April 15, 2014 | Quote
A Nigerian Terrorist Group Just Kidnapped 100 Girls to Keep Them From Going to School
The Nigerian terrorist group Boko Haram, one of the world's most dangerous Islamist groups, just abducted 100 girls from a school in northeastern Nigeria. Why would an organization known principally for bombings and shootings kidnap a group of kids? Because Boko Haram's opposition to educating girls is a core part of its ideology — and they think they can get something in exchange for the girls' safe return.
Boko Haram has attacked hundreds of schools around Nigeria since 2002, when it was founded. The central-west African nation is half Muslim, and Boko Haram wants to make the state Islamic as well.
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“Their goal is almost certainly to ransom [the girls],” Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, a senior fellow at the Foundation of the Defense of Democracies who follows Boko Haram, told me. “Otherwise, they have chosen a target that will make everybody hate them. Killing [100] schoolgirls would be a huge PR hit even for some of the rougher jihadist groups.”
Boko Haram has been known to kidnap for money. Since the group launched a full-on uprising against the Nigerian government in 2012, it has kidnapped a number of foreigners in order to raise funds to continue the struggle.
Nigerians in Borno province, which is both the location of the school and Boko Haram's base of operations, aren't as wealthy as the foreigners that the group might normally kidnap. But kidnappings aren't always about money. “Ransom can be for any number of things, including ransoming for a prisoner exchange,” Gartenstein-Ross says. Nigeria has captured many Boko Haram fighters during the ongoing conflict. In response, the group has both attacked prisons and demanded prisoner releases as part of ransoms before.