Remember ten years ago when Boko Haram kidnapped many girls from a school in Nigeria? It was disturbing front-page news everywhere. Michelle Obama got into the act with a “Bring back our girls” campaign online.

Well, a couple of days ago we got some very good news related to all of this, but not many news outlets even reported it. I don’t see anything from Michelle Obama, either (I checked her “X” page). I guess over the years much of the virtue-signaling world has stopped caring about “our” girls.

They haven’t been forgotten in Nigeria, though; take a look [emphasis mine]:

Hundreds of hostages, mostly children and women, who were held captive for months or years by Boko Haram extremists in northeastern Nigeria have been rescued from a forest enclave and handed over to authorities, the army said.

The 350 hostages had been held in the Sambisa Forest, a hideout for the extremist group which launched an insurgency in 2009, Maj. Gen. Ken Chigbu, a senior Nigerian army officer, said late Monday while presenting them to authorities in Borno, where the forest is.

The 209 children, 135 women and six men appeared exhausted in their worn-out clothes. Some of the girls had babies believed to have been born from forced marriages, as is often the case with female victims who are either raped or forced to marry the militants while in captivity.

Note the use of the word “extremists” rather than “terrorists.” And I don’t know why the word “either” is in there; in such cases, marriage is rape.

More:

The army said the hostages were rescued during a dayslong military operation in Sambisa Forest, which was once a bustling forest reserve that stretches along the border with Cameroon and Niger, but now serves as an enclave from where Boko Haram and its breakaway factions carry out attacks that also target people and security forces in neighboring countries.

Some extremists were killed during the rescue operation and their makeshift houses were destroyed, the army said.

So the hostages were apparently being guarded and there was some sort of battle.

Finally the article gets around to explaining the Muslim jihadi origins of the group:

Boko Haram, Nigeria’s homegrown jihadi rebels, launched its insurgency in 2009 to establish Islamic Shariah law in the country. At least 35,000 people have been killed and 2.1 million people displaced as a result of the extremist violence, according to U.N. agencies in Nigeria.

The US campuses seem notably silent on the matter. They’re too busy championing other jihadi terrorists kidnapping and raping and killing other young women.

Here’s a reference to the kidnapped group that sparked the “Bring back our girls” campaign [emphasis mine]:

The majority of those rescued were women and children, many of whom had been abducted a decade ago.

Acting General Officer Commanding … Haruna revealed that the rescue operation was part of a 10-day endeavor named ‘Operation Desert Sanity 111’, aimed at eliminating terrorist remnants from Sambisa forest while offering surrender opportunities to willing insurgents.

… [In] the infamous Chibok schoolgirls abduction in 2014 … approximately 276 girls were forcefully taken from their school dormitory.

While some managed to escape captivity, others were rescued by troops during clearance operations, with the latest rescue occurring in April 2024.

Despite these efforts, approximately 90 of the Chibok girls remain unaccounted for, raising hopes that some may be among those recently rescued from Sambisa forest.

Let us hope so. This is really good news, in a time when we haven’t gotten too much of it, especially about raped and kidnapped woman taken into sexual slavery by jihadis.

Note also that the articles don’t mention the word “Christian,” but in the case of the Chibok kidnapping (and probably the others, as well, although I’m not 100% sure of that) the targeted girls were Christian. More:

Boko Haram has used the [Chibok] girls as negotiating pawns in prisoner exchanges, offering to release some girls in exchange for some of their captured commanders in jail.

Sound familiar?

The girls kidnapped in Chibok in 2014 are only a small percentage of the total number of people abducted by Boko Haram. Amnesty International estimated in 2015 that at least 2,000 women and girls had been abducted by the group since 2014, many of whom had been forced into sexual slavery.

Nigeria is a country that’s about half Muslim and half Christian, and in much of the country there isn’t much tension between the two groups. But in the north – which is predominantly Muslim – Boko Haram is very active and has wreaked havoc, especially with the Christian population in that area.