[Ynet] Three years after they were kidnapped from a school in Chibok, dozens of girls have been released from captivity in return for the release of Boko Haram hard boyz arrested by Nigerian authorities; the fate of over a 100 others girls remains unknown.Eighty-two Chibok schoolgirls seized three years ago by Boko Haram
... not to be confused with Procol Harum, Harum Scarum, possibly to be confused with Helter Skelter. The Nigerian version of al-Qaeda and the Taliban rolled together and flavored with a smigeon of distinctly Subsaharan ignorance and brutality...
have been freed in exchange for detained suspects with the bad boy group, Nigeria's government announced early Sunday, in the largest release negotiated yet in the battle to save nearly 300 girls whose mass abduction exposed the mounting threat posed by the Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling
Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not
reallyMoslems....
-linked fighters.
The statement from the office of President Muhammadu Buhari was the first confirmation that his government had made a swap for the girls. After an initial release of 21 Chibok girls in October, the government denied making an exchange or paying ransom.
The April 2014 abduction by Boko Haram brought the bad boy group's rampage in northern Nigeria to world attention and, for families of the schoolgirls, began years marked with heartbreak.
Many of the captive girls, most of them Christians, were forced to marry their captors and give birth to children in remote forest hideouts without ever knowing if they would see their parents again. It is feared that other girls were strapped with explosives and sent on missions as jacket wallahs.
Before Saturday's release, 195 of the girls had remained captive. Now 113 of the girls remain unaccounted for.
The freed girls were expected to meet with Buhari on Sunday in the capital, Abuja.
A Nigerian military official with direct knowledge of the rescue operation said the freed girls were found near the town of Banki in Borno state near Cameroon
...a long, narrow country that fills the space between Nigeria and Chad on the northeast, CAR to the southeast. Prior to incursions by Boko Haram nothing ever happened there...
"The location of the girls kept changing since yesterday when the operation to rescue them commenced," said the official. Boko Haram remains active in that area.
On Friday, the United States and Britannia issued warnings that the bad boy group was actively planning to kidnap foreigners in an area of Borno state "along the Kumshe-Banki axis."
The 276 schoolgirls kidnapped from Chibok in 2014 are among thousands of people kidnapped by Boko Haram over the years. The mass abduction shocked the world, sparking a global #Bringbackourgirls campaign supported by former US first lady Michelle Obama and other celebrities. It has put tremendous pressure on Nigeria's government to counter the bad boy group, which has roamed large parts of the north and into neighboring countries.
| Sure it did. That's why it took three years and an election on one side and ISIS replacing Abubakar Shekau in the other for a partial trade of bad guys for good girls to get done. But AyPee wanted to flatter the First World twiitterers who so quickly posted the message that they care, which was just as meaningful as the ice bucket challenge that preceded it, or the email campaign in the months before 9/11 telling the Taliban to give Afghan women Western civil rights. |