There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra
Source: Chinua Achebe Foundation interviews: Colonel Joseph Achuzia in conversation with Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye, November 28, 2005.
3. Interviews with anonymous retired Biafran soldiers.
Biafra Takes an Oil Rig: “The Kwale Incident”
1. “Eni is an outgrowth of Agip (Azienda Generale Italiana Petroli), an oil and gas company set up by the fascist Italian government in the 1920s.” “Eni,” Encyclopdia Britannica Online, April 8, 2009.
2. “Biafra: Reprieve for Eighteen,” Time, June 13, 1969; Anthony Hamilton Millard Kirk-Greene, Crisis and Conflict in Nigeria: A Documentary Sourcebook, Volume 2 (London: Oxford University Press, 1971); Ben Gbulie, The Fall of Biafra (Enugu, Anambra State, Nigeria: Benlie Publishers, 1989); Indian Journal of International Law 14, iss. 1–15, 15, iss. 4.
3. Interview with anonymous former Biafran intellectual.
4. “Biafra: Reprieve for Eighteen,” Time.
5. Ibid. Also Kirk-Greene, Crisis and Conflict in Nigeria; Gbulie, The Fall of Biafra; Indian Journal of International Law.
6. Gabonese and Ivorian diplomats made this real possibility clear to Ojukwu. Also see the following: West Africa, iss. 2718–43 (London: West Africa Publishing, 1969), p. 661; Africa Bureau, Africa Digest 16 (London: Africa Publications Trust, 1969), p. 72.
7. “Pope Paul VI met Federal Nigerian and Biafran representatives separately during his visit to Kampala early in August. A Vatican spokesman said that the Pope had raised the possibility of negotiations to resolve the conflict.”
Source: Commonwealth Parliamentary Association. General Council, Royal Institute of International Affairs, Report on World Affairs 50, iss. 3 (1968).
8.The Daily Register (Red Bank), August 1, 1969; see also Africa Research Bureau 6 (London: Africa Research, 1969).
9. Robert D. Schulzinger, A Companion to American Foreign Relations, volume 24 of Blackwell Companions to American History, Blackwell Handbooks in Linguistics (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2006); Auberon Waugh and Suzanne Cronjé, Biafra: Britain’s Shame (London: Joseph, 1969); Peter Schwab, Biafra (New York: Facts on File, 1971), digitized by the University of Michigan Press, September 16, 2008.
10. Russell Warren Howe and Sarah Hays Trott, The Power Peddlers: How Lobbyists Mold America’s Foreign Policy (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1977); Christian Chukwunedu Aguolu, Biafra: Its Case for Independence (self-published, 1969); Hersh, The Price of Power.
11. Kari A. Frederickson, The Dixiecrat Revolt and the End of the Solid South, 1932–1968 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001).
12. Ibid.
13.West Africa magazine, iss. 2718–43 (1968, 1969).
1970 and The Fall
1. Martin Meredith, The Fate of Africa: A History of the Continent Since Independence (New York: PublicAffairs, 2011), p. 205; Henry Robinson Luce, Time 100, iss. 14–26 (New York: Time, 197
2); Blaine Harden, “2 Decades Later, Biafra Remains Lonely Precedent,” Washington Post, June, 27, 1988.
2. Chinua Achebe Foundation interviews, Number 15: General Yakubu Gowon, October 2005, ©The Chinua Achebe Foundation.
3. Mort Rosenblum, “Gowon Assails International Relief Agencies: Biafran Crisis Builds Up,” Observer-Reporter (Washington County, PA), Associated Press, January 14, 1970; “Lagos Spurns Promises of Aid,” The Montreal Gazette, Reuters, January 15, 1970; Jean Strouse, Newsweek 75, iss. 1–8; United Press International, “Nigeria Eases Relief Ban: Million Biafrans Near Starvation,” Palm Beach Daily News, January 15, 1970; Nancy L. Hoepli, ed., West Africa Today 42, iss. 6 (1971).
According to Carl Ferdinand and Howard Henry, “Three days after thousands of Biafran soldiers surrendered, Nigeria’s leader, General Yakubu Gowon, assailed the international relief agencies coordinated through Joint Church Aid (JCA) and said: ‘Let them keep their blood money.’”
Source: Christianity Today 14, iss. 1–13; vols. 1-13 (Chicago: American Theological Library Association, 1969).
4. Ibid.
5. Dirk Kruijt and Kees Koonings, eds., Political Armies: The Military and Nation Building in the Age of Democracy (London, New York: Zed Books, 2002).
6. Various estimates place the number killed at over two million people.
The Question of Genocide
1. “Death Tolls for the Major Wars and Atrocities of the Twentieth Century”; www.users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat2.htm. The following sources provide death tolls for the Biafran war: Compton’s Encyclopedia: 1,500,000 starved; Charles Lewis Taylor, The World Handbook of Political and Social Indicators (WHPSI): 1,993,900 deaths by political violence, 1966–70; George Childs Kohn, Dictionary 0f Wars: nearly 2,000,000; William Eckhardt in World Military and Social Expenditues, 1987–88 by Ruth Leger Sivard: 1,000,000 civilians + 1,000,000 military = 2,000,000; Dan Smith, The State of War and Peace Atlas: 2,000,000; Jacobs, The Brutality of Nations: 3,000,000.
2. Robert Leventhal, “Responses to the Holocaust: A Hypermedia Sourcebook for the Humanities,” Department of German, University of Virginia, 1995; www2.iath.virginia.edu/holocaust/genocide.html.