Word: biafras
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...BROTHERS'WAR Biafra and Nigeria
...most populous and in many ways most promising nation. In this first complete account of that war, London Observer Correspondent John de St. Jorre is painstakingly evenhanded in his treatment of the two sides. But the effect of his book upon Western readers already mindful of the sufferings of Biafra is to arouse an equivalent sympathy for the plight of Federal Nigeria, faced with the secession of Biafra's hard-working and highly skilled Ibo tribesmen...
...personal impressions of the war: Biafrans going into combat with a Peugeot station wagon as a command car; customs officials who, in the terrible last days, still asked departing newsmen if they had any antiquities to declare; Nigerian officers who clustered around the author after his return from Biafra eagerly asking after friends on the other side. In describing the psychology of the white mercenaries who fought for both the Nigerians and the Biafrans, De St. Jorre suggests the real reason the Nigerians never managed to destroy Uli airstrip -which remained Biafra's lifeline to the very...
Like most journalists who visited Biafra, De St. Jorre pays tribute to the courage and resourcefulness of the Ibos. He describes one village of 300 people that moved en masse seven times in two years. But he was equally impressed with the Ibos' uncanny grasp of propaganda. One day they might take foreign visitors on "the starvation tour." The next day, while trying to demonstrate that Biafra was stable enough to merit international recognition, they might show off their schools, their courtrooms presided over by periwigged judges, and the immaculate lawn of State House...
...contrast to the rest of Nigeria, the war-damaged East Central state is healing at an extraordinary pace. Thanks largely to postwar medical attention and food supplies, a majority of Biafra's starving children have miraculously survived; the state has 1,100,000 children in school-more than it had before the war. New buildings are sprouting amid the wreckage, and the great market at Aba is booming again...