Word: biafra
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...lack of food, for instance, that we now permit starvation in Biafra. Nor is it for lack of available technology, in the main, that India fails to curb its birth rate. The problem in each case is that people who could do something don't -and won't-and can't realistically be expected...
There are two sets of pilots flying the Biafra run, one English-speaking and the other French, and they are carefully segregated. The English-speaking flyers are housed in the dilapidated, mosquito-ridden Hôtel de la Rèsidence, run by a waspish French brunette named Jackie, whose sole virtue seems to be that she is able to count in English. Eighteen of the pilots are Rhodesian and South African, all clad in the uniform of the British colonial in Africa: highly polished shoes, long socks, neatly pressed shorts and starched bush jackets. Carefully holding themselves apart...
...money," one sad, balding man told me. "I've got a wife and five kids and I want to put a down payment on a house in Salisbury." Another Rhodesian had a second motive: "That Harold Wilson is a bastard. He's against Biafra and he's buggering us too. This is a chance to bugger him." Everyone roared with laughter...
Perhaps the most important single reason for battered Biafra's continuing survival against the attacks of the Nigerian Federal Army is a steady infusion of French military aid. Although the French will not acknowledge their role, one of the worst-kept secrets of the war is the fact that armaments are flown into the secessionist state almost nightly from two former French colonies, Gabon and the Ivory Coast. Hard proof of responsibility for the arms lift, however, is hard to come by, as TIME Correspondent James Wilde reported from the Gabonese capital of Libreville...
...three DC-3s and a single Constellation, parked on the palm-lined seaside tarmac. Patient research shows that the aircraft have varied registration-French, German, Belgian, Zambian, Biafran and Gabonese. Each afternoon, three or four planes taxi to the nearby military airfield for loading, then take off for Biafra at 6 p.m. sharp. They return around midnight, after the 900-mile round trip. Just as predictable as the flights is the black Citroen, owned by the French security police, that follows...