I knew this would eventually happen. I knew some fundamentalist terrorist group would eventually kidnap boys. They cannot help themselves. They are compelled by their fanaticism to do stupid, horrible things. So it was only a matter of time before some well-known group went after boys. This time it was ISIS. According to the Guardian:

The kidnapping of 186 teenage boys in Syria on 30 May has gone largely unreported in the wider world, a curious omission given the outcry over the teenage girls in Nigeria. The abduction was no less sinister. The students needed to travel from the Kobani enclave on the Turkish border to Aleppo to take their exams, as required by Syria’s education system. The journey is perilous, but they reached Aleppo without incident. On the way home, however, a convoy of about 10 minibuses containing 186 boys aged 14-16 was stopped and taken to a religious school in Minbej, for training in the Qur’an and jihad. The vast majority are still there.

The omission is not curious. One hundred and eighty-six boys simply does not bring out international concern. After all, they are boys. Who, other than their parents, cares if some militant terrorist group kidnaps them?

Note the time of the kidnapping. It occurred on May 30th. By this point, the fervor over Boko Haram kidnapping almost 300 girls had died down. There was little continued news coverage. There was nothing stopping anyone, including the Guardian, from reporting about the kidnapping. Yet no one did. I searched for articles about the kidnapping and only found three, all of them from the last few days.

That means reporters either sat on the story or ignored it for almost a month.

That is terrible, but not as terrible as the violence these kidnapped boys may be suffering:

Desperate parents in Kobani have been left sitting and waiting. One man, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the information gap was agonising: there had been rumours that the boys had been beheaded, that they had been released, that there was a deal to swap them for Isis jihadists held by Kurdish fighters. And numerous variants in between.

One would think rumors of teenage boys being beheaded would prompt some response, but no. It appears no one cares. How sad that this is the world we live in. Girls are kidnapped and the world rallies behind them. Boys are kidnapped and the world does not care.