Boko Haram Kidnaps Schoolgirls

Along with delving into the recent Boko Haram kidnappings in February, 2018, this article will provide some background regarding the group and some of their previous attacks.

Boko Haram is a militant Islamic group operating out of northern Nigerian states. Boko Haram follows the fundamentalist form of Islam, which forbids participation in Nigeria’s political system unless it is one of Sharia law. The meaning behind the name “Boko Haram” is “Western education is forbidden” in the local Hausa dialect. Along with the group’s purpose of implementing Sharia law, the group also refers itself as “Jama’atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda’awati Wal-Jihad”, which means “People Committed to the Propagation of the Prophet’s Teachings and Jihad.” As of August, 2016, CNN reports that the ISIS publication al-Naba states that the group is led by Sheikh Abu Musab al-Barnawi.
Although Boko Haram is believed to have been created in the late 1990s, Boko Haram’s first detailed presence was in 2002, where the group launched attacks against multiple police stations by 200 militants. Boko Haram resurfaced in 2009 with increasing regularity of attacks to Nigeria’s police, military, politicians, schools, and more. More specifically, in 2009 Boko Haram led an uprising started in the Nigerian state of Bauchi and expanded to the other states of Borno, Kano, and Yobe. Boko Haram continued to launch attacks against police forces and other authoritative entities such as the United Nations compound in Abuja, alongside churches, villages and cities, schools, and others. Boko Haram’s various attacks led to the US State Department to classify them and their splinter group (a small organization that has broken away from a larger one) Ansaru as terrorist organizations; Ansaru is also a militant Islamist group in Nigeria whose main allegiance belongs to the global Al-Qaeda jihadi movement.
Along with suicide attacks, assassinations, bombings, burning of villages, and other violent acts, Boko Haram has abducted hundreds of teenage girls. Most memorably, the group kidnapped 276 Chibok school girls in April of 2014, an act which incited global outrage and a social media campaign to #BringBackOurGirls. The most recent kidnapping from Boko Haram was February 19, 2018.
On February 19, Boko Haram raided the Government Girls Secondary School in Dapchi. According to Global News, the students heard gunshots, but were initially relieved when they saw uniformed, armed men ensuring their safety. One 16-year-old girl recalls them saying “Don’t worry, we’re soldiers…Nothing is going to happen to you.” The perceived soldiers commanded the hundreds of schoolgirls to gather outside while the men went into a storage room, removed all the food, and set a fire. The 16-year-old recalled, “They…started shouting, ‘Allahu Akbar,’ (God is great),” and then said, “And we knew.” The 16-year-old student, who first spoke in a phone interview with The Associated Press, was among 50 other schoolgirls who escaped the Boko Haram attack. Parents fear that, like the kidnapped Chibok girls in 2014, their daughters will be made brides for fighters of Boko Haram.
On February 21, Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari addressed the matter on Twitter stating he has “directed the Military and Police to mobilize immediately to ensure that all the missing girls of Government Girls Secondary School, Dapchi, are found.” On February 25, the Nigerian Air Force published a statement detailing that the chief of air staff had “directed the immediate deployment of additional air assets and Nigerian Air Force personnel to the northeast with the sole mission of conducting day and night searches for the missing girls.” Although there are efforts in place to recover the students, Nigeria’s Ministry of Information and Culture issued a statement on February 26 confirming that 110 girls are still unaccounted for.

Sources:
https://www.premiumtimesng.com/news/more-news/259858-nigerian-air-force-deploys-assets-look-dapchigirls.html
http://time.com/5175464/boko-haram-kidnap-dapchi-schoolgirls/
https://www.cnn.com/2014/06/09/world/boko-haram-fast-facts/index.html
https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/boko-haram
https://www.cnn.com/2016/08/04/africa/nigeria-boko-haram-leader/
https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/20/africa/hundreds-schoolgirls-flee-boko-haram-attackers/index.html