan.
One of the few remaining in the capital, Islamabad, expressed confidence in his company's contingency plans. "We are staying put at the minute, but we have our evacuation tickets, and we are standing by ready to move," he said.
Westerners in Indonesia, many accustomed to intermittent unrest since the ouster of strongman Soeharto in 1998, doubt war in Iraq will herald fresh instability in the world's most populous Muslim country. But they are reviewing safety plans in case.
"We have security advisers who are giving us regular updates on the situation," said a senior official at a European bank in the capital Jakarta. "We are dusting off evacuation plans.
"But we all feel more relaxed than we did during the other times of crisis in Indonesia," he said.
A Western security analyst in Indonesia said people were concerned about the possibility of a terrorist attack, but there was little that could be done about that.
"Big companies here have pretty elaborate contingency plans in place and have had for the last couple of years...the real concern seems to be related to the potential for a terrorist attack and people can't do very much to anticipate that, except keep a low profile," the analyst said.
About 85 percent of Indonesia's 210 million people are Muslim. Most of them are moderate but opposition to a war in Iraq is widespread.
Indonesia has long been a close ally of the United States and a supporter of its war on terror but the government has repeatedly said it would not support an attack on Iraq.
In the Philippines, which saw a bomb attack on a U.S. embassy library after the first Gulf War in 1991, American executive Alan Boyd said he felt comfortable.
"There is a general feeling that nothing big is going to happen from a local standpoint," said Boyd, a finance director at U.S. technology company Texas Instruments who has lived in the Philippines for three years. "I feel a lot more comfortable here than I would in Indonesia."
U.S. investment bank J.P. Morgan Chase said their security arrangements were strengthened after the Sept. 11 attacks and the Bali bombing, and were tightened again ahead of a war in Iraq.
"As we head into a potential conflict in the Middle East, obviously the threat level has increased," said Peter McKillop, the bank's head of Asia-Pacific corporate communications.
A spokesman for Citigroup, the world's largest bank, said it had ample security across Asia, including Singapore where the government broke up a plot by Islamic extremists in 2001 to bomb Western targets including embassies and companies.
An official at another international bank based in Hong Kong, who declined to be identified, said its staff were banned from traveling to Afghanistan, Bahrain, Iraq, Iran, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Pakistan, Saudia Arabia and Syria.
"We have various levels of travel bans. That's the first level," he said. "The second level is a very cautious level and that includes Turkey, Morocco, northern India and Indonesia."
In mostly Muslim Malaysia, the American Chamber of Commerce recently established a security council, which meets regularly to discuss, along with embassy officials, what U.S. companies can do to minimize risks.
Executives in China are also noticing some tougher security. Jonathan Dong, a spokesman for U.S. aircraft manufacturer Boeing Co, said security was tightened at his building in eastern Beijing. "Our property owner is checking identity cards downstairs, but Boeing is operating as usual," he said.