[the wrong response]

Topic: Nepal
Nepal is one of the poorest, least developed countries in the world, which is why many of its people seek opportunities in other lands. Among Nepalis I met, becoming a Gurkha — essentially a mercenary in the British military — was considered a fantastically good opportunity. Others take the more prosaic route of crossing into India in search of work, or sometimes get sold into prostitution there. In Seoul, we found two Nepali restaurants near the massive Dongdaemun market, catering to the growing population of Bangladeshis and Pakistanis who have come to South Korea to participate in the textile and garment trade.

More recently, Nepalis have been heading to Iraq to seek work in the reconstruction. According to ABCNEWS.com,

Nepal [is] an impoverished South Asian nation [that] forbids its citizens from working in Iraq because of security concerns. An estimated 17,000 Nepalese are believed to have slipped into the war-ravaged country from Kuwait and Saudi Arabia and about 200,000 work elsewhere in the Gulf.

Now 12 of those workers have been executed by insurgents, sparking riots in Kathmandu, the Nepali capital, with protesters accusing the government of doing too little to rescue the workers and attacking a local mosque and overseas recruiting agencies.

Sadly, this is absolutely the worst response Nepal could have come up with. Tourism makes up a large percentage of what little foreign capital the country earns. The industry has already been hit hard by the Maoist insurgency, not to mention the general decline in tourism that followed 9/11 and the war in Iraq. So far, however, the capital has remained mostly unscathed, especially in tourist areas. The current outburst, tinged with out-of-character anti-Christian, anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim xenophobia, will only make things worse.

Sadly, that seems to be the lot of Nepal, a nation for which I feel a lot of affection, but whose prospects seem dim.