"The respect that Aisha and Zara commanded contrasts with the situation of most women in northern Nigeria...."

"In Borno state, according to the United Nations Population Fund, nearly sixty per cent of girls between the ages of fifteen and nineteen are married, and many have begun bearing children. Wives typically require permission from their husbands to leave the house, and they have little say in family decisions or public life. 'People often don’t realize how much choice Boko Haram gave women,' Fatima Akilu, a psychologist who runs the Neem Foundation—which operated a deradicalization program for female former captives of Boko Haram—told me. The wives of commanders, and also women who joined the group voluntarily, were extended greater freedoms than are typical for women in the region. 'We usually dismiss Boko Haram as anti-women and anti-girls, but they knew that a powerful recruitment strategy was to tell women that, "If you join our group, you can have whatever role you want,"' she said. '"Even if you want to be a combatant, we will train you to be a combatant."'"

From "The Women Rescued from Boko Haram Who Are Returning to Their Captor" (The New Yorker).

"More than 100 girls are still missing three days after suspected Boko Haram extremists attacked their school in northern Nigeria..."

"... parents said Thursday, as fears grew that they may have been kidnapped... Boko Haram horrified the world when it abducted 276 girls from a boarding school in Chibok almost four years ago. Though some escaped and many others were released as part of negotiations, about 100 remain with their captors. The extremist group has kidnapped thousands of people over the years."

The L.A. Times reports.

"The US has issued a rare global travel alert for its citizens in response to 'increased terrorist threats.'"

"The state department said 'current information' suggested the Islamic State group, al-Qaeda, Boko Haram and others continued 'to plan terrorist attacks in multiple regions.' The alert, it said, will remain in place until 24 February 2016."

3 months!

ADDED: It's so long and generic that it's really no different from no warning at all except to the extent that they want to be able say: Well, we warned you!

"The sect leaders make a very conscious effort to impregnate the women. Some of them, I was told, even pray before mating, offering supplications for God..."

"... to make the products of what they are doing become children that will inherit their ideology."

"This city of over two million people was attacked beginning late Saturday night from at least two directions by the militants from the Islamist insurgency..."

"... which effectively controls the territory surrounding the city. Loud explosions were heard in the center of the city, and small-arms fire and artillery in its suburbs."

Boko Haram in Maiduguri, Nigeria.

The attack on Maiduguri coincided with a visit by Secretary of State John Kerry to Nigeria’s commercial capital, Lagos, for meetings with President Goodluck Jonathan and his challenger in the coming presidential election, Muhammadu Buhari, a retired general. Mr. Kerry was expected to focus in part on the Boko Haram threat amid mounting friction between the United States and Nigeria over how best to deal it....

After a meeting with his British counterpart, earlier this month, Mr. Kerry said that the attacks by Boko Haram constituted war crimes and asserted that the United States was planning a “special initiative” to counter the group. But Mr. Kerry has not provided details of what that initiative is, when it might be undertaken or how the cooperation between the American and Nigerian militaries might be improved.

"All I could hear were ceaseless gunshots, explosions, screams from people and chants of 'Allahu Akbar' from the Boko Haram gunmen."

"I remained in my hiding place until Tuesday evening. Every night when it was dark, I would furtively scale the fence into my house to quickly eat garri and drink water and go back to my hideout.... Some of the Boko Haram gunmen camped outside the Baga main market just 700 metres from my hideout... At night I could see lights from the power generator they ran. I could also hear their cheering and laughter.... "

The survivor Yanaye Grema tells his story.

(What is garri? "To make garri, cassava tubers are peeled, washed and grated or crushed to produce a mash. The mash is placed in a porous bag and allowed to ferment for one or two days, while weights are placed on the bag to press the water out. It is then sieved (or sifted) and roasted by heating in a bowl. The resulting dry granular garri can be stored for long periods.")

"The Khorosan Group Does Not Exist/It’s a fictitious name the Obama administration invented to deceive us."

Writes Andrew C. McCarthy (at National Review):

The “Khorosan Group” is al-Qaeda. It is simply a faction within the global terror network’s Syrian franchise, “Jabhat al-Nusra.” Its leader, Mushin al-Fadhli (believed to have been killed in this week’s U.S.-led air strikes), was an intimate of Ayman al-Zawahiri, the emir of al-Qaeda who dispatched him to the jihad in Syria. Except that if you listen to administration officials long enough, you come away thinking that Zawahiri is not really al-Qaeda, either. Instead, he’s something the administration is at pains to call “core al-Qaeda.”

“Core al-Qaeda,” you are to understand, is different from “Jabhat al-Nusra,” which in turn is distinct from “al-Qaeda in Iraq” (formerly “al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia,” now the “Islamic State” al-Qaeda spin-off that is, itself, formerly “al-Qaeda in Iraq and al-Sham” or “al-Qaeda in Iraq and the Levant”). That al-Qaeda, don’t you know, is a different outfit from al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula . . . which, of course, should never be mistaken for “al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb,” “Boko Haram,” “Ansar al-Sharia,” or the latest entry, “al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent.”

Coming soon, “al-Qaeda on Hollywood and Vine.” In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if, come 2015, Obama issued an executive order decreeing twelve new jihad jayvees stretching from al-Qaeda in January through al-Qaeda in December.

McCarthy looks at the big picture and criticizes Obama for using terminology that obscures it, but there could be reasons — other than to deceive us. It could be to demoralize the enemy. (If that's the idea, though, we should avoid "Islamic State.") It could be some notion of breaking a seemingly impossible big project down into doable chunks. (Which sounds like an idea from a business self-help book. Stuff like this: "Chunk!")

"The State Department under Hillary Clinton fought hard against placing the al Qaeda-linked militant group Boko Haram on its official list of foreign terrorist organizations for two years."

"And now, lawmakers and former U.S. officials are saying that the decision may have hampered the American government’s ability to confront the Nigerian group that shocked the world by abducting hundreds of innocent girls," says The Daily Beast.

“The one thing she could have done, the one tool she had at her disposal, she didn’t use. And nobody can say she wasn’t urged to do it. It’s gross hypocrisy,” said a former senior U.S. official who was involved in the debate. “The FBI, the CIA, and the Justice Department really wanted Boko Haram designated, they wanted the authorities that would provide to go after them, and they voiced that repeatedly to elected officials.”

"God instructed me to sell them, they are his properties and I will carry out his instructions."

Said Abubakar Shekau, leader of the group that has kidnapped 230 girls from a school in Nigeria. 

The name of the group is Boko Haram, which means "Western education is forbidden."