Author: justinthoffman

Médcins sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders) is founded in Paris, with leadership by several doctors who had volunteered in Biafra and who were frustrated by the lack of aggressive response by the ICRC and international community. The initial meeting brought together several different groups of people who were interested in doing direct medical service in war-torn regions of the world while also not standing aside from advocacy. The organization began slowly, with unsuccessful attempts to send doctors to respond to an earthquake in Nicaragua in 1972. More successful trips by Bernard Kouchner and other leaders involved aid for Kurdish rebels in Iraq in 1974 and a 1975 trip to Saigon.

MSF eventually became one of the best-known humanitarian agencies in the world, and won the Nobel prize in 1999.

See Also:

Video: “Bernard Kouchner Talks about Doctors Without Borders Biafra.” Uploaded April 13, 2017.

Bradley, Mark. “The World Reimagined: Americans and Human Rights in the Twentieth Century.” Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016.

Davey, Eleanor. “Idealism Beyond Borders: The French Revolutionary Left and the Rise of Humanitarianism, 1954-1988.” Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015.

Redfield, Peter. “Life in Crisis: The Ethical Journey of Doctors Without Borders.” Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013.

Nigerian author Chinua Achebe was born in Nigeria in November 1930. He attended the University of Ibadan and published his first novel “Things Fall Apart” in 1958.

“There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra” is a memoir of Achebe’s experiences growing up in Nigeria, and specifically, his thoughts and commentaries the Nigeria-Biafra War. The book is split into four parts, beginning with the story of his family, then moving onto the subjects of war and peace, and finally concluding with the difficulties associated with a postwar society. In describing the context in which the book was written, The Guardian writes that “no writer is better placed than Chinua Achebe to tell the story of the Nigerian Biafran war from a cultural and political perspective.”

See Also:

World Literature Today. “There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra by Chinua Achebe“ from “Taking Pictures and Telling Stories” in March 2013 Book Reviews. March 2013.

Adam Nossiter. “Remembering Biafra: There Was a Country by Chinua Achebe.” The New York Times. Published November 4, 2012.

Noo Saro-Wira. “There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra by Chinua Achebe – Reviewed.” The Guardian. Published October 5, 2012.

A graduate of Harvard Law School, Dr. Ferguson worked as the US ambassador-at-large and special coordinator of relief for civilians during the Nigeria-Biafra War. He negotiated the “Protocol on Relief to Nigerian Civilian Victims” of the conflict and was lauded by many nations for his service.

During Nixon’s announcement of Ferguson’s appointment, he explained that Ferguson was in charge of ensuring the responsible and effective use of US aid to “both sides of the battle-line.” However Nixon was quick to remind the public that Ferguson would not be negotiating any issues other than those having to do with humanitarian assistance and disaster relief.

Throughout his career in both the public and private sectors, Ferguson served as US Representative to the United Nations Economic and Social Council, United States Ambassador to Uganda, Professor of Law at Rutgers University, Dean of the Howard University Law School, and Professor of Law at Harvard University, among other jobs and appointments.

SEE ALso:

Kissinger, Henry. Memorandum From the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Kissinger) to President Nixon, Washington. Archived at 2001-2009.State.gov.

Levenson, Eric. “Was Nixon a Humanitarian?: Declassified Material from the Nigeria-Biafra War.” Levenson blog, April 19, 2013.

McNeil, Brian. “Frontiers of Need: Humanitarianism and American Involvement in the Nigerian Civil War, 1967-70.” PhD Dissertation, University of Texas-Austin, 2014.

Mitchell, Clarence. “In Memoriam: C. Clyde Ferguson, Jr.” Harvard Law Review 97:6 (1984):1253-1254.

As the Nigeria-Biafra war waged on, starvation became a central concern for civilians in Biafra. As the FMG continued to advance on Biafran forces—eventually shrinking Biafra to one tenth of its original size—Biafra had no access to seaports or roads, thus the only way to import food and other necessary supplies was via airplane. However, the FMG then took control of the relief operations on both sides of the frontlines and prohibited the ICRC from continuing to deliver aid to Biafra. Due to mounting pressure from the international community, Gowon allowed the ICRC to airlift medical supplies to Biafra two weeks after the ban began. Despite this, he did not allow food and other supplies to enter Biafra unless it tightly monitored by Nigerian forces. Thus, almost all aid to Biafra begins to go through the non-authorized night flights run by Joint Church Aid.

Less than a year after its formation, the American Jewish Emergency Effort for Biafran Relief had raised $185,000. The Emergency Effort consisted of 21 national Jewish organizations. The American Jewish Committee was a member of both this coalition and Joint Church Aid. Besides the total funds raised by the coalition at the end of June 1969, many other Jewish organizations, including local synagogues, US held food drives and raised money for Biafra relief.

See Also:

BBC. “On This Day 1969: Nigeria Bans Red Cross Aid to Biafra.” Published June 30, 1969.

“Summary of the American Jewish Emergency Effort for Biafran Relief.” Reports Published July, 1968 – July 1969

During the duration of the Nigerian civil war, many sophisticated weapons were utilized. A number of these arms were manufactured to meet the immediate needs of the war. It has the highest collection of the Nigerian civil war weapons, no longer used. Such weaponry emanates from the Nigerian military and the defunct Republic of Biafra.

Its location is of no coincidence; Umuahia was the second capital of Biafra proceeding the fall of Enugu. It was where the bunker housing of the famous radio, the Voice of Biafra, was transmitted. Voice of Biafra served as a spokesperson for Biafra during the war. The museum has become a renowned tourist site, attracting hundreds of people daily. From various walks of life, they venture to the institution for varied purposes: to relive the period of the war through items on display or research objectives. Rarely anyone visits to satiate their curiosity.

The museum is on a massive expanse of land, containing three galleries that cover traditional warfare, the armed forces, and the Nigerian civil war galleries. Artifacts pertain to weapons utilized in pre-colonial disturbances, warfare materials used during communal and inter-tribal wars and those of the Nigerian Civil War.

A tour of the museum commences with viewing the prehistoric section where some of the weapons are exhibited. This weaponry pertains to spears, shields, bows, and arrows. Even metal war vests that warriors utilized as protection can be observed. The end of the old war weapons section escorts viewers into the Nigerian Armed Forces gallery where ceremonial uniforms of the army officers and photographs of a few previous military leaders lie. Then visitors travel into the gate of the bunker that houses the Radio Biafra of the defunct Biafran Republic. At the entrance, the Biafran flag hangs, containing the colors red, black, and green with the rising sun in the focal point. Black and white pictures of the Nigerian leaders that were victims of the war, beginning with the January 15, 1966 coup of Kaduna Nzeogwu. Inside the 30 feet deep bunker lies the transmission studio and the transmitter of Radio Biafra. Throughout the large premises of the war museum, are various antiquated military weapons which include anti-aircraft guns and Squid Mortar anti-submarine gun said to be carried by the Navy warship N.N.S. Nigeria.

For those who have never experienced the Nigerian Civil War, they may value visiting the National War Museum, Umuahia to truly deepen their understanding of what it was like to live during such a period. For those who did, this exhibition would allow them the opportunity to retrospectively reflect.

See Also:

Development Alternatives and Resource Center. “The National War Museum, Umuahia.” Carolina Academic Press. June 30, 2016.

Chijioke N. Onuora. “The National War Museum, Umuahia: Preservation of Civil War Memorials and Nigerian Military History.” Critical Interventions, 9:3, 204-218.

Ojukwu Bunker. YouTube, uploaded by nwmumahia. August 10, 2014.

Tour of the Museum. YouTube, uploaded by nwmumahia. August 11, 2014.

Catholicism first arrived in Nigeria via the Portuguese in the, 15th century, and. by the middle of the 20th century. the number of Catholic missions surpassed that of the Anglican Church. The Catholic Church also played an important and influential role in the Nigeria-Biafra war. At the start of the conflict in 1967, more than half of the Catholic missions within Nigeria were in the southeast region, many of them staffed by Irish missionaries. Throughout the war, many Catholic missionaries followed their Igbo congregations as they migrated and fled to safer parts of Nigeria after the violence against Igbo people in 1966.

Nigeria had long been seen as “the showpiece of Ireland’s religious empire” (Bateman), and many Irish Catholics were familiar with the country from missionary reports. After the war started, Catholic missionaries also helped disseminate awareness of the plight of the Igbo people to international media outlets and the global Christian community. Catholics in Ireland were particularly involved in pro-Biafran activities. (The official government policy in Ireland, as with most states, was in favor of “one Nigeria.”) In March 1968, Irish activists founded Africa Concern, which soon raised £3.5 million for Biafra (65 million euro in today’s terms).

Given that Catholics in Europe were perceived as being strongly supportive of Biafra, after the war, the Catholic Church had a difficult time continuing to operate within parts of Nigeria. For example, the state seized control of all schools managed by private groups, including Catholic missionaries, in December 1970. In addition, Irish missionaries were also expelled from the eastern region in the immediate aftermath of the war.

See Also:

Bateman, Fiona. “Ireland and the Nigeria-Biafra War.” New Hibernia Review 16: 1 (Spring 2012).

Horgan, John. “How Ireland Got Involved in a Nigerian Civil War.” The Irish Times. May 20, 2017.

Nwaka, Jacinta Chiamaka. “Reactions of the Governments of Nigeria and Biafra to the Role of the Catholic Church in the Nigeria-Biafra War.” War & Society 34 (2015): 65-83.

Omenka, Nicholas Ibeawuchi. “Blaming the Gods: Christian Religious Propaganda in the Nigeria-Biafra War.” Journal of African History 51 (2010): 367-89.

O’Sullivan, Kevin. “Humanitarian encounters: Biafra, NGOs and Imaginings of the Third World in Britain and Ireland, 1967–70.” Journal of Genocide Research 16:2-3 (2014): 299-315.

Yancho, Paul. “Catholic Humanitarian Aid and the Nigeria-Biafra Civil War.” In Religion, History, and Politics in Nigeria: Essays in Honor of Ogbu Kalu. Edited by Chima Korieh and G. Ugo Nwokeji. Mitchellville, MD: UPA of Rowman & Littlefield, 2005.

Joint Church Aid was formed in response to the increasingly desperate humanitarian situation occurring in Biafra during the war. Various Protestant church organizations had been frustrated with the World Council of Churches’ neutral stance in the war and by its decision to work through the ICRC to deliver aid. JCA was a collaboration of those groups and Caritas International. JCA was built on an earlier group, Nordchurch Aid, a coalition of Northern European churches that been coordinating airlifts of food, medicine and supplies to Biafra for several months. After an expansion of airfield capacity in October 1968, the organizations collectively decided it was time to purchase a larger aircraft in order to increase the shipments of aid to Biafra; this meant the formation of a coordinated group, thus the JCA was born.

At this point, then, there became two major relief efforts into Biafra. The ICRC’s effort, which was supported by most governments and groups like the WCC, was done with the permission of Nigeria’s Federal Military Government and launched from Fernando Pó (now Bioko), an island off Equatorial Guinea — although relations between the Nigerian government and the Red Cross were often tense and difficult. In early June 1969, a Red Cross plane was downed and the pilot killed; this effectively ended the ICRC’s airlift.

The JCA airlift was launched from the island of São Tomé. Shortly after the JCA begins delivering aid, the JCA-USA is formed, made up of the National Council of Churches, Catholic Relief Services, and the American Jewish Committee. It raises funds to support the airlift. The JCA also lobbied politicians in an effort to put pressure on them to call on the Federal Government of Nigeria to stop disrupting the humanitarian assistance being delivered to Biafra. Over the course of two years, pilots working for the JCA flew a total of 5,314 missions from São Tomé to various parts of Biafra, delivering a total of 60,000 tons of aid supplies. However, during the same time period, 25 JCA pilots were killed.

See also:

de Montclos, Marc-Antoine Pérouse. “Humanitarian Aid and the Biafra War: Lessons not Learned,” Africa Development 34:1 (2009.):69-82.

“Joint Church Aid-U.S.A., Inc., Memo to Clarence C. Ferguson, Jr., Coordinator of the Nigeria/Biafra Civilian Relief .” Feb. 28, 1969. Archived at 2001-2009.State.gov.

Kadidal, Akhil. Illustration of the Landing Process at Uli Airfield. Weapons and Warfare.

Omaka, Arua Oko. “Humanitarian Action: The Joint Church Aid and Health Care Intervention in the Nigeria-Biafra War, 1967-1970.” Canadian Journal of History 49:3 (2014):423-447.

Sources: McCullum, Hugh. “Biafra was the Beginning.” from Biafra Relief Heroes: Remembering – In the Words of Those Who Were There. Archived at biafraland.com.

McCullin was a British photojournalist known for his work in Congo, Cyprus, Vietnam, and Israel. (After the Nigeria-Biafra war, he would work in Northern Ireland, Cambodia, Beirut, Bangladesh, and Iraq, among other conflict zones.) He first traveled to Biafra early on in the war, where he was embedded with Biafran units. At the time, McCullin was working for the Sunday Times, which he described as being “pro-Biafra” even though the weekday paper was in favor of one Nigeria. However, over the course of his many trips to Biafra, McCullin came to doubt the viability of the Biafran cause.

McCullin describes his famous photo as “one of the most obscene photographs I’ve ever taken.” He found himself at a Catholic mission in Umuiaghu after getting malaria and also suffering from stress and trauma after a particularly horrific battle. It was at the mission that McCullin first came into contact with the depth of starvation in the population. He contextualizes the photograph by noting that “to be a starving Biafran orphan was to be in a most pitiable situation, but to be a starving albino Biafran was to be in a position beyond description.”

See Also:

Campbell, David. “Cultural Governance and Pictorial Resistance: Reflections on the Imaging of War.” Review of International Studies 29 (2003): 57-73.

“From Beirut to Biafra: Don McCullin’s War Photographs Go on Show.” Guardian. Feb. 8, 2010.

Kamber, Michael. “Don McCullin at War.” New York Times, Nov. 6, 2015.

Krznaric, Roman. “Do We Suffer Compassion Fatigue?” RomanKrznaric.com. Oct 10, 2010.

McCullin, Don. Unreasonable Behavior. London: Random House, 2015 (new ed.)

Owen, Jonathan. “One the Edge of Reason: The Torment of Don McCullin.” Guardian, Dec. 30, 2012.

The ICRC was sending aid into Biafra with the approval of the Federal Military Government, although they, like other organizations in the airlift, flew at night into the Uli airport. Unlike Joint Church Aid, the ICRC flew from Fernando Pó (Equatorial Guinea) as well as Dahomey.. In June, a Swedish Red Cross plane was shot down by the Nigerian airforce. A few weeks later, the Nigerians stripped the ICRC of its role in coordinating the official relief proram. The government’s new, hard line on relief flights was made clear in a report in the Africa Research Bulletin:

A Federal statement…said that “this disaster has long been prophesied by the Federal Military Government to the International Committee of the Red Cross…which has repeatedly been approached to discontinue mercy night flights in favour of daylight flights so that their identity could at no time be mistaken for Ojukwu’ s arms planes, many of which are of the same type.”…Recent raids by aircraft mistaken for civilian planes had obligated the Federal Government to resume night air patrols “bearing in mind the ICRC’s words that they were prepared to risk their lives to feed the rebel civilians.”

The FMG had not, up to that point, been attacking relief planes, but this was the warning that such tacit acceptance of the flights was no longer operational.

See Also:

“Aid Flight Reported Downed by Nigeria.” New York Times, June 7, 1969, Page 13.

De Waal, Alex. “Famine Crimes: Politics and the Disaster Relief Industry in Africa.“ Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997.

Desgrandchamps, Marie-Luce. “’Organising the unpredictable:’ the Nigeria-Biafra war and its impact on the ICRC.” from International Review of the Red Cross Vol 94. No. 888. (Winter 2012) pp. 1409-32.

Nigeria Situation Report: ICRC Plane Shot Down. June 6, 1969. Archived at 2001-2009State.gov.

Source: Laurie Wiseberg, “The International Politics Of Relief: A Case Study Of The Relief Operations Mounted During The Nigerian Civil War (1967-1970),” PhD Dissertation, UCLA, 1973.

After the coup that began on January 15, 1966, Aguiyi-Ironsi, who was an Igbo, became the military head of state. Ironsi, who joined the military at age eighteen, was trained in England and upon return, worked as an aid to the Governor General of Nigeria, John Macpherson. He served as the leader of the 5th battalion of the Nigerian Army during the 1960s Congo crisis and was subsequently appointed the Force Commander of the UN Operation in the Congo. However, after serving as head of state for 194 days, Ironsi was killed in late July 1966 after a counter-coup by northern Nigerian soldiers were who rebelled against his government.

See Also:

Video:  “Major-General Aguiyi-Ironsi becomes Head of State, 1966.”

Video: “The Burial of Major General Aguiyi Ironisi 1966”

Article: “Aguiyi-Ironsi: The Murder that Birthed Nigeria’s Northern Hegemony”