Nigerian Civil War

==Biafra surrounded==
[[File:Makeshift airport in Calabar, Nigeria, probably 1968.png|thumb|A makeshift airport in Calabar, Nigeria, where relief efforts to aid famine victims were deployed by helicopter teams.]]
From 1968 onward, the war fell into a form of stalemate, with Nigerian forces unable to make significant advances into the remaining areas under Biafran control due to stiff resistance and major defeats in [[Abagana]], [[Arochukwu]], [[Oguta]], [[Umuahia]] ([[Operation OAU]]), [[Onne]], [[Ikot Ekpene]], etc.<ref name="NCWF">{{cite web|work=Dawodu|title= Nigerian Civil War File |author=Nowa Omoigui|date=3 October 2007|access-date=27 October 2007|url=http://www.dawodu.com/omoigui24.htm}}</ref> But another Nigerian offensive from April to June 1968 began to close the ring around the Biafrans with further advances on the two northern fronts and the capture of [[Port Harcourt]] on 19 May 1968. The blockade of the surrounded Biafrans led to a humanitarian disaster when it emerged that there was widespread civilian hunger and starvation in the besieged Igbo areas.<ref>Heerten & Moses, "The Nigeria–Biafra War" (2014), pp. 175–176. "In early May 1968, Biafra's principal port town and remaining access to the sea, Port Harcourt, fell to federal forces. The secessionist state was turned into a landlocked enclave. With federal forces tightening the noose around the secessionist territory, the shrinking Biafran enclave soon encompassed only the heart of Igboland. At the same time, this territory had to absorb increasing numbers of people fleeing federal offensives. After a year of fighting, the rump state was overpopulated, its people impoverished, lacking supplies, food and medicine."</ref>

The Biafran government reported that Nigeria was using hunger and genocide to win the war, and sought aid from the outside world. Private groups in the US, led by Senator [[Ted Kennedy]], responded. No one was ever held responsible for these killings.

In September 1968, the federal army planned what Gowon described as the "final offensive." Initially the final offensive was neutralised by Biafran troops by the end of the year after several Nigerian troops were routed in Biafran ambushes. In the latter stages, a Southern Federal Military Government offensive managed to break through. However, in 1969, the Biafrans launched several offensives against the Nigerians in their attempts to keep the Nigerians off-balance starting in March when the 14th Division of the Biafran army recaptured [[Owerri]] and moved towards Port Harcourt, but were halted just north of the city. In May 1969, Biafran commandos recaptured oil wells in Kwale. In July 1969, Biafran forces launched a major land offensive supported by foreign [[mercenary]] pilots continuing to fly in food, medical supplies and weapons. Most notable of the mercenaries was Swedish Count [[Carl Gustav von Rosen]] who led air attacks with five [[Malmö MFI-9]] MiniCOIN small piston-engined aircraft, armed with rocket pods and machine guns. His Biafran Air Force consisted of three Swedes: von Rosen, Gunnar Haglund and Martin Lang. The other two pilots were Biafrans: Willy Murray-Bruce and Augustus Opke. From 22 May to 8 July 1969 von Rosen's small force attacked Nigerian military airfields in Port Harcourt, Enugu, Benin City and Ughelli, destroying or damaging a number of Nigerian Air Force jets used to attack relief flights, including a few MiG-17's and three of Nigeria's six Ilyushin Il-28 bombers that were used to bomb Biafran villages and farms on a daily basis. Although the Biafran offensives of 1969 were a tactical success, the Nigerians soon recovered. The Biafran air attacks did disrupt the combat operations of the Nigerian Air Force, but only for a few months.[[File:Malmö MFI-9 Biafra Baby two-view silhouette.svg|thumb|Malmö MFI-9 Biafra Baby two-view silhouette]]

In response to the Nigerian government using foreigners to lead some advances, the Biafran government also began hiring foreign [[mercenary|mercenaries]] to extend the war.<ref name="Mercs">{{cite web|url=http://www.mercenary-wars.net/biafra/|title=The Biafran conflict in 1966.|access-date=12 January 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140112190931/http://www.mercenary-wars.net/biafra/|archive-date=12 January 2014|url-status=dead}}</ref> Only German-born [[Rolf Steiner]], a lieutenant colonel with the 4th Commandos, and Major [[Taffy Williams]], a Welshman, would remain for the duration.<ref>{{cite book |title=The Last Adventurer |first=Rolf |last=Steiner |location=Boston |publisher=Little & Brown |year=1978 |isbn=978-0-316-81239-9 }}</ref> Nigeria deployed foreign aircraft, in the form of Soviet MiG{{nbh}}17 and Il{{nbh}}28 bombers.<ref name="Shadows"/>

===Humanitarian crisis===
{{Further|Blockade of Biafra|Biafran airlift}}

[[File:Starved girl.jpg|200px|left|thumb|A child suffering the effects of [[kwashiorkor]], a disease brought on due to a severe dietary protein deficiency. Pictures of the famine caused by the Nigerian blockade garnered worldwide sympathy for the Biafrans. It was regarded in the Western press as the genocide of two million people, half of them children.]]

The September massacres and subsequent Igbo withdrawal from northern Nigeria was the basis for the initial human rights petition to the UN to end genocide and provided a historical link to Biafran claims of genocide during the Nigerian civil war.<ref name="auto2">{{cite journal|last1=McNeil|first1=Brian|title='And starvation is the grim reaper': the American Committee to Keep Biafra Alive and the genocide question during the Nigerian civil war, 1968–70|journal=Journal of Genocide Research|date=July 2014|volume=16|issue=2–3|pages=317–336|doi=10.1080/14623528.2014.936723|s2cid=70911056}}</ref> Awareness of a mounting crisis rose in 1968. Information spread especially through religious networks, beginning with alerts from missionaries. It did not escape the notice of worldwide Christian organisations that the Biafrans were Christian and the northern Nigerians controlling the federal government were Muslim.<ref>Heerten & Moses, "The Nigeria–Biafra War" (2014), p. 175. "In the first half of 1968, ever more religious groups and humanitarian organisations were alerted to the event, due in large measure to the presence of western missionaries. These religious ties were conduits for the transnational networks through which the conflict would be turned into an object of international humanitarian concern. For many Christian clerics and laypeople, the war seemed to be a cosmic drama fought between a vulnerable Christian Biafra and a northern Muslim-dominated federal Nigeria."</ref> Among these Christian efforts were the organisation Joint Church Aid and [[Caritas Internationalis|Caritas]], the latter aligned with various international Catholic aid groups.<ref>{{cite report|url=https://2001-2009.state.gov/r/pa/ho/frus/nixon/e5/54647.htm|title=The Biafran Relief Problem|publisher=[[Central Intelligence Agency]]|date=29 January 1969|access-date=1 March 2021|location=[[Langley, Virginia|Langley, VA]]}}</ref> The famine was a result of the blockade that the Nigerian government had imposed on the Eastern region in the months leading up to secession.<ref name="auto2"/> [[Frederick Forsyth]], then a journalist in Nigeria and later a successful novelist, observed that the main problem was [[kwashiorkor]], a protein deficiency. Prior to the civil war, the main source of dietary protein was [[stockfish|dried fish]] imported from [[Norway]], which was supplemented by local hogs, chicken and eggs. The blockade prevented imports, and local protein supplies were quickly depleted: "The national diet was now almost 100% [[starch]]."<ref>Forsyth, Frederick. The Outsider: My Life in Intrigue. NY: Putnam, p. 176</ref>

Many volunteer bodies organised the [[Biafran airlift]] which provided blockade-breaking relief flights into Biafra, carrying food, medicines, and sometimes (according to some claims) weapons.<ref name="Shadows">''Shadows : Airlift and Airwar in Biafra and Nigeria 1967–1970'', by Michael I. Draper ({{ISBN|1-902109-63-5}})</ref> More common was the claim that the arms-carrying aircraft would closely shadow aid aircraft, making it more difficult to distinguish between aid aircraft and military supply aircraft.<ref name="Shadows"/>

The American Community to Keep Biafra Alive stood apart from other organisations by quickly creating a broad strategy for pressuring the American government into taking a more active role in facilitating relief. Former [[Peace Corps]] volunteers who had recently returned from Nigeria and college students founded the American Committee in July 1968. The Peace Corps volunteers stationed in the Eastern Region developed strong friendships and identified as Igbo which prompted them to help the Eastern Region.<ref name="auto2"/>

One of the characters assisting Count Carl Gustav von Rosen was [[Lynn Garrison]], an ex-[[RCAF]] fighter pilot. He introduced the Count to a Canadian method of dropping bagged supplies to remote areas in Canada without losing the contents. He showed how one sack of food could be placed inside a larger sack before the supply drop. When the package hit the ground the inner sack would rupture while the outer one kept the contents intact. With this method many tons of food were dropped to many Biafrans who would otherwise have died of starvation.<ref>Farran, Roy. "Calgarian active in Biafran conflict." ''North Hill News,'' 19 October 1968.</ref>

[[Bernard Kouchner]] was one of a number of French doctors who volunteered with the [[French Red Cross]] to work in hospitals and feeding centres in besieged Biafra. The Red Cross required volunteers to sign an agreement, which was seen by some (like Kouchner and his supporters) as being similar to a [[gag order]], that was designed to maintain the organisation's neutrality, whatever the circumstances. Kouchner and the other French doctors signed this agreement.<ref>{{Cite web|title=July 6: Nightfall at dawn New Telegraph Online New Telegraph|url=https://www.newtelegraphng.com/july-6-nightfall-dawn/|last=Correspondents|website=New Telegraph|language=en-US|access-date=2020-05-29}}{{Dead link|date=October 2023 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref>{{citation needed|date=January 2020}}

After entering the country, the volunteers, in addition to Biafran health workers and hospitals, were subjected to attacks by the Nigerian army, and witnessed civilians being murdered and starved by the blockading forces. Kouchner also witnessed these events, particularly the huge number of starving children, and when he returned to France, he publicly criticised the Nigerian government and the Red Cross for their seemingly complicit behaviour. With the help of other French doctors, Kouchner put Biafra in the media spotlight and called for an international response to the situation. These doctors, led by Kouchner, concluded that a new aid organisation was needed that would ignore political / religious boundaries and prioritise the welfare of victims. They formed the ''Comité de Lutte contre le Génocide au Biafra'', which in 1971 became ''[[Médecins Sans Frontières]]'' (Doctors Without Borders).<ref name="hih">Bortolotti, Dan (2004). ''Hope in Hell: Inside the World of Doctors Without Borders'', Firefly Books. {{ISBN|1-55297-865-6}}.</ref><ref>Heerten & Moses, "The Nigeria–Biafra War" (2014), p. 177.</ref>

The crisis brought about a large increase in prominence and funding of [[non-governmental organisations]] (NGOs).<ref>Heerten & Moses, "The Nigeria–Biafra War" (2014), p. 177. "The Biafran crisis was also connected to wider changes in the relief sector. In particular, it resulted in a massive spending increase through state funds and public donations, leading to the growth and proliferation of NGOs."</ref><ref>O'Sullivan, "Humanitarian Encounters" (2014), p. 299. "The Biafran humanitarian crisis holds a critical place in the history of non-government organisations (NGOs). It prompted the creation of new agencies, like Africa Concern, and thrust existing ones, like Oxfam, into a spotlight they have left only rarely since. As part of a wider 'NGO moment', it focused public and official attention on the role of non-state actors and accelerated the emergency of an internationalised, professionalised aid industry that took centre stage in the mid 1980s."</ref>

===Media and public opinion===
Media and public relations played a central role in the war, due to their influence on morale at home and the dynamics of international involvement. Both sides relied heavily on external support.<ref name="HeertenMoses2014page174"/><ref name="HeertenMoses2014page175"/> Biafra hired the New York public relations firm of Ruder and Finn to lobby American public opinion.{{sfn|Stremlau|2015|p=68}} However, it was not until Biafra hired the Geneva public relations Markpress in January 1968 that significant international sympathy was won.{{sfn|Stremlau|2015|p=116}} Markpress was headed by an American public relations executive, William Bernhardt, who was paid 12,000 Swiss francs per month for his services, and who expected a share of Biafra's oil revenues after the war.<ref>Omaka, Arua Oko ''The Biafran Humanitarian Crisis, 1967–1970:'' (2016) p. 68.</ref> Markpress's portrayal of the war as a struggle for freedom by the [[Catholic Church|Catholic]] Igbos against the Muslim-dominated north won the support of Catholic opinion all over the world, especially in the United States.<ref>Omaka, Arua Oko ''The Biafran Humanitarian Crisis, 1967–1970:'' (2016) pp. 69–70.</ref> Besides portraying the war as a Christian-Muslim conflict, Markpress accused the Federal government of waging genocide against the Igbos, a campaign that was extremely effective as pictures of starving Igbos won the sympathy of the world.<ref>Omaka, Arua Oko ''The Biafran Humanitarian Crisis, 1967–1970:'' (2016) p. 70.</ref>
[[File:Ongeveer_10.000_kinderen_van_scholen_uit_het_gehele_land_demonstreerden_in_Den_H%2C_Bestanddeelnr_922-9928.jpg|thumb|Student protesters in [[The Hague]], 20 November 1969.]]
Media campaigns focused on the plight of the Biafrans intensified internationally in the summer of 1968.<ref name="OSullivan2014page302"/><ref name="Griffin2015page124"/> By the Biafran leadership and then around the world, the pogroms and famine were classified as [[genocide]] and compared to [[The Holocaust]]; [[Igbo Jews|hypothetical Judaic origins of the Igbos]] were used to bolster comparisons with Jews in Germany. In the international press, Igbo refugee camps were compared to Nazi extermination camps.<ref>Heerten & Moses, "The Nigeria–Biafra War" (2014), pp. 178–179. "Further elevating the genocide reproaches, the eastern (later the Biafran) leadership frequently made comparisons to the Holocaust to draw attention to their cause. This analogy originated in ethnological genealogies that cast the Igbos as the 'Jews of Africa', even as one of Israel's 'lost tribes'. The Biafran leadership drew on this representation that many eastern Nigerians had adopted as their self-perception. This analogy, combined with the genocide charge, was used by the leadership to secure the support of the population, and to build loyalty to Biafra by emphasising the threat from a common enemy. The 'Jews of Africa' envisioned their state like an 'African Israel', a new nation born of genocidal violence. / Soon, the growing cast of Biafra's supporters around the globe adopted this rhetoric, further elaborating it in the process. After the publication of images of starving Biafran children in the western media, analogies and comparisons with the Holocaust abounded internationally."</ref>

Humanitarian appeals differed somewhat from place to place. In the United Kingdom, humanitarian aid used familiar discourses of imperial responsibility; in Ireland, advertisements appealed to shared Catholicism and experiences of civil war.<ref>O'Sullivan, "Humanitarian Encounters" (2014), pp. 304–305. "In Britain humanitarianism became a vessel through which society could construct a new sense of national purpose; it amounted, in essence, to a benign re-imagining of imperial compassion for a postcolonial world. When the Biafran crisis erupted, it offered an opportunity to renew this emphasis on the country's responsibilities{{nbsp}}... On the surface, the Irish response to Biafra was built on something very different to the British: a shared religion (Catholicism), a common colonial experience and a narrative of humanitarian disaster. At the launch of the JBFA in June 1968, one speaker reminded the assembled that Ireland and Nigeria were united in their knowledge of 'the horror of famine and civil war'."</ref> Both of these appeals channelled older cultural values into support for the new model of international NGOs.<ref>O'Sullivan, "Humanitarian Encounters" (2014), p. 305. "Yet the dominance of the decolonisation paradigm suggests that the experiences of the British and Irish NGOs were much closer than they might at first appear. From different starting points, and with differing goals, NGOs in both states assumed the mantel of organised reactions and re-imaginings of their countries' roles for the postcolonial era. Where the British public used humanitarianism to negotiate the shift from formal empire to responsible power, the changing role of Irish Catholic missionaries reflected the need to re-articulate the Irish 'spiritual empire' for this new world."</ref> In Ireland, public opinion identified intensely with Biafra as most of the Catholic priests working in Biafra were Irish who naturally sympathised with the Biafrans, who they saw as fellow Catholics struggling for independence.<ref name="Hogan">{{cite news |last1=Hogan |first1=John |title=How Ireland got involved in a Nigerian civil war |url=https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/heritage/how-ireland-got-involved-in-a-nigerian-civil-war-1.3089229 |access-date=7 April 2020 |newspaper=The Irish Times|date=20 May 2017}}</ref> The Irish journalist John Hogan who covered the war noted: "The threat of famine, combined with an independence struggle, had an almost irresistible political and emotional impact on Irish public opinion, which became hugely supportive of the regular airlifts, via the off-shore Portuguese island of São Tomé, of food and medical supplies to the beleaguered infant republic".<ref name="Hogan"/> The use of famine as a conscious tactic by the Federal government who wanted to starve Biafra into submission provoked parallels with the [[Great Famine (Ireland)|Great Famine of Ireland]] of the 1840s while many Irish people saw a parallel with Igbo struggle for independence with their own independence struggle.<ref name="Hogan"/> The pro-Biafra British journalist [[Frederick Forsyth]] started covering the war in the summer of 1967 for the BBC, became angry at the pro-Nigeria stance of the British government and resigned in protest in September 1967.<ref name="Heerten, Lasse 2017 p.98">Heerten, Lasse, ''The Biafran War and Postcolonial Humanitarianism: Spectacles of Suffering'' (2017) p. 98</ref> Returning as a freelance journalist in 1968, Forysth worked closely with the Irish Holy Ghost Fathers to collect information about the famine, and whose dispatches from Biafra had an immense impact on British public opinion.<ref name="Heerten, Lasse 2017 p.98"/> 

In Israel, the Holocaust comparison was promoted, as was the theme of threat from hostile Muslim neighbours.<ref>Levey, "Israel, Nigeria and the Biafra civil war" (2014), p. 270. "Michal Givoni points out that after June 1967, Israelis viewed the Biafrans as a people threatened in a manner similar to Israel during the crisis period that preceded the war.60 She also notes that Israel's daily newspapers reported frequently and prominently on what they termed the 'genocide' taking place in Nigeria. The general public in Israel, in the wake of that intense press coverage, expressed revulsion at the world's feckless response and the helplessness of the Biafran victims, which, for Israelis, recalled their own catastrophe."</ref>

The Biafran war presented Westerners with the notion of starving African children. The Biafran famine was one of the first African disasters to receive widespread media coverage, enabled by the proliferation of television sets.<ref>Heerten & Moses, "The Nigeria–Biafra War" (2014), p. 176.</ref> The televised disaster and the rising NGOs mutually enhanced each other; NGOs maintained their own communications networks and played a significant role in shaping news coverage.<ref>O'Sullivan, "Humanitarian Encounters" (2014), pp. 303–304. "As NGOs moved to centre stage in translating humanitarian concern into humanitarian action, they took on an equally important role in mediating between the lives of donors and life 'on the ground' in the Third World. Their advertisements, images and stories dominated the public narrative. In some cases, they did so in quite a direct fashion—Africa Concern, for example, established its own telex service to send up-to-date reports to the major Irish media outlets straight from west Africa, and in so doing had a considerable influence on the news agenda."</ref>

Biafran elites studied Western [[propaganda]] techniques and released carefully constructed public communications in an intentional fashion. Biafran propagandists had the dual task of appealing to international public opinion, and maintaining morale and nationalist spirit domestically. [[Political cartoon]]s were a preferred medium for publicising simple interpretations of the war. Biafra also used [[push poll]]ing to insinuate messages about Nigeria's inherent bloodthirstiness.<ref>Roy Doron, "Marketing genocide: Biafran propaganda strategies during the Nigerian civil war, 1967–70", ''Journal of Genocide Research'' 16.2–3, August 2014. "In order to organise a coherent policy, and to create a strategy to circumvent the obstacles of creating effective propaganda during wartime, the Biafrans created a series of plans, of which only one, 'Guide lines [sic] for effective propaganda' (also called Plan #4), remains. The plan's first part details the general purpose, aims, techniques, and strategies of the campaign. The second part explains how the Biafran 'propaganda man' was to deal with the unique challenges of operating in a war so close to home and a home front that was increasingly under siege, blockaded and teeming with refugees. / The authors of the guidelines studied propaganda techniques very carefully, and incorporated the lessons of Allied and Axis propaganda during World War II with strategies used in the advertising world. Thus, when the Biafrans discussed hate appeals as an effective propaganda tactic, they invoked Josef Goebbels' words, 'we are enemies of the Jews, because we are fighting for the freedom of the German' alongside catchy advertising slogans such as 'Fresh up with Seven-up!'"</ref> Novelist [[Chinua Achebe]] became a committed propagandist for Biafra, and one of its leading international advocates.<ref name="Jeyifo2013">{{cite journal | last1 = Jeyifo | first1 = Biodun | title = First, There Was A Country; Then There Wasn't: Reflections on Achebe's New Book | journal = Journal of Asian and African Studies | volume = 48 | issue = 6| pages = 683–697 | year = 2013 | doi = 10.1177/0021909613506483 | s2cid = 147590538 }}</ref>

On 29 May 1969, Bruce Mayrock, a student at Columbia University, set himself ablaze at the premises of the [[United Nations Headquarters]] in New York, to protest what he viewed as a [[genocide]] against the people of Biafra.<ref name="El Paso Herald Post-1969">{{cite news|title=Student Dies Following Self Burning|url=https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/69591865/|access-date=19 June 2014|agency=El Paso Herald-Post|date=30 May 1969}}</ref><ref name="Achebe-2012">{{cite book|last1=Achebe|first1=Chinua|title=There was a country : a personal history of Biafra|date=2012|publisher=Allen Lane|location=London|isbn=978-1-84614-576-6|chapter=Blood, Blood Everywhere}}</ref><ref name="Columbia Spectator 1969">{{cite news|title=GS Student, 20, Immolates Himself in Front of U.N.|url=http://spectatorarchive.library.columbia.edu/cgi-bin/columbia?a=d&d=cs19690603-01.2.8&e=-------en-20--1--txt-txIN------|access-date=2 June 2014|date=3 June 1969}}</ref><ref name="Ebiem-2014">{{cite news|last1=Ebiem|first1=Osita|title=30 May Biafra Independence & Bruce Mayrock Story|url=http://www.srilankaguardian.org/2014/05/30-may-biafra-independence-bruce.html|access-date=2 June 2014|date=26 May 1914}}</ref> He died of his injuries the following day.<ref name="Achebe-2012"/> On 25 November 1969, musician [[John Lennon]] returned the MBE he had awarded by Queen Elizabeth II in 1964 in protest against British support for Nigeria.<ref name="Lennon-MBE">{{cite news |title=Valued exposure: MBE |url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/8378080.stm |access-date=6 April 2020 |publisher=BBC |date=25 November 2019}}</ref> In his letter to the Queen returning the MBE, Lennon wrote: "Your Majesty, I am returning this in protest against Britain's involvement in the Nigeria-Biafra thing, against our support of America in Vietnam, and against Cold Turkey slipping down the charts. With love. John Lennon.".<ref name="Lennon-MBE"/>