The Risks
GroundTruth is one of a number of security consultancies catering to Western businesspeople heading into potentially lucrative but high-risk markets. Business is booming. As more and more companies flock to the BRIC countries, and regions of South America and Africa, their executives must confront the fact that doing business in Mumbai or Mombasa is considerably riskier than working in Memphis or Manchester.
“Prior to 9/11, terrorists targeted government structures, embassies, and soldiers,” says Dick Hildreth, a former FBI agent and now senior VP of consulting firm Corporate Risk International (CRI). “Now they realize that they could blow up an embassy and it would hurt for a couple of days. But if they go after the general population and businesspeople, the impact will be much greater.”
Meanwhile, the stats for more common violent crimes, which CRI compiles from State Department data and local reports, aren’t encouraging either. The number of violent robberies in Mexico City in the first four months of 2009 hit nearly 1,700, and kidnapping rates jumped almost 9 percent to 774 incidents between September 2008 and April 2009. In South Africa, Johannesburg’s Central Business District is a designated “no-go” zone for Caucasians, and the country as a whole has some of the highest rates of murder (about 20,000 a year) in the world. And in recent years, Brazil’s murder rate — 48,000 in 2007 — has been on par with those of some war zones.
To be sure, the odds that you will face a terrorist attack or a violent kidnapping are still quite low. But emerging markets often lack the infrastructure and law enforcement that Westerners are used to. Thus, even a mugging or a bad traffic accident can derail your trip — or, at worst, test your survival skills.
The Training
GroundTruth’s course directors, who come from military and foreign service backgrounds, prep ordinary professionals to take care of themselves in both more common situations like traffic accidents and less likely ones like terrorist attacks. They don’t try to teach self-defence techniques; corporate executives come to GroundTruth to learn the art of self-preservation.
The seven-day Hostile Environment Awareness Training (HEAT) boot camp, for example, gives trainees an overview of the destination city’s social mores, the ability to assess risks both before a trip and while on location, tactics to source reliable local help, first-aid training, evasive driving techniques, and even body postures that might give them away as foreigners (looking up and around indicates unfamiliarity with their surroundings). The classes also cover detailed and more traumatic scenarios — how to differentiate between legitimate and illegitimate checkpoints, how to spot and react to different explosive devices, negotiation theory and practice, and what participants should do if they get caught in crossfire.
GroundTruth specialises in psychological techniques that could apply to many crisis situations. Trainees learn how to overcome “neurological freezing,” when the mind shuts down during an emergency. “When the mind endures the stress induced by the shock of a capture scenario, it reduces the number of separate thoughts it can juggle from between nine and five to one or two,” says GroundTruth senior consultant Jon Goodwill. In that state, you can make poor decisions that further endanger your life.
To stay calm and alert under extreme stress, course participants learn coping mechanisms. For example, kidnappers often try to induce confusion by depriving victims of the ability to tell time. Counting to 600 seconds is one way to focus the mind and mark time passing in roughly 10-minute intervals. To regain self-control, trainees learn to regulate their breathing — inhaling, exhaling, and holding their breath at 4-second intervals. Another tactic they learn is to make a mental list of everything they need to do when they get home. This exercise helps take their minds off the current situation and enforces the idea that eventually they will return to safety and their normal lives.
Construction consultant Paul Stuart (not his real name) took a HEAT course in the U.K. to prepare for his current job rebuilding infrastructure in Afghanistan. Unlike many Westerners in Kabul, he never travels with armed guards or in armoured cars. Stuart says the course made him realize that a low profile and common sense are often more useful than a heavy-handed approach to security. “If you are driving around in armoured vehicles with massive guards, you inevitably attract attention to yourself,” he says. He drives himself around in a Toyota Corolla and receives security alerts via text message from the network of security contacts his company employs. Of course, with some things, he doesn’t take any chances: An armed guard stands outside his residence.
The Reality Check
You could argue that any globe-trotting executive would benefit from learning how to keep a low profile abroad, drive safely on foreign roads, and avoid becoming a victim of petty theft. But would a few training classes make any difference in the case of terrorism or violent crime?
“Generally I believe in the benefits of providing some training to people in high-risk areas,” says Brian Jenkins, senior adviser to the president of RAND Corporation and co-author of a report about the lessons of the 2008 Mumbai terrorist bombings. “But if you are caught in a terrorist attack, there is a limit to the extent this sort of training can help you. Should you never go into a train station, hotel lobby, or hotel restaurant? You can’t always make precautions for being a victim of happenstance.”
For all of the specialised training that firms like GroundTruth and CRI offer, the security experts teaching the classes stress one point above all else: First assess whether the business case for going outweighs the potential risks. In many cases, it simply doesn’t. Says Tim Holleran, a training manager for the U.K.-based firm Centurion Risk Assessment Services, “Why are business travelers going into an area that has a high threat from improvised explosive devices? [Those bombs] blow up 60-ton tanks, so your little SUV, even if it is armoured, wouldn’t stand much chance.”
