Should We Step in to Help Nigeria Find Kidnapped Girls?
It's been two weeks since 234 students were abducted by the terrorist group Boko Haram, and Nigerian lawmakers say the country needs help.
—By Erika Eichelberger | Thu May. 1, 2014 9:18 AM PDT


Update, Tuesday, May 6, 2014: On Tuesday, US Secretary of State John Kerry offered to send a team to Nigeria to help search for the kidnapped girls, MSNBC reports. Nigerian president Goodluck Jonathan accepted.

Two weeks ago, 234 Nigerian girls were kidnapped from a boarding school in the country's northernmost state of Borno by the al Qaeda-linked group Boko Haram. Today, most of them are still missing, and Nigerian lawmakers are calling on the international community to step in to help the rescue effort.

"Nigeria should seek international help," says Rep. Eziuche Ubani, who sits on the country's house of representatives' committee on defense. "The Nigerian armed forces are not in a position to defeat the insurgency in the northeast."

The schoolgirls were captured during a predawn raid on April 15 in the town of Chibok by members of Boko Haram, which the Obama administration recently designated as a terrorist organization. The group, whose name means "Western education is sinful," believes the Nigerian government has been corrupted by Western ways. In an effort to return the country to the pre-colonial days of Muslim rule, the group has terrorized the country over the past four-plus years, targeting schools in many of its killing sprees, and attacking churches, military checkpoints, highways, the UN building, and, recently, a bus station in the capital city of Abuja.

Though the abduction happened weeks ago, international press coverage of the missing girls has shot up in recent days after Nigerians criticized the foreign media's initial silence on the issue and launched the Twitter hashtag #BringBackOurGirls.

Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan has vowed to rescue the girls, but two weeks after the kidnapping, many of the victim's parents are losing faith in the government's efforts, especially as reports have emerged that many of them have since been married off to the Boko Haram militants.

"Nigeria has one of the best armed forces" on the continent, says Kyari Mohammed, a professor of security studies at Modibbo Adama University of Technology in northern Nigeria, "but they are not trained for asymmetric warfare." The militants disguise themselves easily amongst their fellow Nigerians in Borno, and often escape to bordering countries or hideouts in the dense northern forests.

So elected officials in the country are calling for outside aid. The government must do "whatever it takes, even seeking external support to make sure these girls are released," Nigerian Sen. Ali Ndume told the Associated Press Wednesday. His colleague, Sen. Bukola Saraki, tells Mother Jones the international community should lend a hand to Nigeria in the same way it did to families of the victims of missing Malaysia Airlines flight 370.

The US gives about $1 million a year in aid to the Nigerian military and soon plans to start training Nigerian special forces to fight the insurgency in the north, but American forces would not be able to enter the country to help search for the kidnapped girls unless Nigeria officially requests that the US do so. A spokeswoman for the US State Department says that the department is "in discussions with the Nigerian government on what we might do to help support their efforts to find and free these young women."

Not everyone buys into the argument that Nigeria needs outside help. "What has happened to the girls is not what is beyond the capability of the Nigerian security forces to handle," says Mausi Segun, a Human Rights Watch researcher based in Borno state. "The reports we're getting out of the North is that nothing much is being done on the part of the security forces. They are not using information provided to them by residents and locals in that region." Parents have been searching the forests near Boko Haram camps in the north on their own for over a week, but they can only do so much, as they are in danger themselves of being killed by militants. Segun says the Nigerian military should make a good faith effort to find the girls before asking for international help.

The Nigerian military doesn't have a great track record when it comes to stemming attacks by the Islamist militants. Jonathan has promised to defeat Boko Haram, but the insurgency has become bloodier than ever over the past few months. One reason for that, Ubani says, is that the military does not coordinate with security forces in the countries that border Borno state—including Chad, Cameroon, and Niger—where Boko Haram members have been known to hide out. And the Nigerian military's expenditures are not tracked, Mohammed explains, so even though the country spends about $6 billion a year on its military, it is hard to determine how much of that money goes toward fighting Boko Haram and how it's used.

Human rights advocates contend the military is not only ineffectual, but that Nigerian security forces' response to the insurgency, including the indiscriminate killing of northern Muslim men, is worsening Boko Haram violence. The terrorist group has killed some 5,000 Nigerian men, women, and children since it emerged in 2009. In the the first few months of 2014, it has already killed 1,500 people. Boko Haram has abducted school children before, but this time the scale is unprecedented.

 whembly wrote:
No problem with that at all.

Just curious what exactly our "help" will consist of...

 whembly wrote:
No problem with that at all.

Just curious what exactly our "help" will consist of...

The group, whose name means "Western education is sinful," believes the Nigerian government has been corrupted by Western ways. In an effort to return the country to the pre-colonial days of Muslim rule

 djones520 wrote:

 whembly wrote:
No problem with that at all.

Just curious what exactly our "help" will consist of...

Probably the kind that will make the kidnappers "regret" their actions...

 NuggzTheNinja wrote:
As much fun as it would be to kill those Nigerian scumbags, I have to wonder if it's "worth it," when putting those same lives on the line in Benghazi wasn't considered "worth it."

 NuggzTheNinja wrote:
As much fun as it would be to kill those Nigerian scumbags, I have to wonder if it's "worth it," when putting those same lives on the line in Benghazi wasn't considered "worth it."

 djones520 wrote:

 NuggzTheNinja wrote:
As much fun as it would be to kill those Nigerian scumbags, I have to wonder if it's "worth it," when putting those same lives on the line in Benghazi wasn't considered "worth it."

250ish girls, who are probably being repeatedly raped, and you don't think it's "worth it"?

Man, your moral compass needs some fine tuning.

the group has terrorized the country over the past four-plus years, targeting schools in many of its killing sprees, and attacking churches, military checkpoints, highways, the UN building, and, recently, a bus station in the capital city of Abuja.

 Grey Templar wrote:
The sad thing is that Africa is probably a few centuries away from anything approaching civilized except for a few exceptions along the coasts and certain countries.

Socially, it might as well be a thousand years ago with inter-tribal warfare and general brigandage. Except instead of spears they have AKs.


The only way things will change is either veeeeeery slowly over time with very small shifts in attitude OR if things get totally shaken up by an outside power forcing change and then holding it for a generation or so to allow things to change rapidly. Either way, its a seriously messed up situation.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Yeah, I would say its because they weren't colonies long enough.

It would have been best for them to either not have been colonized at all(and thus not have all this technology they aren't ready for) OR for them to still be colonies, and thus have access to the infrastructure and specifically education that the Mother Country would have built. And influx of colonists would also have helped speed the development.


I know this kinda sounds like "The White Man's Burden" BS, but there is a grain of truth to it.

 NuggzTheNinja wrote:


It's obviously wrong, but maybe the Europeans should step up for once. They fethed up Africa up in the first place...let them deal with it.

The United States and Britain have offered military and technical support to Nigeria to hunt down the Islamist group which has abducted a new batch of schoolgirls, piling pressure on the Nigerian authorities to find and free the victims.

President Barack Obama led a mounting international outcry on Tuesday and said Nigeria's government had accepted help from US military and law enforcement officials to pursue Boko Haram militants.

Gunmen believed to be from the group kidnapped eight more girls, aged between eight and 15, in an overnight raid on a village in the sect's stronghold in north-eastern Borno state on Monday. It was already holding 257 girls from a raid on a school on 15 April.

Obama said the US was doing its utmost to help resolve the "heartbreaking" and "outrageous" situation but stopped short of offering to send troops – in contrast to Britain, which is prepared to send special forces and intelligence gathering aircraft.

"In the short term our goal is obviously to help the international community, and the Nigerian government, as a team to do everything we can to recover these young ladies," Obama told NBC. "But we're also going to have to deal with the broader problem of organisations like this that ... can cause such havoc in people's day-to-day lives."

The president said Boko Haram was one of the world's worst terrorist organisations. "I can only imagine what the parents are going through," added Obama, a father of two daughters aged 15 and 12.

The offers from Washington and London follow widespread criticism of the Nigerian government's perceived sluggish response to the crisis. Relatives of the girls have protested in the capital, Abuja.

Boko Haram's leader, Abubakar Shekau, has threatened to sell the captives into slavery and said militants would attack more schools and abduct more girls. The group's name means "Western education is sinful". In a separate atrocity this week militants reportedly shot at least 52 people in a remote village.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said the US embassy in Abuja would help assemble a team of technical experts, including military and law enforcement personnel skilled in intelligence, investigations, hostage negotiating, information sharing and victim assistance. The US was not considering sending armed forces, Carney said.

John Kerry, the secretary of state, said Washington had been in touch with Abuja since "day one". It rebuffed US offers of help until Tuesday when Kerry spoke with Nigeria's president, Goodluck Jonathan.

"I think now the complications that have arisen have convinced everybody that there needs to be a greater effort," Kerry said at a state department news conference. "And it will begin immediately. I mean, literally, immediately."

In London Whitehall officials said Britain was prepared to send intelligence-gathering aircraft and members of the Special Air Service (SAS), or its naval equivalent, the Special Boat Service (SBS), if asked by Abuja.

Officials at a meeting of the government's emergency committee, Cobra, discussed options. The Nigerians are expected to make an official request on Wednesday following unofficial talks between London and Abuja.

Urgency grew after Boko Haram released a video threatening to sell their captives as "slaves" and gunmen slaughtered people in the village of Waraba. It straddles the Gwoza mountain range, a network of caves which stretches into neighbouring Cameroon and shelters the militants.

"They were many, and all of them carried guns," Lazarus Musa, a resident, told Reuters. "They came in two vehicles painted in army colour. They started shooting in our village. The Boko Haram men were entering houses, ordering people out of their houses."

The village was now deserted, said Marcus James, a Waraba resident who moved to the capital, Abuja, last year to escape cross-border raids. "The last I heard from my relatives is that around two dozen gunmen had been shooting for about three hours. At that time, my family called to say they were hiding in the bush, and I haven't heard from them since."

On Monday, Cameroonian officials said two soldiers were killed in a shootout with militants, in the latest sign of insurgents using porous borders to their advantage.

Nigeria's army has struggled against a fleet-footed enemy which launches lightning raids before disappearing into rugged mountain and desert terrain.

The five-year insurgency in the country's north-east has claimed more than 4,000 lives and forced almost half a million people to flee their homes, according to International Crisis Group.

The latest assaults come as Nigeria prepares to hold the World Economic Forum in Abuja, where two bombs in the last three weeks have killed at least 95. Roadblocks and security checkpoints have choked traffic as the government seeks to reassure heads of states and dignitaries of their security.

Ordinary citizens have been less convinced. Early on Tuesday, jittery parents in the suburb of Nyanya rushed to pull their children out of school after armed men hijacked an empty private school bus.

The scale and audacity of the 15 April mass abductions in remote Chibok – several truckloads of militants were able to run rampant for almost five hours – has shocked Nigerians.

"We want to know what happens to all the money being spent on security every year. What is it for?" said one protestor in Abuja, referring to the government's $6bn annual security budget.

Officials have scrambled to provide explanations. On Sunday Patience Jonathan, the president's wife, accused local officials of being partially responsible for the attacks by opening Chibok school, even though others in the area had shut down.

African leaders have rallied around Nigeria. "All of us are fathers, and I could just imagine that my daughter could be one of them," said Ghana's president, John Dramani Mahama, who added he had written a letter on behalf of 14 other west African nations offering assistance.

The United Nations warned that any parties participating in the buying or selling of the schoolgirls could face prosecution under international law. "We warn the perpetrators that there is an absolute prohibition against slavery and sexual slavery in international law," said UN rights spokesperson Rupert Colville. "So just because they think they are safe now, they won't necessarily be in two years, five years or 10 years' time," he told a news briefing in Geneva.

 NuggzTheNinja wrote:
As much fun as it would be to kill those Nigerian scumbags, I have to wonder if it's "worth it," when putting those same lives on the line in Benghazi wasn't considered "worth it."

America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.

 Ouze wrote:
I have mixed feelings. I've generally been a champion of isolationist policies in the past. I didn't want us to get involved militarily in Syria, or Libya, or the Ukraine. I'm a pretty ardent supporter of John Quincy Adam's advice on this:

America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.

So, there's that on the one hand. We're not the world police.

 kronk wrote:
If Nigeria is asking for international help to recover 200+ kidnapped school girls, plus however many others that they may be holding, I say let's help them.

This is an example of what we should be doing.

 Ouze wrote:
I have mixed feelings. I've generally been a champion of isolationist policies in the past. I didn't want us to get involved militarily in Syria, or Libya, or the Ukraine. I'm a pretty ardent supporter of John Quincy Adam's advice on this:

America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.

So, there's that on the one hand. We're not the world police.

"Nigeria has one of the best armed forces" on the continent, says Kyari Mohammed, a professor of security studies at Modibbo Adama University of Technology in northern Nigeria, "but they are not trained for asymmetric warfare." The militants disguise themselves easily amongst their fellow Nigerians in Borno, and often escape to bordering countries or hideouts in the dense northern forests.