I would too - seriously!! I take those State Department warnings TOTALLY with a grain of salt - let me tell you why...

We were living in Ethiopia when a war with neighboring Eritrea broke out. The war was centered on the border and those of us in the capital city were totally unaffected. Nevertheless, a few weeks later, the USA pulled out all "official" Americans - all Americans paid by the US government including all embassy personnel (except critical people) and all Peace Corps Volunteers. That meant we lost a whole lot of students at our school!!

Anyway, the American ambassador called a town meeting for all of us Americans were still in country. At the meeting he BEGGED us not to leave. He said we were ABSOLUTELY NO DANGER at all and that the whole warning from the State Department was a political thing. He had spent hours and hours on the phone with the powers that be in Washington DC during the previous two weeks trying to convince them not to issue the warning, but they did it anyway - for political reasons.

In the end, we stayed and all was well.

I could tell you other stories as well, but I think having the American ambassador personally tell us the State Department screws up on a regular basis on those warnings speaks the loudest.