It sounds like a Grimm’s fairy tale, only it is grimly true. The abduction of some 276 Nigerian girls in the middle of the night, by a terrorist organization, Boko Haram, is a nightmare scene that few of us ever dream of. The leader is not just like a monster, he is a monster breathing fire that boasts, “I abducted your girls. There is a market for selling them and Allah says I should sell. He commands me to sell.”
The act is so horrendous that even Al Queda is distancing themselves from him. How can this dragon be slain and the girls be rescued? It is not a coincidence that these girls were abducted from a girls' school. Their crime was to go to school and become educated.
The Nigerian government bares the primary responsibility, not having taken warnings seriously and not having acted quickly enough in pursuit. It is tempting to speculate that they did not regard this crime as a major tragedy because Nigerian forces themselves did not value the lives of girls sufficiently to take prompt action.
Once upon a time, in this country, women and girls were considered property under the law. They had no right to even own the clothes on their backs, or the babies they bore. Divorce meant giving up their children to the father. While the idea of owning and selling women like slaves is a story we believe happened long ago and far away, remnants of that attitude can still be found. In some countries fathers dictate their daughter’s marriage partner, and kill their own daughters when they do not obey. In other countries, girls are sold into servitude in the sex trade. In India, thousands of girls are aborted or not cared for as infants because the family wants a boy child. The abduction of the Nigerian girls is a mad extension of the belief that girls are simply not as valuable as boys. It is dangerous to educate them. Only when the despairing mothers took to the streets and cried “We want our girls back” and we saw them nightly on our television screens, did others begin to respond. The United States sent in a team of mediators and experts recently, but we too, took too much time to act.
Tales of beheadings and other atrocities have now placed Boko Haram far beyond the bounds of morality and civilized behavior, paralyzing would be rescuers with fear. But this paralysis cannot be allowed to stand. If this terrorist group is able to kidnap and possibly kill these girls without being brought to justice, what next? The voices of Nigerian mothers and fathers must be echoed by voices from all over the world, including here in the United States. Our rescue team must be joined by a global effort that follows every trail until these girls are found. The innocent lives of these schoolgirls are worth the effort; we cannot let them disappear.
