Clarity backed by force

Christians continue to be attacked in Nigeria, as Islamic extremists abducted 177 Nigerian Christians on Jan. 18.

President Donald Trump’s strike on Islamic State terrorists was necessary, and I am grateful that the United States has taken an interest in combatting anti-Christian violence in Nigeria and around the world.

President Trump’s stance on Nigeria stands in stark contrast to the past Democratic-led administrations’ short-lived interest in outrageous human rights atrocities against Christian girls by Islamic-fascist regimes.

The reality is that modern-day slavery is horrifically alive and well in these regimes. During the Obama Administration in 2014, the United States launched a global social media campaign to bring attention to 276 kidnapped, mostly Christian, schoolgirls in Chibok, Nigeria, tagged #BringBackOurGirls. Even former First Lady Michelle Obama and other world leaders amplified the young girls’ plight at the hands of Boko Haram, a Sunni violent extremist group that originated in northeastern Nigeria.

Over 3.3 million tweets on X were dedicated to the young women, fearing their rape, murder, and sex slavery. The world focused briefly and passionately—but after all of that, at least 91 of them still today remain as slaves or missing today.

Pentagon sources confirmed recently that the Obama Administration’s only real action aside from participating in a social media campaign was a brief reconnaissance with no other real effort. Unsurprisingly, they wanted credit for caring without the leadership required to confront the problem. But social media campaigns alone don’t change people’s brutal reality.

The kidnapping and sale of non-Muslim girls is not a new idea to Islamo-fascist regimes. It’s a “fundraiser” that goes back to the time of Muhammad. But most recently, it drew international attention when, according to the United Nations, in 2014, ISIS militants invaded the Sinjar region of Northern Iraq, kidnapping about 7,000 minority Yazidi girls and shipping them to Raqqa, Syria, where they were sold at slave markets. Over a decade later, even with the new U.S. cooperation with President Ahmed al-Sharaa, about 2,600 of those girls are still missing. Where are they?

With ISIS beaten back in Syria, these terror groups are reconstituting (along with other Muslim criminals) in other countries, including Nigeria. A country of more than 240 million people, Nigeria is split into several regions, but Northern-Western Nigeria has long been a stronghold for Islamic terrorists who prey on Christians, and to a lesser extent, moderate Muslims.

In 2018, Boko Haram kidnapped 110 mostly Muslim schoolgirls in Dapchi. They were all released a month later, except for one. Her name is Leah Sharibu, now 22. She was held because she refused to renounce her Christian faith. Today, she has reportedly given birth to two children in captivity.

Open Doors research found that 3,100 Christians were killed and 2,830 Christians were kidnapped in Nigeria in 2024, the most of any country that year.

According to a recent piece in the Wall Street Journal, “… al Qaeda and Islamic State are conducting insurgencies.” The story also revealed that “Washington spent hundreds of millions of dollars arming and training local militaries to battle those insurgents over the past decade,” but the radical slave trade is only growing. Case in point: about 300 young girls, including babies, were kidnapped from St. Mary’s Catholic School in a community called Papiri, located in the middle region of Nigeria. The Nigerian government has declared that all those girls have escaped or been rescued.

Up until now, the United States has given about $1 billion per year in foreign aid to Nigeria. But none of that mattered enough for the Nigerian government to take a hard stand to protect Christians, particularly women. They have ignored the slavery with feckless leadership. No more. Suddenly, the spotlight is on this issue, and President Trump means business. The president is the unlikely abolitionist.

America’s foreign policy isn’t about wimpy, do-nothing hashtag campaigns, but about clarity that, in some cases, has to be backed up by force. We learned on 9/11 that terrorism ignored can fester and kill Americans, but beyond that, every leftist who donned a keffiyeh should be marching in solidarity with modern slaves in Nigeria. Where are the Ivy League college activists on this issue? I suspect that there is no profit in helping the Nigerians, and apparently not much compassion either.

With the latest attacks on Christians in Nigeria following the U.S.-led Christmas Day strikes, it is even more important for the U.S. to be proactive. President Trump has led with clarity on so many fronts of American foreign policy. We encourage the Trump Administration to continue to find ways to protect Christians in Nigeria against Islamic extremists. It is a battle worth fighting and one that President Trump is uniquely positioned to lead.