Biafra

The République of Biafra ( Bịafra in Alphabet side-Nigerian) was a State secessionist of 1967 with 1970 located in the South-eastern part of the the Nigeria, richest in reserve of Pétrole. The name Biafra comes from the Golfe of Biafra located at the South, on the Atlantic coast .

History

See also: War of Biafra

The desire of the Igbos to free itself from the federal mode to the hand of the two other majority ethnos groups of the Nigeria started a Civil war with the declaration of Indépendance of the Republic of Biafra by its chief Odumegwu Emeka Ojukwu the May 30th 1967. One of the reasons of the secession was that the Igbo ethnos group, in Christian majority and animist wished to free from the federal supervision of the Haoussa, in Moslem majority. This war political, religious and ethnic, very fatal, was completed the January 15th 1970 (capitulation the January 12th) with the reincorporation of the republic in Nigeria.

The secession did not call into question the concessions already granted to existing oil companies concerning the basement of Biafra. However, it was suggested (in particular in accounts blaming the role of the France in Africa starting from the Années 1960) that the belligerents were supported by European powers according to the advantages discounted on exploitations.

Four African countries (Tanzania, Gabon, Ivory Coast, Zambia) and Haiti recognized the young Republic of Biafra. France helped it in a discrete way by sendings including/understanding of the weapons and the mercenaries. Nigeria reacts by issuing the Blocus and by starting the war, helped by the the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and the the United States. The hostilities will make more than one million deaths, in particular because of famine. During the blockade, at least a plane of the Croix-Rouge was cut down by Nigeria, in violation of international conventions.

According to Rony Brauman, With autumn 68 the French government mobilized the Red Cross and set up, in the same movement, a clandestine device of military aid. Under the direction of an American mercenary, French pilots, Rhodesia NS, South-African and Portuguese, convoyaient armaments from Portugal to the Biafran tiny room via Sao Tome where they embarked humane teams, drugs and vivres. France and South Africa financed this airlift jointly.

Geography

The surface asserted and controlled at the beginning of the war of Biafra was that of the area of the East is 76 364 km ². But the territory did not cease decreasing until its total disappearance the January 12th 1970.

The majority of the territory was composed of plains and the delta Marécage ux of the Niger in the West where the palm tree with oil, the Hévéa and the Cacaoyer were cultivated. Layers of Pétrole had been found in the area. Hills, beginning of the volcanic chain of the “line of Cameroun”, rose at the border Is with the Cameroun and the Niger river marked the Western border. Biafra opened in the South on the Golfe of Biafra of the Atlantic Ocean.

Population

The inhabitants of Biafra are mainly Igbos (or Ibos) which formed approximately 70% of the population of Biafra and 18% of that of Nigeria. The writer Kurt Vonnegut presents them as more advanced in education than the other ethnos groups of the countries (it mentions the number of Igbos carrying out of the international higher learning) and according to him hated remainder of the Nigerians for this reason.

The other important ethnicities are the Ibibios, Ijaws, Ogojas, Ekois, Efiks,…

The majority of the population is catholic, Protestant and animist.

Biafra, crucible of the humanitarian action of today

The Guerre of Biafra is very known to have been the release of an humanitarian action of a new kind, the without-frontièrisme . Indeed during the war television retransmet of the insupportable images of refugees and the combat. However the States and the traditional organizations are paralyzed. Indeed, neither UNO nor the other countries can act in an interior conflict with a country and the government of the Nigeria refuses the action of the Croix-Rouge - so much so that the army of the Nigeria drew in spite of international conventions on planes from the Red Cross bringing in theory helps to besieged Biafra. Challenged on this subject, the leaders of this country affirmed not to have had evidence that these planes did not transport weapons.

In front of these blockings, some French doctors, whose Bernard Kouchner (which had left on mission with the Red Cross), revolts and decides to found Doctors without borders. It is the first of a long line of well-known governmental organizations today, more committed in the denunciation of misfortunes of the world and in rupture with strict the neutrality of the Red Cross. These ONG inaugurate a mode of humanitarian action managed by small private missions which will be, hope, closer to the needs for the populations and far from the heavy structures of the traditional humanitarian action. Leaving the absolute neutrality of the Red Cross, they will be, indeed, better capable to denounce the exactions made by the belligerents, official and nonofficial. They will run also the risk to take party in the conflicts and to be used by the strategists of the communication.

Without giving opinion on the accuracy of the biafraise cause, one can consider that the war of Biafra will be also the occasion to start to wonder about the relation of the Médias to the event. Indeed, one can see there one of the origins of what some will call the dictatorship of the emotion , the rebellion biafraise arriving, through the media of mass, with instrumentaliser bad conscience of the Western populations for the benefit of its cause.

See too

List of the countries disappeared
War from Biafra
History of Nigeria
Indépendantisme
the Red Cross
Doctors without borders
Voice off Biafra International
Bernard Kouchner

Similar cases

Other countries having had divisions caused by the colonists, under military pressure, to preserve a right on the parts richest in resources or of the strategic points:

External bonds

Site of the '' nation '' of Biafra
the MFI-9B " MiniCOIN" in the air force of Biafra
Files on Biafra
the Express train, article of Georges Henein and Claudine $the Hague on January 19th, 1970
Reflection of Rony Brauman on the role of ONG during the war of Biafra

References and sources

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