Word: biafra
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...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...
...world's shortest-lived country was the tiny state of Biafra - or so it seemed. Six months ago, the Eastern Region of Nigeria, the home of 8,500-000 Ibo tribesmen, proclaimed itself a sovereign nation and plunged Nigeria into civil war. No country ever recognized Biafra, and the Nigerian federal navy soon choked its economy with a blockade. By October, federal troops sent to quell the rebellion had captured almost a third of Biafra's territory, including the capital of Enugu, and sent the secessionist government fleeing into the region's rain forests. The surprising fact...
...bought millions of dollars worth of arms and ammunition, which reach the rebels at night via the Portuguese island of São Tomé in the Gulf of Guinea. Biafran students recently organized noisy pro-secessionist demonstrations at the United Nations in New York and in downtown London. Biafra's lone television station continued to end its program day each evening with a rousing chorus of We Shall Overcome...
Invasion Force. Outnumbered 2 to 1 and surrounded on three sides by a federal army that totals about 50,000 men, Biafra nonetheless seems ready to fight for the last inches of its turf. Pushed out of the Midwestern state, which they had seized in a daring raid, Ojukwu's men have hurled back boatloads of troops trying to cross the Niger River after them. One big government ferry got stuck on a sandbar in midpassage; while searchlights lit it up, Biafran guns splintered it, and hundreds of men drowned. Elsewhere, the war has become a kind of ballet...
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...