Outside the Beltway

Boko Haram Leader Vows to Sell Kidnapped Girls

Boko Haram is threatening to sell the 200-plus Nigerian girls it has kidnapped into slavery.

James Joyner
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Boko Haram is threatening to sell the 200-plus Nigerian girls it has kidnapped into slavery.

CNN (“‘I will sell them,’ Boko Haram leader says of kidnapped Nigerian girls“):

Fears for the fate of more than 200 Nigerian girls turned even more nightmarish Monday when the leader of the Islamist militant group that kidnapped them announced plans to sell them.

“I abducted your girls. I will sell them in the market, by Allah,” a man claiming to be Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau said in a video first obtained by Agence France-Presse.

“There is a market for selling humans. Allah says I should sell. He commands me to sell. I will sell women. I sell women,” he continued, according to a CNN translation from the local Hausa language.

Boko Haram is a terrorist group receiving training from al Qaeda affiliates, according to U.S. officials. Its name means “Western education is sin.” In his nearly hourlong, rambling video, Shekau repeatedly called for Western education to end.

Aside from increasing Boko Haram’s standing in the competition for Most Repugnant Terrorist Group, this has to be the best advertisement for Western education imaginable.

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12 responses to “Boko Haram Leader Vows to Sell Kidnapped Girls”

  1. legion Avatar
    legion

    Is there any reason – other than the obvious one that these are little white girls – why there isn’t already a US Marine battalion on the ground there, going door-to-door, guns drawn? Because if this was about 200+ little white girls who’d been kidnapped, anywhere on the planet, I 100% guarantee you that’s where we’d be right now…

  2. grumpy realist Avatar
    grumpy realist

    @legion:Up to quite recently, Nigeria was steadfastly refusing to accept any aid in dealing with Boko Haram. The U.S. offered assistance. So did quite a few other countries. All turned down. Something about “sovereignity.”

  3. Neil Hudelson Avatar
    Neil Hudelson

    @legion:

    If there were American girls–of any color–maybe. I don’t know of too much precedence of sending American soldiers into a foreign country to rescue citizens from a terrorist group, without the host country asking for our help and giving our permission.

    It’s not always about race.

  4. CSK Avatar
    CSK

    Another eight were kidnapped this morning. All are between the ages of twelve and fifteen.

  5. legion Avatar
    legion

    @grumpy realist:
    @Neil Hudelson:
    I suppose I’m just sick of useless old fools like McCain and Bolton demanding we send troops everywhere _else_ in the world, but nobody (on either side) wants to address actual, real-life horror stories like this.

  6. dazedandconfused Avatar
    dazedandconfused

    I’ll bet $20.00 right now that at least half of those girls are already sold or given as gifts. For him it would be a heck of a job to contain, feed, and protect them to the degree needed to make them usable hostages for ransom or political concessions, and he would have asked for ransom right away if that had been the plan. Would have asked for it now if he still had control of them too, I reckon. He’s just delaying the day all hell breaks loose by leaving the impression he has control of them.

    Nigeria needs to acknowledge they must mobilize to all-out war against these guys, IMO. Perhaps their women will shame them into it.

  7. Neil Hudelson Avatar
    Neil Hudelson

    @legion:

    Fair.

    Didn’t know if you saw it this afternoon, but it looks like we are sending some help:

    http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/05/06/us-preparing-team-to-help-nigeria-locate-kidnapped-girls/

  8. Tyrell Avatar
    Tyrell

    @legion: In the recent past the US has sent in elite forces to extract kidnap victims, such as those involving the Somalian kidnappers. The US intelligence knew right where the victims were, and had tracked their movements for a period of time. This is the sort of operation that can and needs to be done here. I don’t think that our government asked the permission of the Somalian government either. We don’t need permission for this sort of mission.

  9. Lounsbury Avatar
    Lounsbury

    @legion: Why pray tell woulld US Marines be of any great utility in this instance. Particularly as they would not know either Hausa or any other relevant language and are as likely to kill innocent Nigerians as actual Boko Haram.

    The world isn’t a bloody American action movie.

    On the positive, this is dealing a body blow to Boko Haram credibility in the North.

  10. bill Avatar
    bill

    @Lounsbury: worst case scenario is they kill a bunch of muslim militants and have a little collateral damage. i don’t see a downside, especially since these scum will kill or sell them.

  11. Neil Hudelson Avatar
    Neil Hudelson

    @Tyrell:

    I don’t think you understand how much the Somalian government actually exists.

  12. aFloridian Avatar
    aFloridian

    @Tyrell:

    This is the sort of operation that can and needs to be done here. I don’t think that our government asked the permission of the Somalian government either. We don’t need permission for this sort of mission.

    Yeah…Uh, we DO need permission for this sort of mission. Nigeria is a sovereign nation, whereas Somalia is a fractured land that is a sovereign nation more or less on paper only. This story obviously has a big emotional impact, and it does seem to me to be exactly the sort of good cause we should be putting our substantial technological resources into use for (unlike the random nation-building or dictator-toppling missions neocons like so much) but ONLY if requested by their government. Fortunately, it looks like Goodluck Jonathan recognized that the growing campaign for these girls could not help in the coming election, and has accepted some help, but strictly speaking this is a local problem, or perhaps at regional problem at most, and good guests don’t show up uninvited.

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