One of the scariest things about Boko Haram, the militia group that has set up a stronghold in north-east Nigeria and kidnapped more than 200 girls from their boarding school three months ago, is that they know what the West is like. It's not that they're out of reach of western communications, and are yet to learn our supposedly enlightened ways of doing things. It's just they've seen it and they don't like it. That's why the group have released a video mocking the #BringBackOurGirls campaign.
In the clip, a small group of the Islamic militants stand in front of their trucks, with the leader of the group, Abubakar Shekau, demanding that the government 'bring back our army', by releasing insurgents they have imprisoned in return for the release of the schoolgirls. Shekau chides 'girls, girls girls girls, Christians. Bring back our army!'
In another clip, Shekau brags about his recent victories including two explosions at a Lagos fuel depot that the government have tried to hush up, according to The Independent. One of the explosions was said to have been undertaken by a female suicide bomber.
The mocking videos came as 17-year-old Malala Yousafzai, the girls' education rights campaigner, visited Nigeria's president, Goodluck Jonathan, to plea to him to assist in the return of the girls to their families. After their meeting, he released a statement saying that he would meet with the parents of the missing girls 'to personally comfort them and reassure them' that the government was doing 'all within its powers to rescue their daughters.'
The idea that the government isn't doing enough to find the girls is 'very wrong and misplaced', reads Goodluck's statement according to the BBC, 'Terror is relatively new here and dealing with it has its challenges. The great challenge in rescuing the Chibok girls is the need to ensure that they are rescued alive'
He also thanked Malala for 'your efforts to change the world positively through your powerful advocacy for girl-child education'.
'girl-child', whatever that is…
Malala also called upon Boko Haram, who's name roughly translates as 'Western education is sin' to stop 'misusing Islam', and told CNN that Jonathan made her some promises: 'As you all know, in politics nothing is clear. In the circumstances nothing is clear really, but the president did make promises, and the president said that he feels that these girls are his daughters.'
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.