Kampala To Addis Ababa

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31754, 10 August 1968, Page 12

Kampala To Addis Ababa

There is little reason for believing that peace is more likely to come from the Addis Ababa talks between Nigeria and Biafra, which seceded from Nigeria in May, 1967, than from the peace talks between the warring sides in Kampala, Uganda, in May of this year. The significant factors since the Kampala talks have been the constant fighting, in which the Federal forces, superior in numbers and arms, undoubtedly are making gains, and the information about starvation in Biafra, where it is estimated that 3000 die daily. As at Kampala the Biafrans see a cease-fire as the main requirement; the Federal Nigerians still hold that a cease-fire is something to be arranged after the political issues have been settled, and by that they mean the renunciation of secession by Biafra and reintegration into Nigeria—in other words, surrender. The two sides’ positions accord with the usual logic of war: those winning see no reason to stop and those losing do. Nor is it possible for the winner to foresee what will happen if the immediate military objectives can be achieved, as they probably can in Nigeria. The weapons of the Federal forces are those that modern armaments manufacturers can provide (mostly supplied by Britain on the strange ground that it might thus be able to restrain the Federal side). The weapons of the Biafran side are world sympathy—though of the major Powers only France has granted formal recognition the determination of desperation, and such arms (presumably British) as guerrillas gain by raiding Federal supply lines.

The Biafran leader, Lieutenant - Colonel Ojukwu, has been accused of using the plight of his people to obtain world sympathy. His refusal to allow relief supplies overland from Nigeria would seem to lend support to this view of his motives, though with the memories of massacres of the Ibos, the main people of Biafra, still fresh, he has little enough reason to trust the Federal side. When one side has guns and the other little but sympathy it is obvious which will be victorious in a conventional war. But it is after the conventional war is over, after the Federal forces have occupied the remaining Biafran towns (which are largely empty when they take them), and after the Federal administration has been re-established throughout the entire Biafran area, that the forces the Federal Nigerians are up against will be fully apparent. There will be savage guerrilla warfare which is unlikely to cease until the secession of Biafra is achieved. Such a secession would be total. Now there is some possibility of co-operation. The two sides at least are talking in Addis Ababa. The Federal plan recognises that Biafrans need some guarantee of their own security. Only stubborn inflexibility can prevent this being extended to allow recognition of a self-governing State, perhaps loosely linked with the Federation. This is the minimum solution the Biafrans would accept. The Biafrans, for their part, should be prepared to co-operate economically and in other ways with Nigeria, perhaps ceding rights to the oil and minerals of their area so that their sale benefits Nigeria as well as Biafra. The economic differences were there before the war began. To move towards a solution of these might help the whole of the area to achieve its former stability.