The ultimate atrocity !

The news that Boko Haram - an African  group of Muslim extremists - has kidnapped over two hundred girls from a Nigerian boarding school opens a new front in the war of terror.  It's leader is now threatening to sell these girls into sexual slavery and they are probably over Nigeria's borders and dispersed in neighbouring countries.

Boko Haram has achieved exactly what the world's terror groups crave - world publicity !  It's name roughly translates into " Western Education is a sin " - and it fervently believes that women should be denied any form of education and their sole function is to serve as wives in an Islamic society.

Boko Haram have struck before.   On other occasions they have killed male students at Nigerian schools and spared the girl students, but it seems that the kidnapping of girls is fast becoming the main thrust of their war on society.  A fresh wave of kidnappings followed, and this is sure to be copied by other extreme Islamic groups seeking fame - and ransom loot.

Many parents in Africa are going to have second thoughts about sending their daughters to school.   The prospect of armed men herding them away in the night and having total control over them will strike fear deep into their hearts.   The thought that they may end up in a distant slave market, being sold to the highest bidder  -  to a complete stranger who simply desires their sexual services - is an unthinkable atrocity.

The US has offered ransom negotiators and staff skilled in investigative techniques, but surely this is an act of war against the citizens of Nigeria that should provoke the United Nations into action.   The UN is the world body that is supposed to harness world power to right wrongs.   What Boko Haram has done fully deserves a UN army to be deployed against it.

This should be a matter for the UN Security Council - and it is unlikely that either of the usual nay sayers - Russia and China - could possibly object to world action to hunt down and destroy Boko Haram.   It is also unlikely that the moderate Islamic world would offer objections - and in fact that army to fight Boko Haram could well come exclusively from the Muslim world.

The entire world swung behind the Jewish people at the end of world war two when the Nazi horror of the Holocaust was revealed.   What is being done in the name of religion in Nigeria is a similar affront - against those of the female gender.   It deserves a world reaction - and the only way to stamp it out will take boots on the ground.

Whether those boots on the ground will be forthcoming - remains to be seen.  Boko Haram has issued it's challenge.   The parents of those missing girls will be waiting to see if the United Nations lives up to it's charter - or if it dissolves into the usual gab fest - that goes nowhere !