As tonight’s story on the WSJ’s blog informs us, below, approximately 25 more girls and two women have been kidnapped--including 20 girls in the past day--in the northeastern corner of Nigeria by Boko Haram "Islamic insurgents," since the world learned of that group’s kidnapping of approximately 276 girls on April 14th.
Per the WSJ, over the past nine weeks, “…the U.S. has said it is dispatching drones over Nigeria along with 80 soldiers who will guard a drone base in neighboring Chad. The U.K. has sent a surveillance plane, while China is offering satellite data. France is gathering intelligence from the French-speaking nations that border Nigeria, its government says.”
… none of those world powers have confirmed any breakthroughs in the search—in fact, the relationships show signs of strain. U.S. officials have cast doubt on Nigerian military announcements that the girls have been found. In turn, several senior Nigerian politicians have expressed their discomfort with Nigeria—historically, a nation that hardly takes in aid— accepting U.S. military assistance…
Meanwhile, these kidnappings continue…
Boko Haram Kidnaps More Girls in Nigeria
Abductions Near Town Where Students Were Grabbed Reflect Lack of Protection
By Drew Hinshaw
WSJ blog
Updated Monday, June 9, 2014 6:39 p.m. ET
ACCRA, Ghana—Nigeria's Islamist insurgency on Monday kidnapped some 20 girls just miles from a small town where the group abducted several hundred schoolgirls in April, local officials said, in an attack that exposed the military's absence in an area the president pledged to protect.
The village of Garkin Fulani was preparing for its weekly market early Monday when Boko Haram fighters pulled up in a tractor trailer and began pulling young girls into the truck, said Adu Ibrahim, the area's chairman for a vigilante group called the Civilian Joint Task Force.
The village straddles the same dirt road that leads to Chibok, a small and remote town where Boko Haram kidnapped 276 schoolgirls in April…
…
…The country's military was nowhere to be seen during the hourslong raid, said a member of the state government there.
Instead, the job of preventing more kidnappings has fallen to a group of vigilantes who say they have been left with only hunting rifles, fashioned from car parts and scraps of wood, to go up against the rocket launchers and heavy machine guns of Boko Haram.
The Nigerian government couldn't be reached to comment about Monday's incident…
…
…"These people have a free hand to do whatever they want," said Jibrin Ibrahim, the director of the advocacy group Center for Democracy and Development's office in the capital Abuja. "It's just that simple."
# # #
From Kossack thenekkidtruth, in the comments:
This is a faaaaaar more common occurance...
...than most Americans probably think.
Check out this analysis, also by the WSJ. While they say that the 276 young women captured by Boko Haram nearly three months ago now is an outlier in terms of quantity, in actuality over 700,000 boys and girls are kidnapped or coerced into slavery by subterfuge in Nigeria annually. And there are other countries which are much worse - Nigeria's Western African neighbor Mauritania loses over twice that many young people every year.
The Boko Haram kidnapping was perhaps significant for only two reasons - the capture by Boko Haram was couched in the language of extreme Islam, and the sheer number of abductees at one time was likely (but not certainly!) unprecedented.
More at the Global Slavery Index website.
# # #
Reiterating, from Kossack thenekkidtruth's comment, above: Checkout the WSJ Live video HERE: Nigeria Kidnapping: How Common Is Teen Abduction? WSJ Live, May 8, 2014
# # #