FOREIGN Minister Datuk Seri Dr Rais Yatim's suggestion that single unaccompanied women travelling abroad carry documents of passage from parents or employers attesting to their origins and destinations speaks to the frustrations of the problem, not the problem itself. Quite simply, the idea is unworkable, as well as being more than a little offensive to more than a few women. Not least because the vast majority of women on the move in the world know very well what they're doing, where they're going and what they're carrying. Those who remain woefully ignorant, uneducated and naive in this regard constitute a minuscule minority -- but with a hugely disproportionate effect, what with 119 of them so far having ended up languishing in foreign jails, some facing the death penalty, for being drug mules.

While the media dutifully attend to the heart-wrenching aspects of these stories -- the anguish of families; the helplessness of officialdom; the pathetic and usually futile efforts to secure their daughters' release or extradition home -- there's no glossing-over the hard realities of these situations. National leaders from Tun Razak Hussein to Datuk Seri Najib Razak have found continuing cause to remark upon cases such as these with the reminder that just as foreigners are subject to our laws in this country, so too must Malaysians be subject to theirs in their countries. Besides, Malaysia's own resolute sternness against drug trafficking is enfeebled when pleading for leniency on behalf of those who aided and abetted -- however unwittingly -- the international trafficking syndicates held in odium by this country as a threat to national security and indeed a bane on all mankind.

But the roots of this problem are sociological, not criminal. The restrictive regulatory measures of extra documents for travel will do little or nothing to help -- most families of victims profess to having had few compunctions against their charges' travel plans to seek work or develop a promising new relationship overseas. As their stories often reveal, deception and duplicity are second nature to those most easily lured into these fatal traps. The tragic fate of these young Malaysians abroad, while deserving of all compassion, must serve as the only warning that might get through to their ilk, this unhappy sorority haunting the clubs and nightspots of the city, flirting with seductive silver-tongued strangers offering them excitement, adventure and a new life. Which they may find aplenty on their one-way flights to horror, grief and despair.