Word: secessionist
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...cover over 6,000 miles to Lagos, through Athens, Geneva and London. In from Paris flew Roland Flamini, and he and Blashill pieced together a thorough report on the final breakup and surrender. Planes were grounded, and correspondents who attempted the 36-hour drive to Enugu, the original secessionist capital, were turned back by Nigerian army roadblocks. In Lagos, government officials refused to see newsmen at all. Nevertheless, Blashill managed an exclusive 45-minute interview with a top Nigerian official. "He kept saying he really had to go," recalls Blashill. "But he kept on talking. I found out later that...
...colonies began receiving their independence. It was also one of the most devastating civil wars in modern history. At the outset, Biafra's people numbered 12 million-about two-thirds of them Ibo, the rest belonging to minority tribes (as does Effiong, who is an Ibibio). The secessionist territory covered nearly 30,000 sq. mi. and included some of Nigeria's richest land. At the close of the war, 3,500,000 people were squeezed into a devastated area of 1,500 sq. mi. As many as 2,000,000 Biafrans, many of them children, had perished...
France's Charles de Gaulle, fearful that a too powerful Nigeria would serve as an irresistible example for such former French colonies as Niger and Chad, backed the Biafrans; he might also have been hoping that a secessionist victory would give France a crack at the immense oil reserves in the Niger Delta. The Biafrans were also supported by South Africa, Rhodesia and Portugal, all obviously interested in preventing a united Nigeria from realizing its potential as the most powerful state in all of Black Africa. Black-ruled African nations, worried about the effect of the rebellion on their...
...nation Organization of African Unity adopted in principle the concept that the borders should remain as they are. As Tanzania's President Julius Nyerere said, "Our boundaries are so absurd that they must be regarded as sacrosanct." By the same token, the O.A.U. has also condemned secessionist movements. Only four member nations recognized Biafra; two of them, Tanzania and Zambia, did so only as an unsuccessful ploy to facilitate a negotiated settlement of the conflict...
...world was a measure of De Gaulle's outsize scale, his legerdemain in making France count for more than her resources and her population of 50 million people really justified. It mattered to Britain, which he had twice imperiously barred from the Common Market. It mattered to tiny secessionist Biafra, which he had kept alive with arms shipments against federal Nigerian forces for the, past nine months. It weighed heavily in the Middle East, where he was virtually the only partisan Western friend that the Arabs had. It certainly mattered to Washington, which had felt his sting almost ceaselessly...