Bloomberg News
Rescuers may struggle to find more than 200 Nigerian girls abducted by the Islamist militant group Boko Haram because the gunmen are able to hide at bases in rough terrain along porous borders.
Boko Haram is holding the secondary school girls abducted from their dormitories in Borno state in northeastern Nigeria more than three weeks ago. The U.S. plans to send security personnel and equipment to the West African nation to help rescue the girls whose kidnapping has sparked international outrage and protests in cities around the world demanding stronger action for their safe return home. U.S. President Barack Obama called the plight of the girls “heartbreaking.”
The bordering areas of Cameroon, Niger and Chad is where “Boko Haram has carved out its back bases and have momentarily secured it against military targeting, given the abducted school girls provide a human shield,” Natznet Tesfay, senior Africa manager at IHS Country Risk in London, said in an emailed reply to questions. The U.S. and U.K. could provide “immediate support” with aerial surveillance, Tesfay said.
The militants’ leader, Abubakar Shekau, said in a video released this week that the girls, some as young as 15, were abducted as punishment for getting educated instead of married and he threatened to sell the captives on “markets” and force them into marriage. Boko Haram, which means “western education is a sin” in the Hausa language, has been waging the violent campaign to impose Shariah, or Islamic law, in Nigeria.
The girls are probably being held in Sambisa forest, Elizabeth Donnelly, assistant head of the Africa Program at Chatham House, said Wednesday. Sambisa, a game reserve during colonial times, covers about 60,000 square kilometres across Borno and four other states.
“It is a very difficult region, and a very dangerous situation and civilians have really borne the brunt of it,” Donnelly said.
The captives have probably been split up, meaning multiple search parties will have to venture into Boko Haram-controlled territory and operate at night, Peter Sharwood-Smith, West Africa manager for security company Drum Cussac, said.
“A rescue would probably require the use of rotary wing aircraft, and would be best carried out at night, which would be very difficult,” Sharwood-Smith said.
Spy satellites operated by the U.S. and its allies have the ability to locate groups of people much fewer in number than the girls and their kidnappers, according to an U.S. official with knowledge of the subject not authorized to speak on the record.
The U.S. National Security Agency and other electronic eavesdropping agencies such as the U.K.’s General Communications Headquarters listen for, locate and track unusual spikes in cellphone, satellite phone and computer communications such as those that might be associated with a militant operation as large as this one, the official said.
Gunmen seized eight more girls between the ages of 12 and 15 from Borno state on May 4, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund and residents of the affected Gwoza district.
The Borno government in March had ordered all schools closed over fears of attacks, after more than 50 schools in the region were burned down over a year and the assault on a school in bordering Yobe state in February that left 29 students dead.
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