It's Becoming Increasingly Likely Nigeria's Kidnapped Girls Will Never Come Home

It's now been two months since terrorist group Boko Haram kidnapped more than 200 Nigerian school girls in the country's unstable north.

Despite new aerial patrols from U.S. drones, no progress has been made in locating them. This past week, former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo said some of the girls may never return home. And ordinary Nigerians are accusing the Nigerian government of trying to stifle their pleas to keep the situation top of mind.

In an op-ed on Project Syndicate, former British PM Gordon Brown goes a step further, discussing the gruesome reason for why the campaign may have already been lost:

...it is likely that in the month since Boko Haram released a video of the girls flanked by gunmen, the girls have been split into groups of 40-50. If one group is rescued by force, the others will be murdered, creating a serious tactical dilemma for the Nigerian government's special forces.

And, as the world's attention shifts to other global trouble spots, such as Iraq, intense international scrutiny is giving way to what seems like silent acceptance of the girls' fate. The fight to maintain global support has become an uphill one for Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan, despite his direct appeal to the whole world for help in securing the girls' release.

A Times of India report says the Nigerian government has now turned to the Sri Lankan government for advice in counteracting the movement, given the latter's experience defeating the Tamil Tigers. That campaign resulted in tens of thousands of civilian casualties. So it seems like whatever , the price for doing so may be extreme.