Opinion

Beyond the hashtag

It’s now been four weeks since nearly 300 schoolgirls in the Nigerian village of Chibok were kidnapped from their school by the radical jihadist group Boko Haram.

Precious time was lost almost from the start. The Nigerian military was slow to respond to warnings from Boko Haram that it was planning an attack because girls were trying to get an education. Even after the April 14 kidnapping, it took more than two weeks for the world at large to wake to the horror of this incident.

Since then, a #BringBackOurGirls campaign has arisen. All this has been welcome. But good wishes won’t get the girls back or bring their captors to justice.

It’s true that with each day, the job gets more complicated. We’ve lost time. Intelligence reports suggest the girls have been broken up into smaller groups and sold off in different countries. And the Boko Haram Islamists plainly do not believe there will be any consequences for the evil they have done.

They are determined, like their brother Islamist terrorists, to prevent girls from being “corrupted” by education. And there is no atrocity they are unwilling to commit in pursuit of that goal.

These problems are indeed daunting. But Nigeria has some assets of its own, including a large military. With Western support and technology — and more resolve from its government — surely Nigeria could track down at least some of these girls.

Already some of the public has been galvanized, demanding action from a corrupt and feckless government. But let’s not give up on the effort to rescue these girls until we’ve made one.