Boko Haram was responsible for the brutal deaths of more than 400 people in and around Maiduguri in northeast Nigeria in February and early March 2014. Among its victims were children watching a soccer match and dozens of male students at a public college in Yobe State, many of whom were burned or shot to death. The group was also blamed for a rush-hour bomb set off in April at a bus station in Nyanya, a city on the outskirts of the capital, Abuja, that killed more than 70 people.

In April, the group kidnapped about 280 girls from a school in the northeast with the intention of making the girls sex slaves. The mass kidnapping—and the governments slow response and inept attempts to rescue them—sparked international outrage and anti-government protests in Nigeria. A social media campaign sparked widespread news coverage of the kidnappings and put pressure on Jonathan to take action against Boko Haram.

In a videotaped message released in early May, Abubakar Shekau, the leader of Boko Haram, said the group planned to sell the abducted girls and threatened to give their hands in marriage because they are our slaves. We would marry them out at the age of 9. We would marry them out at the age of 12. He also reiterated the groups core belief that Western education is a sin.

The U.S. sent a team from the State Department, the F.B.I. and the Pentagon, 80 troops, and manned and unmanned surveillance drones to Nigeria in May to help to locate the girls. Another 68 girls were kidnapped in June in Borno state; 63 of the girls escaped weeks later.

While the world was focused on the search for the girls, violence attributed to Boko Haram continued. About 100 people were killed in a suicide attack in Jos and dozens more died in a series of attacks on villages in May. The violence continued into the summer, with the military stepping up its attacks on the group. In late June, a bomb attributed to Boko Haram killed about two dozen people in Abuja, the capital. The attack on the city, which is located in central Nigeria,