We thought we would never see it: the release of at least some of the young girls kidnapped and enslaved by Boko Haram from northern Nigeria three years ago in April, 2014.
Exactly what is happening is still a mystery. Two-hundred-and-seventy-six girls were kidnapped. Twenty-one girls were released last October, 2016. Now, 82 girls are released in May, 2017. That leaves a lot of girls still unaccounted for. Are they still alive? Were some radicalized or otherwise brainwashed and want to remain with their captors? Were some used as suicide bombers? No one knows, or, if they do, they not talking.
Among those who might know are the Swiss government and the International Committee of the Red Cross, which reportedly negotiated for the current release of 82 girls. All people of good will would seem to owe these mediators a debt of gratitude.
Meanwhile, what happened to these girls? For starters, forced “marriages.” Some of these girls are now mothers. None of them retains their innocence. All of them are political pawns in the worst sense. All of them are living reminders of the brutality and absence of conscience of their captors. All of them require some kind of reorientation, whose nine-month length is subject to controversy in Nigeria.
Did the celebrity-driven “Bring Back Our Girls” campaign launched after the girls’ kidnapping make a difference? Perhaps the mediators know. In any event, the most important response to the likes of Boko Haram is not to respond with outrage to the outrages they commit, but to realize that Boko Haram (and their ilk) represent, more than anything, a war of ideas.
It has been said, with some justice, that if one Islamic terrorist is killed, one or more will take his place. That is because, in our efforts to defeat these terrorists, we conceive of their defeat as a battlefield victory. The death of Osama bin Laden, for example. On this scale, we will never win the war. Until we engage the enemy on the battlefield he most promotes — the battlefield of ideas — we shall fail. Our current “victories” are, at best, tactical. What we need is a strategy: an acknowledgement that we are engaged in a war of ideas. Of religion. Of right and wrong. Of tolerance. Of political pluralism. Of humanity. Of democracy.
Until we can communicate the superiority of these ideas, the terrorists who would take us down will continue to grow in number and influence. The Boko Haram kidnapping will loom as the merest accretion on an immense canvas of religion-driven and culture-driven hatred. We deny the war of ideas at our peril.
Copyright © 2017 by the Intermountain Jewish News
