When America Couldn’t Bring Back Our Girls
science and technology
In 2014, three months after Boko Haram militants kidnapped 276 girls from a school in the northeastern Nigerian town of Chibok, a photo landed on a bank of monitors in the CIA’s Abuja station, a group of sealed drop-ceiling rooms concealed behind the blast-proof walls of the United States embassy.The picture was the spy agency’s best clue in months as to the location of the Chibok girls. It had been forwarded over an encrypted channel from an American air base in Ramstein, Germany, where drone and satellite footage had been collected. On the screens glimmered a full-color image, described to us by several current and former American and British defense and intelligence officials and diplomats who, like many of those we interviewed about this episode, declined to be identified in discussing sensitive intelligence and diplomatic details.In the image were about 80 young women in full-length mayafis standing about in the sun, just far enough beyond the branches of a gigantic, craggy baobab-like tree to be visible to the high-definition cameras peering down at them. They were near a handful of men who appeared to be their guards. Pickup trucks were parked by a small mud-brick structure ...
The Atlantic
Apr 03, 2021
