The tragedy of Biafra
Biafra is no more. After two and a half years of fighting against overwhelming odds, after two and a half years of starva- tion, after two million Biafran dead, resist- ance has come to an end. The objective of British policy, which at first alone and sub- sequently in company with Russia has been responsible for providing the Niger- ian government with the means to achieve a military victory, has been attained. The SPECTA TOR has consistently attacked that policy. Nor have we any doubt what the verdict of history will be. But there is no point now in recrimination or in looking back. The question is how to make the best—or avoid the worst—of the situation that has arisen.
Rightly, the eyes of the world are now turned to the plight of the five million Biafrans who remained huddled within their country's shrinking perimeter until the end, and who are now facing, more imminently than ever, the prospect of death by starvation. It has all along been the contention of Mr Stewart that, as soon as the war was ended, the spectre of mass starvation would disappear, and relief would come to the Biafran people. The truth is proving to be very different. With the collapse of Biafra has come the com- plete disintegration of the Biafran relief organisation which, thanks to the charities' nightly airlift, has up to now been feeding the five million. And nothing has taken its place, while the British High Com- missioner in Lagos has chosen this moment to urge all British relief workers to leave the area.
No doubt this last appeal was in re- sponse to General Gowon's warning to 'all foreign governments and persons' to stop meddling in Nigeria's internal affairs. There is no reason to disbelieve that General Gowon genuinely wishes to con- duct relief operations himself. But Lagos, where the bulk of Nigeria's relief supplies are stored, is hundreds of miles away from Biafra, and communications are wholly inadequate. Not only that: the ramshackle Nigerian relief organisation has been un- able even to deal satisfactorily with the problem of starvation in the remoter areas which have long been under Federal con- trol. It cannot possibly cope with the scale of the disaster that now confronts it in what was once Biafra—a disaster that de- mands immediate and effective action, or it will be too late.
There is only one solution. The nations of the \world, including, first and foremost, Britain. whose responsibility for the present situation is so great, must provide Joint Church Aid and the other charities that have been involved in Nigerian relief with the means to carry out a massive and immediate airdrop of essential foods over the entire disaster area. It is true that the Nigerian government has. already declared that the sending of direct aid to the needy areas will be seen as an infringement of Nigerian sovereignty, and will not be toler- ated. But in the name of humanity, the rest of the world simply cannot allow this national sensitivity to go to the length of preventing even an airdrop, in which no foreign aircraft will land or foreign relief worker set foot on Nigerian soil.
But even if starvation is averted, and it is within our power to avert it. there still remains the need, only slightly less urgent. for medical aid, and for some means of protecting the five million Biafrans from the vengeance of the advancing Federal soldiery. The appeal of Major-General Effione. General Ojukwu's successor, to the Biafran soldiers to lay down their arms and not to attempt to engage in guerrilla warfare. is a wise one: it is to be hoped that it will be heeded. Any resort to guer- rilla warfare by the Biafrans at this stage would achieve nothing but savage and in- discriminate reprisals against the civil ponulat ion.
But even without this. there still remains the need for'outside medical teams to tend the sick and diseased, and for outside observers (far in excess of the dozen now in Port Harcourt) to inhibit by their presence the excesses of Nigerian com- manders in the field. Let General Gowon name the nations they should come from; let him stinulate. if he wishes. the colour of their skin: but let them come.
Finally. what of the loneer-term future? The war has been fought—and won—to preserve 'one Nigeria'. But for how long? Here is a country, far and away the largest in Africa, composed of three major tribes. each jealous or distrustful of the other, and a host of minor ones. A unity imposed by British rule, with Moslem, Christian and pagan yoked uneasily together, it has been on the verge of disintegration almost ever since it was launched into independ- ence, as the great hope of Black Africa, nine years ago. Recently, the war against Biafra, and against the Ibo race, had served to some degree to unite the rest of Nigeria in a common purpose. Now that purpose recedes, the old tensions will re- emerge. Nor will it be easy. even for a government bent on reconciliation, to re- integrate the Ibos into federal Nigerian society. Their fault has been to be cleverer, abler, more industrious. more successful— and hence more disliked—than most other Nigerians. Is it really likely that, after two and a half years of war, they will now be allowed the opportunities to' advance themselves that they formerly enjoyed?
And this, perhaps, in the long run, is the greatest tragedy of all. Britain, over the past two and a half years, has des- troyed her moral standing in the world to no material benefit whatever. But Africa has lost more than this—and more than millions of lives. too. The future of black Africa. once the heady dreams of the immediate post-independence days were shattered, has never looked very hopeful. In country after country a flirtation with democracy has given way to one-party rule. then to the oppression of minorities, then to a rather inefficient and corrupt police state. Meanwhile economic devel- opment has depended wholly on outside— European. American or Asian—enterprise and initiative, hampered by political in- stability.
Biafra. for the first time, suggested that there was hope for black Africa. Breaking out of the old colonial mould, and from the arbitrary frontiers of past rulers, a great tribe succeeded in forging, under fire, a new nation whose maturity and self- reliance was the marvel of all who, during its brief existence, visited it. That ray of hope for the future of Africa has now been extinguished. It is a blessing that the Biafra-Njgeria war has at last come to an end. But it leaves the dark continent even darker than before.
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