Word: airlifts
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COMBAT reporting is never a safe or simple job. But even for case-hardened veterans, the Nigerian civil war presents one of the meanest assignments yet. Merely getting in and out of Biafra is a dangerous and doubtful proposition. The irregular airlift from Lisbon flies through Nigerian antiaircraft fire to reach a makeshift airstrip that is only open at night. When correspondents finally manage to get in, they are shuttled off to quarters in the Progress Hotel in Aba, the country's provisional capital. When they are not in the field, they face the hazards of the Progress menu...
...Airlift as Symbol. Ojukwu's fear of mass poisoning is not so ridiculous as it seems to the Western mind: the traditional way of doing in an enemy in Africa is to poison him, and Ibo lore abounds with such tales...
There can be little doubt, however, that Biafra's leader is holding out for an airlift for other reasons, too. He knows only too well the value of an airlift as a visible symbol of the world's helping a besieged people stay alive. That, in turn...
...announce that it will send food to Biafra, and simply do it. In fact, the Administration has privately agonized over Biafra's suffering for a long time, but concluded that nothing short of military muscle would get supplies through, and it is certainly unwilling to risk that. An unauthorized airlift might endanger the lives of 5,000 Americans now living in federal Nigeria, and it would bring howls of outrage from most governments in Africa, which have served notice that they want to handle the Nigerian civil war in their...
...carried a gun, even for personal protection in Biafra. ("I figured we had enough guns and ammo on the plane already.") He left Biafra at the end of July, after his mother died in the United States and his close call made him suspicious of the safety of the airlift's flying procedures but he wants to return there, this time for expenses only...