World News

SOUTH AFRICA

The Star, Johannesburg, Feb. 13: Philosopher Victor Hugo once said: “We say that slavery has vanished from European civilization, but this is not true. Slavery still exists, but now it applies only to women and its name is prostitution.”

By way of this digression, it is disheartening to note that slavery, under a watered-down definition of “human trafficking,” as exposed in a lengthy feature on our pages yesterday, still exists on the subcontinent. Thousands of Mozambicans are trucked into this country to work on farms for next to nothing. The UN and the International Organization say human trafficking is the fastest growing global multibillion-dollar business.

Sale of young girls

On these shores, truckloads of children are transported across the Mozambican border, particularly during harvest time. Inevitably, young girls are sold to Johannesburg brothels for as little as R1 000, or as private slaves. Or they are shopped around as “wives” for R600.

What is the Southern African Development Community doing about this state of affairs?

BRITAIN

The Independent, London: In the few weeks since he led the Labor Party into office on a landslide, Mr. Rudd has brought a liberating breath of fresh air into Australian politics. Before the end of his first day in office, he had reversed Australia’s policy on climate change by ratifying the Kyoto Protocol. He has also announced the permanent closure of the notorious detention center on Nauru Island, which is scheduled to take place next month. Both moves illustrate the world of difference between his policies and those of the defeated Prime Minister, John Howard.

But it is Mr. Rudd’s determination to institute a serious process of reconciliation with Australia’s Aboriginal population that could well become the hallmark of his prime ministership. The opening of Parliament recently showed that he was starting as he intended to go on. In place of the stiffly formal ceremonies inherited from the old world, Australian MPs watched an Aboriginal elder hand a symbolic message stick to the new Prime Minister. Music was provided by didgeridoo.

Official apology

This new-style, all-Australian opening of Parliament was followed this morning by a solemn ceremony without precedent in Australia. Mr. Rudd delivered an official apology to Aborigines, in the name of the Australian government and Parliament, for the cruel assimilation policy over more than a century, and other wrongs.

It was not the first attempt by an Australian government to broach national reconciliation.

FRANCE

International Herald Tribune, Paris, Feb. 12: By the Bush administration’s standards, Defense Secretary Robert Gates was remarkably candid ... : acknowledging that popular opposition in Europe to the Iraq war was making it harder to persuade European governments to send more troops or take more risks to salvage Afghanistan.

Nearly everything about President George W. Bush’s botched war of choice in Iraq has made it much harder to win Afghanistan’s war of necessity.

Truth-telling

That Gates is permitted such truth-telling is a measure of how bad things have gotten in Afghanistan and how much the United States needs more outside help.

To help beat back a resurgent Taliban, countries like Germany, France, Spain and Italy must agree to send more combat troops and lift restrictions on where and how their forces would operate — including bars on deployments to the south, where the fighting is heaviest. The United States and Europe also need to come up with more cash and a better nation-building strategy.