Early Signals that Chibok Girls Have Been Rescued

Cautious reports are coming out of the possible rescue of those dubbed the Chibok girls of whom 276 were kidnapped from a secondary school in Borno state Nigeria just over a year ago in April of 2014.  This follows the operation to take back the Sambisa forest in recent days. The reports claim that 200 girls and 93 women were rescued by Nigerian military who had just destroyed three Boko Haram camps.

Secure Freedom and the analysts at the Freefire blog hope the best for the healing and reunification of those families destroyed by the militant Islamist movement in Nigeria.  Whether they call themselves Boko Haram or Islamic State in West Africa it is still important that their motivations and goals be understood by the U.S. and the multinational military forces working with the Nigerian military.  There have been many lessons to date in the world’s experience of news coverage in Africa and international efforts to stop the horrors imagined and executed by Boko Haram.

One of those lessons was about the disconnect between media trends and the responsiveness of governments.  The cooperation between the U.S. and Nigerian governments to respond to the rise of Boko Haram is sort of a sub-tragedy in itself.  The prediction is that if media and government responsiveness continue this pattern it will be to Boko Haram’s advantage.  Why? If Michelle Obama’s hashtag and the Charlie Hebdo coverage are indicators then what will happen next? The narrative for international media coverage will end with the headling, “girls rescued.”  The political pressure that at least prompted a slow response will be gone.

Meanwhile, Boko Haram will adapt smaller scale tactics for a time but continue to menace Nigerian society in the long run.  It may become less likely to galvanize a strategic approach to defeating this part of a global movement.  There continues to be more positive developments in Nigerian efforts against Boko Haram.  International media coverage has been a positive force to some degree in this regards but the short attention span of that same international media may signal the end of scrutiny to a complex movement that has manifested terrible horrors in the northern forests of Nigeria.