Most often, a wedding is a cause for celebration. Not lately in Nigeria, though, where mass marriages may be leading to a life of terror for hundreds of kidnapped students.
Since April, the Islamist terrorist group Boko Haram has been holding more than 200 girls it kidnapped as they sat for exams at a Nigerian school. The Western world responded with what passes for action these days: celebrities and politicians including Michelle Obama tweeted #bringbackourgirls. Then: nothing.
A few weeks ago, a Nigerian government official told CNN that the girls would soon be freed. They weren’t. Instead, Boko Haram says they’ve been converted to Islam and “married off.” The group’s leader, Abubakar Shekau, recently released a video in which he mocked Nigeria’s government, and promised more violence.
Boko Haram followed that up with more attacks, kidnappings and murders. CNN reports it “abducted at least 60 young women and girls from Christian villages in northeast Nigeria” just days ago. That’s a real world “war on women,” not a phony, political, hashtag-friendly one.
Meanwhile, the group is expanding its reach. Last week, Breitbart News reported that the group had seized five local governments and was on the verge of taking another. That caused a local governor to warn that a “failure to boost military presence in that state may mean that the terrorist group will completely overrun it.”
On September 12 Breitbart News reported that Boko Haram controlled a swath of land as large as Ireland. The terror group’s leader–Abubakar Shekau–said he planned to rule captured land as a caliphate in a manner similar to ISIS’s Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
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