A Little History - The Biafran War Begins and UNICEF Responds : Tom McDermott

 

October 1, 1960 British and Nigerian Officials at
ceremonies marking Indiepence of Nigeria

Independent Nigeria was not yet six years old, but the strains between its regions were already strong. The struggle for power between north and south was particularly strong. The first coup took place on 15 January 1966. By late July a counter-coup was underway. Massive ethnic killing followed in the north, leaving between 8,000 to 30,000 dead and an exodus of over one million ethnic Igbos from the north to their ethnic homelands in south-eastern Nigeria.

In October 1966 northern troops began to cut off food supplies to southeastern Nigeria and by March 1967 the military authorities began a formal blockade of all movement of food and supplies to the region. Given that the population of the small region had swollen by the influx of at least a million refugees, the import restrictions had an immediate effect. A Nigerian representative at the UN defended the blockade by arguing that “starvation is a legitimate weapon of war.” He went on to say, “If children must die first, then that is too bad, just too bad.”

In March 1967 the military government declared a division of Nigeria into 12 new states, including division of the southeast into three separate states leaving most of the Igbo population isolated in a small area away from the area’s only seaport and airport.

The Shrinking of Biafra - 1967 to 1969 ©Pinterest

In response, on 30 May 1967 Biafra declared its independence from Nigeria. The early phases of the war in Biafra went largely without notice in the world press. There were much bigger stories capturing headlines. Just a few days after Biafra’s declaration of independence, the 1967 Arab Israeli War began. Public attention in the US was on American troops in Vietnam who were suffering rapidly growing numbers of casualties. In the US protests against the war were growing. As 1968 began, the Biafran war intensified, but world attention again had other events on its mind, including the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia and the Tet offensive in Vietnam.

With so many competing stories in the news, a small break-away state in west Africa attracted little attention from the public or their governments. The exception was the former colonial power, Britain, where authorities quickly pushed back against a breakup of Nigeria, in large part because of the potential loss of the rich oil fields controlled by BP / Shell - a company in which the British Government owned a major stake.

British authorities also had another argument - one that sounded better in public. Africa, it was said, was composed of many ‘Nigerias’ - former European colonies formed for the economic convenience of the colonial powers across many ethnic, cultural and linguistic lines. To permit the breakup of one such new state would lead to the breakup of many others - an often repeated cry heard later in Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia and other countries facing division.

1967 Ex. Board - L/R Henry Labouisse, Joseph Willard (Chairman),

Jack Charnow, (Secretary), Vedast Kyaruzi (UNICEF Director for Africa south of the Sahara).

The Biafran war posed a crucial moment in post-WWII history. What was the fate of post-colonial states? Would they fall back to their pre-colonial ethnic, tribal, and linguistic groupings? Would they be swept up in the Cold War competition for influence and power? What role should or could a United Nations or other international body play in responding to a civil war within a sovereign country? Was there a responsibility, a right to intervene?

The War Shifts

Up to the spring of 1968 the war went well for Biafra. Major thrusts by the Nigerian military were repulsed with heavy losses to Nigerian forces. The situation began to change as outside powers sent in arms. Jet fighters and bombers began to arrive from Egypt and Yemen. Mercenaries arrived to train and lead Nigerian units. Most of the financing and arrangements came from Britain, but Nigeria encouraged aid also from the Soviet Union, skillfully playing the two donors off against each other. Meanwhile, France became a major source of arms for Biafra. Biafra too began to hire mercenaries to train and lead army units.

In March 1968 the Nigerian forces began a successful assault on Port Harcourt, and by June had completed capture of the seaport and airport. A naval blockade cut off all of the coast, leaving Biafra without any outside access. Suddenly, the war shifted and the famine in Biafra quickly became real starvation.

UNICEF Gears Up

Civil war in Nigeria posed a particular problem for UNICEF. Our regional office responsible for all of Africa south of the Sahara was located in Lagos. The newly appointed regional director was a senior Tanzanian diplomat, Dr. Vedast Kyaruzi. Kyaruzi had previously served as Tanzania’s Permanent Representative at the UN. Like other international agencies and embassies, UNICEF had no field offices and travel of staff to the conflict zones was very restricted. Reports of the extensive ethnic killings came, however, from foreign businessmen who traveled regularly outside Lagos. While most agencies and embassies in Lagos were seen  as supporters of one side of or the other of the conflict, Kyaruzi, as a senior African diplomat with experience at the UN was seen as a neutral observer. He had easy access to leaders in the military government, including the head of government, General Gowan, but he also listened carefully to other parties and reported their views to Headquarters.

Dick Heyward (then still head of UNICEF programmes - a job Charles Egger would soon assume) and Sasha Bacic (then head of Africa Section) followed Kyaruzi’s reports carefully at Hq. Travelers in the north reported that many northerners blamed the Igbos for the assassination during the first coup of their traditional leader, the Sarduna of Sokoto, and other northern leaders. One report quoted an American businessman with long experience in Nigeria, saying that there is an acceptance “within those who run the government now that large numbers of Igbos must die to placate Northerners for the loss of their spiritual leader...Your own man in Lagos, Dr. Kyaruzi, told me that it is generally agreed that a ceasefire will be possible (only) when, and not before at least one million Igbos have died.” Another report by a Swiss businessman reported letters circulating in the north calling for the killing of every Igbo down to the age of six.

Heyward was deeply troubled by reports of the killings and the impending famine. Others described him as 'passionate' in his concern over the starvation of children there. At the same time he was deeply troubled by the unwillingness of the Secretary-General, UN agencies and the ICRC to respond. The SG, UThant, increasingly took the Nigerian side in the conflict and ordered UN agencies to provide assistance only if they had written agreement of the government in Lagos.

Partnering with ICRC

Like the UN, the ICRC seemed paralyzed by the fact that this was a civil war, rather than the sort of international conflict for which it had been created. Moreover ICRC and the League of Red Cross had very limited capacities for finding and delivering relief aid.  Gertrude Lutz had just arrived in Geneva as the new Deputy RD for Europe and N. Africa from her previous post as Representative in Turkey. Heyward assigned Lutz as liaison with ICRC in the hope that she could move them to act on the crisis. Her Swiss nationality and past association with ICRC made her an ideal link. (Charles Egger would later join her in Geneva as UNICEF's chief link with ICRC throughout the Biafran crisis)

Meanwhile in Lagos, UNICEF began preparing its relief efforts, but it needed the permission of the military government to deliver aid. In November they received approval for the first relief flight into the affected area, and in December 1967 Sasha Bacic and a representative of the ICRC visited Lagos and in a month of hard negotiating achieved what most international observers thought impossible - an agreement with the government allowing aid to continue entering both sides of the conflict.

Reaching agreement that relief supplies could enter was one thing. Actually getting supplies into the area was another. There were constant obstacles thrown up in Nigeria blocking ships or planes from entering the area. Finally, in April 1968 the government agreed that ICRC could begin a series of 11 flights carrying supplies to both government-held and Biafran-held areas. The supplies mostly consisted of foodstuffs and medicines provided by UNICEF. Not only had the flights been long delayed, but they also delivered only a fraction of the needs in the area, a total of only 105 tons of food for a population of 13.5 million people.

Next week - Frustrated with international diplomacy, UNICEF joins forces with the churches, and the Biafran airlift begins.



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