Aisha Musa has been living
in the crowded Minawao refugee camp in Cameroon for seven months. She survives
by selling corn meal at the local market. Musa was kidnapped by Boko
Haram militants. They killed her family, and forced her at gunpoint to become a
jihadi bride. “They show you a gun, and then whatever they say you have
to follow their command,” Musa said. “He would go on operations and kill
people, and then come home and force me to be with him.”
Musa was rescued by the
Cameroon military, but the worst of her ordeal was finding out she was pregnant
by her rapist. “I am not enjoying
that I have a baby from a Boko Haram man,” she said. But she is resigned and
there are moments of tenderness between her and her young child. Musa’s story is not unusual. Boko Haram has
captured hundreds of girls, the most infamous kidnapping was the 200 Chibok
schoolgirls taken more than 18 months ago.
Musa never saw the Chibok girls but often heard the
fighters speak of them. Like many of the other girls, they too were forced to
marry the militants. In a double injustice, many are now stigmatized by their
community. Girls like Musa are regarded as spoiled goods — her baby a very
public reminder of a cruel and unfair shame.
