Biafra: Hunger, Politics, Inhumanity
Sale, J. Kirk
BY THE END Of this summer, whether or notB the relief missions are successful, the breakaway nation of Biafra and fully a third of its 15 million citizens may both be dead. The political tragedy...
...In Asaba in April, 700 Biafran civilians were lined up along the main street, the men facing their wives and children, and all of them were shot by Federal soldiers...
...The Biafrans can reflect wryly on the irony that it is only after they are near defeat that the world should know of their battle...
...There is no reason whatsoever to expect the Federal troops, the majority of whom are Northerners, to show the slightest mercy toward the surviving Ibos...
...the Biafrans, truly fearing genocide, have pledged to fight to the last man unless they get such a solution...
...Sadly, another chance for Africa COMMENTS AND OPINIONS really to modernize, to throw offcolonialism, for its units to become rational and strong instead of arbitrary and manipulable, has faded—and the massacred Biafran soldiers and the starving Ibo children are the sorry testament to that hope...
...they are little use as dispassionate negotiators or peace finders (unlike Russia at Kashmir or America over West Irian...
...A Federal aide from Biafra reported to the abortive Kampala peace talks in June: "In Ikot Epenyong, three miles from my home town, the Ibo soldiers rang the church bell one Sunday afternoon and forced everybody in the village at gun point to assemble in the church building...
...One emaciated girl licked powdered milk off the smock of her younger sister where it had spilled...
...I saw a child sucking her mother's breast, and the mother was dead...
...Biafra, the former eastern region of an obviously unworkable and disintegrating Federation of Nigeria, proclaimed its independence a little over a year ago, on May 30, 1967...
...But the world either scorned or ignored the Biafrans...
...Some 50,000 Ibos died at the hands of rampaging Northerners in the 1966 massacres that initiated the whole process of secession...
...As of late July food supplies have come in only by air--mercifully fast but pathetically inadequate-since the Biafrans regard any goods passing overland through Federal-held territory as probably poisoned and certainly compromising their sovereignty...
...But the whole relief question has become sticky, dripping with local and international politics...
...and it was a decidedly difficult war to report on, which is especially unfortunate in this modem world where an event scarcely exists until it receives saturation press coverage...
...The only real question is how many of these people will be slaughtered by triumphant Federal troops and how many will curl up and die of starvation or disease...
...The International Red Cross estimated in July that 13,000 Biafrans were dying every day, and perhaps 2 million would be dead by midSeptember...
...It is estimated that more than 300 men, women and children were massacred...
...children who had received nothing scrambled on the ground picking up single kernels in the dust...
...An occasional hoarse croak came from the parched lips of the babies, sucking on the wizened, dry breasts of their mothers...
...Political organization was solid, oil provided a new economic base, and socially the people were homogenous—so why not nationhood...
...The Ibos, the most adaptable and educated tribe in the country and the dominant tribe in the East, were historically united, egalitarian, progressive, and ef6cientaIl qualities necessary to a modem nation that Nigeria itself lacked...
...The next day several hundred Biafran soldiers, hospitalized in the city and unable to evacuate, were massacred in their cots by the incoming Federal soldiers...
...Vultures moved from wall to wall in great numbers, ready to descend...
...After all, the Nigerian Federation had undergone two disintegratory coups, and all its history of corruption, chaos, and collapse suggested that secession was only rational...
...The political tragedy of this prolonged and agonizing death is overshadowed only by the human...
...The O.A.U...
...has diddled and dawdled, most African states unable to figure whether their interests lie in preserving the fiction of colonially-drawn boundaries or in restructuring the continent along truly ethnic/national lines...
...We know that the fighting has been ugly and brutal, the Federals trained and equipped for modem war, the Biafrans illsupplied but committed to survival or death...
...The last two months have seen growing viciousness, as Federal troops, knowing they have the Biafrans surrounded, have pressed their advance...
...In Awgu in January, Egyptian-piloted Russian planes dropped incendiary bombs on an apparently nonmilitary village, killing 90 civilians and hospitalizing 400 more for whom there was no available medicine...
...A NUMBER of world agencies--Oxfam, the International Red Cross, Caritas (a Catholic organization), governments including the U.S...
...THE LAST two months have also seen growing starvation, and it is this that has finally gripped the conscience of the world and turned international attention to this other dirty little war...
...In Umuawa-Ude, a medical team distributed ears of corn that were soon exhausted...
...The International Red Cross protested the wanton slaughter...
...Nigerian authorities, acknowledging the slaughter, called it "a mistake...
...In Port Harcourt in late May, according to a Federal Ijaw spokesman, some 40 of his tribesmen were indiscriminately murdered by Biafran soldiers fleeing town before Federal troops, and 60 per cent of the civilian homes were sacked...
...In Ikot-Ekpene, reported John Birch of the Save the Children Foundation, Biafrans in prison last month when the Federals marched in were "too weak to run--some too weak even to speak...
...But even when the immediate problem of relief transportation is settled, as it no doubt will be eventually, starvation will continue as long as the war continues and as long as food distribution has to be carried on under chaotic conditions...
...Either way, with each disemboweled soldier, each writhing child, there dies a nation and a hope...
...The Biafrans originally believed their revolu tion would be treated sympathetically, especially by what their schoolbooks had told them was a revolutionary United States...
...The international cooperation in the supply of food to Biafra is the first instance of outside concern for the cruel Nigerian war and the first time that the Biafran cause has received anything near the attention it deserves...
...When all were assembled, the Ibo soldiers surrounded the church, set it on fire, burning down the villagers, and shot those who tried to escape...
...COMMENTS AND OPINIONS • In Umuchu in July, Father Sean Guina reported that he saw "four little children lying on a bed...
...They were, after all, black and far away...
...At this point, probably not...
...the West had deceived itself with the fiction of a democratic, unified, happy Nigeria that it couldn't quite give up...
...The Federals are unwilling to allow a full-scale airlift without minute inspection since they claim to be afraid of mortars mixed with the milk...
...No ONE knows how many have died so far on the military front alone, but the recent press estimate of 150,000 from both sides seems reasonable...
...The Federals haven't much interest in a political solution with a population they can either slaughter or starve to submission...
...Vietnam was a more vivid problem for Americans, who had decided anyway that foreign intervention might have its sorry side...
...Since then it has been in an increasingly vicious and hopeless battle with Federal forces, and there is no doubt now that the end for the 11 million Ibos and their satellite tribes is at hand...
...The hope for international intervention in the legitimate if difficult cause of Biafra is forlorn and futile...
...Is THERE a way out...
...it was hard for financial interests to decide who was going to win and thus control the oil, so noninterference seemed most expeditious...
...Foreign governments are heavily committed by now—notably Britain, unable to relinquish its colonial role when it comes to the crunch, and Russia, unable to resist trying to create one...
...One was dead and I couldn't tell the difference...
...Herman Middelkoop, of the World Council of Churches, says flatly: "I have no doubt that 6 million people will die in the next six month, without a cease-fire and massive help...
...and Britain have tried to feed supplies into the Biafran-held areas...
Vol. 15 • September 1968 • No. 5
