Word: biafra
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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London will also be the site of preliminary peace talks beginning this week. After more than nine months of fighting between Nigeria and the secessionist government of Biafra, the two sides agreed last week to meet there and try to pick a site for full-scale peace negotiations, probably somewhere in Africa. Any talks face formidable difficulties: Nigeria insists that Biafra rejoin the country and be split up into three states; Biafra demands that it retain some form of sovereignty in order to protect its 8,500,000 Ibo tribesmen...
...tribesmen in the secessionist state of Biafra are proving as adept at the business of defending their homeland as they have always been at trade and commerce. That is the impression brought back last week by Western newsmen who flew into the Biafran city of Port Harcourt in a darkened plane to get their first look at Nigeria's rebellious state. Though Biafra hired a Hollywood public relations man to organize the trip, TIME Correspondent Friedel Ungeheuer, who went along, learned enough on his own by moving around the country, talking with Biafrans and Europeans and interviewing Biafra...
Though its coasts are blockaded, Biafra is in no immediate danger of economic collapse. It grows all the yams, bananas, rice and other vegetables that it needs to prevent hunger, is at work trying to make up for a scarcity of salt by distilling it from sea water. Almost every night, privately owned Super Constellations fly badly needed medicines, along with arms and ammunition, from Lisbon into Port Harcourt. Biafra is unable to sell any of its oil and its refineries are virtually shut down. But breweries and cigarette plants are producing at normal levels, and factories that...
...remarkably well. In the bush, villagers have taken into their families thousands of Ibo fleeing from other regions of Nigeria and from Biafran towns threatened with capture. Wholly new and hidden villages have sprung up near occupied towns. At roadblocks around the country, highschool girls in "Long Live Biafra" T-shirts help militiamen check passing cars. Light-Heavyweight Boxing Champion Dick Tiger, an Ibo, has toured the interior villages, advising militia officers on how to whip their inexperienced recruits into fighting trim...
More than 50,000 people have been killed on both sides in the civil war, which has also brought thousands of refugees, mostly Ibo, from the rest of Nigeria crowding into already overpopulated Biafra. Ojukwu insists that Biafra's sovereignty is not negotiable, has arrested 600 persons he suspects of plotting to bring about a compromise. For his part, Gowon does not seem to be demanding Ojukwu's removal anymore, but does persist in his plan to carve the Eastern Region into three states, only one of which would be reserved for the Ibo. Weeks overdue, an Organization...