Chelsea Clinton expressed disgust on Twitter on Tuesday at the "unspeakably awful" news that Boko Haram has been raping hundreds of its female prisoners, but the rise of Boko Haram coincided with a refusal by Hillary Clinton's State Department to designate it as a terrorist group, which hampered the United States' ability to confront it.
Though Clinton would later state on Twitter that the United States "must stand up" to Boko Haram's terrorism and #BringBackOurGirls, her handling of the terrorist group as secretary of state has been widely criticized.
As secretary of state, Clinton was urged separately by the Justice Department, FBI, CIA, and dozens in Congress to designate Boko Haram as a terrorist group. Her failure to do so "hampered the American government’s ability to confront the Nigerian group that shocked the world by abducting hundreds of innocent girls," according to the Daily Beast.
"The one thing she could have done, the one tool she had at her disposal, she didn’t use," a former U.S. official involved in the Boko Haram debate told the Daily Beast. "And nobody can say she wasn’t urged to do it."
The head of the Justice Department’s national security division even sent a letter to the State Department requesting that the group, referred to at the time as the "Nigerian Taliban," be added to the terrorist list.
Clinton's State Department not only refused to designate Boko Haram as a terrorist group—which would have given law enforcement and intelligence agencies additional tools to fight its rise—but it actively fought against efforts to do so. State Department representatives lobbied against legislation in Congress that would have forced the administration to act against Boko Haram.
The State Department's argument against designating Boko Haram as terrorists was that it was a "loosely constructed group."
"Boko Haram is at the moment a loosely constructed group attached to trying to address grievances in the north," said spokesperson Victoria Nuland. "There are different views within the group, and we’re continuing to look at that."
Boko Haram, which pledged allegiance to the Islamic State earlier this year, was finally designated a terrorist group in 2013 after Clinton had left the department.
A House Homeland Security Committee report said in 2011 that Boko Haram "may meet the legal criteria for State Department [foreign terrorist organization] designation" and added that the State Department should initiate "an investigation into the designation."
State Department officials now say it "could have acted sooner to designate Boko Haram a foreign terrorist organization."
Many believe Clinton's reluctance to designate Boko Haram as terrorists was due to the administration's political fear that voters would realize al Qaeda was not "on the run."
"According to current and former U.S. officials, the reluctance of Hillary Clinton’s State Department to designate Boko Haram as a foreign terrorist organization in the summer of 2012 was no isolated case; it was partly rooted in a larger effort by the Obama administration to narrowly define al Qaeda and deemphasize the rise of its new affiliates, especially in Africa," wrote Michael Hirsh in Politico Magazine.