War zone safety

It is highly unusual for anyone other than professionals sent with a specific mission, or locals who cannot or will not leave, to be wandering around war zones. Diplomatic missions are typically unable to provide any assistance to their citizens who are travelling in war zones.

Some people must travel to these areas as part of their job; these include soldiers, war correspondents, diplomats, military or security contractors, and often people employed by various governments, international agencies and NGOs to provide humanitarian relief, or to rebuild after a war. Usually, those people will have had special training and the organization will provide extensive support – almost always a professional security team and heavily-secured buildings, often armored vehicles or armed guards for any required travel. They may also be partly protected by diplomatic immunity, by press credentials, or by some symbol like a Red Cross or the blue helmets of UN peacekeepers.

Going into such an area for tourism is a spectacularly bad idea since you may not have the training and will certainly not have the backup or protections that the professionals do. If your country has military forces in the area or is supporting one side in the conflict, those groups are quite unlikely to think their mission includes protecting tourists, but the other side is almost certain to consider you hostile. Even a tourist with no hostile intentions may provoke heated reactions; among other things, you may be taken for a spy. Tourists can be just as much a target of hostility as any military force. In some areas, such as Afghanistan and the southern Philippines, tourists are prime targets for kidnapping. Many national governments have a policy of not paying ransoms to kidnappers to avoid encouraging further kidnappings. Indeed, tourists are a soft target, much easier to attack than the professionals. Some may be specifically targeted because of their home country, religion or ethnicity.