Why the trillion-dollar war on terrorism couldn’t defeat Boko Haram

The failings of the global intervention into Boko Haram’s kidnapping of the Chibok schoolgirls led to fatal miscalculations; the social media campaign extended the girls’ captivity; and the mistrust between the U.S. and Nigerian governments delayed action on vital information sharing.

In April 2014, the hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons was on a yacht cruising in the Caribbean when he tweeted about the 276 girls kidnapped by the terrorist group Boko Haram from a secondary school in Chibok, northeastern Nigeria. The hashtag he copied lit a matchstick that inflamed the world.