Fitzgerald: Remember Biafra!

Hugh, can I say to you? You are right.

So that's what Biafra was about! I remember my mum telling me to eat all my dinner because of "the starving kids in Biafra". I recall being concerned that somehow me not wanting to eat all my spinach would cause more kids in Biafra to starve. That only worked for a little while before I figured out I had no such influence, but I do remember worrying why they were starving. Almost 40 years later, and I learn that it was because of the Usual Suspects. How many little kids died, and are dying today, because of jihad? It's just so depressing.

"i condemn all violence and wars in the name of religion, do you?"
-- posted by militant muslim

If you truly think as you claim above, then you are an apostate and must suffer execution according to the Holy Prophet:

"Kill whoever changes his religion (from Islam)."
-- posted by Mohammed in Bukhari V9.84.57

But we know you're not an apostate. You are Taquiyya Guy!

PBUH PBUH PBUH PBUH PBUH PBUH PBUH PBUH PBUH PBUH PBUH PBUH PBUH PBUH

Back in the late 60s, did the mainstream media explain the cause of Moslem genocide to have been Islam? I was pretty young at the time, but clearly remember that it the whole mess was only a "tribal conflict" and not Islamic Scripture-Based Moslem Bloodlust.

Phew, let me stop laughing and dry my eyes. Ah, there. Militant Muslim says he condemns all violence in the name of religion. Right. That would make him 1) not militant, and 2) not Muslim.

He says "you talk about christians and muslims and somehow conviniently forget all the wars, the empire building the countries invaded by christian nations"

Um, we're talking about one country in the 1960s, not the Crusades (nice head fake, though), and the only people killing people for religion there are Muslims. Do you condemn that, MM?

...the Devil!

Militant Muslim didn't last long. Would that this could be true all over the world...

Alarmed:

Re: "Back in the late 60s, did the mainstream media explain the cause of Moslem genocide to have been Islam?"

No, I don't remember reading about this aspect of the war at all. Back then the MSM was totally ignorant of jihad - now they just ignore it. Strange, but I vaguely knew someone who was killed in Biafra at this time. The plane crashed - may have been shot down but I forget the details which may have been incorrectly reported anyway.

Militant Muslim,

Do you mind if I refer to you as M&M?

Hypocritical is definitely not something that Hugh is …enlightened, perhaps. Knowledgeable, even. And to call this site evil is truly asinine –the only evil contained within it’s pages are the numerous references to Islam, a warrior cult which has passed itself off as a religion for far too long.

The transparencies which are becoming relevant are those lies that Islam has spread for ages and are now becoming clear to the West and all of the free nations of the earth.

What can I say that hasn’t been said before about the Muslim trolls on here trying to get a reaction from the commentors? Nothing, really. We all know the truth is out there and is being spread and, no matter how hard these idiots try to spread Taquiyya, there will be a larger and larger group of individuals who see through the bull.

Ha! Just as I was about to post this, M&M’s post has been removed. Nice.

Keep up the good work, Hugh. Keep bringing us historically accurate information on Muslims and where they’re engaged in jihad and how it’s affected the modern day world …and just maybe the tide may someday change in our favor.

Google the "Ahiara Declaration" and "Ojukwu." Go to the websites with the word "Biafra" in them. Google the word "Massob." See what the Egyptian pilots did. Find out about Biafra.

The only one, in the American press, who covered that war correctly, with sympathy for the Biafrans, was Renata Adler in, I recall, The New Yorker.

Col. Ojukwu used the word "Jihad." But what did that word mean in the chanceries and press and television of the Western world in those days? Nothing. Who was paying attention to what went on in distant Biafra? Nobody.

I first heard of Biafra in the late 60's while in elementary school, listening to the Spanish version of "Eve of Destruction." There's a line in the song about children dying in Biafra (not mentioned in the English version).

Were it not for Jihadwatch, I would never have connected the dots between Biafra's suffering and jihad.

"Were it not for Jihadwatch, I would never have connected the dots between Biafra's suffering and jihad."

In the last 4 years, I've found some strange dot-connections. It seems the problem of Islam has tentacles in the unlikeliest of places: Even the legend of Dracula: What Vlad the Impaler, tortured by the Muslim Turks, heard and saw outside his dungeon window was grotesquely worse than whatever he did in revenge against them later; and the Islamic horrors were religiously official and out in the sun in public, not in some dark cellar.

Worse than impaling?

Another comment about that, more on-topic:

"Were it not for Jihadwatch, I would never have connected the dots between Biafra's suffering and jihad."

I had a reasonably good education -- four years at an average American high school, followed by 7 years of study at a major non-Ivy League American university, receiving two B.A. degrees, one in European history and one in comparative religions. Aside from this formal education, I read a lot of history, philosophy, theology and literature on my own during those 7 years (which ended in 1982) and have continued that self-education (having aborted a graduate course at Harvard Divinity School after three months for personal reasons) since that time up to the present.

I don't mean to bore the reader with my bio, but the point is this: not once in all my studies (formal or informal), before the time of post-911, did I ever read about how deep, broad and devastating was the influence of Islam upon the African Continent. Islam was rarely mentioned at all during my years of education; and if it was, it was only in passing, and mostly only to insinuate that Islam was a beneficial cultural aesthetic imparted to the Africans, just another zig-zag pattern added to the wonderful multicultural "tapestry".

What was mentioned in my education (formal and informal) -- hammered into our heads -- was the pernicious effects of Western Colonialism on Africa.

How true, how tragically true. . .that Hugh's comments were the first exposure I had to the fact the Biafra war was a bloody jihad.

To explore this Renata Adler, I found this interview . She discusses Mohammed Atta and his link to Iraq as an example of msm use of anonymous sources.

in defending Biafra or the Blacks in Sudan or India or the non-Muslims in Indonesia, the very notion of the 3rd World as a basically uniform entity with identical interests, must be contested. The blindness that only saw "3rd World" helped to slaughter Biafrans, southern black Sudanese, Israelis, etc.

"... just another zig-zag pattern added to the wonderful multicultural 'tapestry'."
-- posted by Dr. Pepper

Well put. You'd think these multiculturalists are talking about a damned wall-hanging as they go about their daily work of systematically destroying whole cultures.

And, has anybody ever been to one of these diversity celebrations? I never seem to get invited to these parties, although I can certainly understand why not.

I'm still wondering what is worse than impaling, which I imagine is a fate worse than a fate worse than death. But Dr Pepper won't be pinned down.

Beatrice without any apparent need for a Benedick.

Interested,

It's difficult to adumbrate degrees of grotesque cruelty; but with the help of Islam, it can be done. (Note: when we say that A is worse than B, we are not absolving B of being bad.)

Here's a paste from a site on Vlad (Dracul or Dracula):

The sultan [Sultan Murad], upon hearing that Hunyadi [Jonas Hunyadi, the White Knight, Viceroy of Transylvania who repeatedly marshalled armies to repulse the invading Muslim Turks] was on the attack, had the Dracul's boys [Vlad being one of the Dracul's boys] locked in the dungeon. There, they received daily floggings and endured long periods of hunger. Dracula's insolence harshened his treatment; he suffered various tortures to mind and body. Still, he was kept alive, probably due to the fact that the sultan figured he could still be employed as a bartering tool.

From a narrow window above his cell, Dracula witnessed the executions of less-fortunate prisoners taking place in the yard outside. Depending upon their crime, they were hanged, shot with arrows or spears, beheaded, crushed under wheels, or given over to a wild beast of prey. Many were impaled.

At first, the teenage boy may have been repulsed at the site of impalement. But, after a while, he certainly grew fascinated by it. Impalement, the most inhuman of punishments, involved piercing a body length-wise with a sharpened pole, the victim then left to die atop the raised pole. Death was excruciating and sometimes slow. Men were usually struck through the rectum, women through the vagina. Dracula watched the victims squirm, scream, hemorrhage, then die. He saw the crows pick at their carcasses that often remained under the hot Turkish sun until they were only blistered meat.

Dracula learned to detest his captives for their cruelty, yet wished that he would be given the chance to serve his captives likewise. Not knowing if and when he might be next, he imagined, if he survived, a day that he could inflict such torment on the Turks. Battered, starving, cut, singed and now having to view what the Turks did several times a week just beyond his windowsill, he probably went mad.

http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers/history/vlad/otto_3.html

Pinned Down

Oh Funny!

It is also noted that some impaling were designed to cause the victim to rip their own body apart in their attempt to escape. It wasn't always straight up thru the body.

Thank you Mr. Fitzgerald for bringing up BIAFRA
For those of you who were not even born or were very young - Please go to this link below to learn more of this Islamic Jihad which tried its best to eradicate a whole culture and people, while the whole world watched and did very little.

http://www.biafraland.com/Start_here_header.htm

Point taken.

Much ado. But not miching mallecho. And not about nothing.

Many, many thanks to you, Hugh, for helping to keep the cause of Biafra alive. When I bring up Biafra in discussions, I usually get only blank looks from U.S. policymakers. On the other hand, I get hugs from Ibo and Ogoni expatriots, surprised that anyone outside of Africa still cares about their cause. Biafra, like Assyria and South Sudan may be occupied but she is not yet defeated.

"Were it not for Jihadwatch, I would never have connected the dots between Biafra's suffering and jihad."

The Nigerian Civil War has been largely mischaracterized here. It was not the Muslim north vs. the Christian south. It was all of Nigeria vs the Ibo of Biafra.

The federal President prosecuting the war against Biafra was Gen. Gowan, who was from the Yoruba tribe centered around Lagos in the southwest. The Yoruba were mostly animists and Christians. They fought alongside the Muslim Hausa and Fulani, trying to keep their country in tact. Gowan was perceived as Nigeria's Abraham Lincoln until he was overthrown by Gen Murtala Muhammad in I believe 1975.

What happened to the people of Biafra was tragic, but to characterize it as primarily a Muslim-Christian struggle is erroneous.

Nigeria and Sudan were oxymoronic countries created by the British upon decolonizing.

Owing to British extreme stupidity and shortsightedness (or malevolence), the Christians in the South of both countries became unequally yoked with the northern Moslems.

Mass killings ensued in the decades that followed and are still taking place, but do the British feel any responsibility?

"The Yoruba were mostly animists and Christians...."

"What happened to the people of Biafra was tragic, but to characterize it as primarily a Muslim-Christian struggle is erroneous."
-- from a posting above

The Yoruba are divided between Christians and Moslems. There was within Nigeria an ability, by the Muslim-run army, to grab the nation's wealth, to continue a policy of limitless corruption that the more advanced Christian people of the south, in the main Ibo, but also including a great many other smaller tribes, who without inshallah-fatalism to hold them back, formed the most industrious part of the population, and least willing to see the nation's oil wealth misused (though individual Ibo then, and now, are willing to join the national government, which routinely tries to buy off the opposition of the southern and Christian peoples by offering them some showy post in that government).

After a series of massacres -- some 50,000 people were killed -- of southern, Christian people by northern Muslims (Ibo traders in Kano, and others whom economic activity had brought to northern cities) -- the Biafrans, predominatenly but not exclusively Ibo, declared that they would not tolerate this state of affairs, nor the pseudo-state -- a colonial contraption -- of Nigeria. Of course, Great Britain and the United States immediately turned their backs on Biafra. They did this for several reasons. One is that neither country gave a damn what actually happened within Nigeria as long as nothing was done to upset the continued flow of oil. Second, they allowed themselves to believe that "Nigeria" was more than a colonial conception that forced quite different, often hostile peoples, some more hostile than others (the Muslims made war on the Christians, and not the reverse), simply had to be held together, lest other colonial creations come flying apart -- "stability" was all that mattered. And to put a thoroughly modern face on what was, as Col. Ojukwu saw, the indifference of white colonials to black African suffering, they allowed themselves to believe that the Biafran cause was baseless, and that it was important to "hold together Nigeria as the largest black African state." Why? one may ask -- if holding it together meant allowing everything that was wrong --the corruption, the despotism, the economic stagnation, the theft of oil resources, and above all the oppression of the more advanced Christians of southern Nigeria -- to continue?

All of these massacres and this history of misrule from Abuja (Muslim-dominated, in the Muslim north), finally led to the declaration of an independent Biafra, there was no doubt about the need, as Colonel Ojukwu said, to defend the Christians (the Ibo being the dominant Christian group, but not the only one that was threatened).

Go to the websites on Biafra. Many of them make clear that, as Colonel Ojukwu said, this was a "Jihad."

Here, in fact, are some of the relevant words from the 1969 Ahiara Declaration:

"Our struggle has far-reaching significance. It is the latest recrudescence in our time of the age-old struggle of the black man for his full stature as man. We are the latest victims of a wicked collusion between the three traditional scourges of the black men - racism, Arab-muslim expansionism and white economic imperialism.
The Biafran struggle is, on another plane, a resistance to the Arab-Muslim expansionism which has menaced and ravaged the African continent for twelve centuries....

"Our Biafran ancestors remained immune from the Islamic contagion. From the middle years of the last century Christianity was established in our land. In this way we came to be a predominantly Christian people. We came to stand out as a non-Muslim island in a raging Islamic sea. Throughout the period of the ill-fated Nigerian experiment, the Muslims hoped to infiltrate Biafra by peaceful means and quiet propaganda, but failed. Then the late Ahmadu Bello, the Sardauna of Sokoto tried, by political and economic blackmail and terrorism, to convert Biafrans settled in Northern Nigeria to Islam. His hope u as that these Biafrans of dispersion would then carry Islam to Biafra, and by so doing give the religion political control of the area. The crises which agitated the so-called independent Nigeria from 1962 gave these aggressive proselytizers the chance to try converting us by force.

"It is now evident why the fanatic Arab-Muslim states like Algeria, Egypt and the Sudan have come out openly and massively to support and aid Nigeria in her present war of genocide against us. These states see militant Arabism as a powerful instrument for attaining power in the world. Biafra is one of the few African states untainted by Islam. Therefore, to militant Arabism, Biafra is a stumbling block to their plan for controlling the whole continent. This control is fast becoming manifest in the Organization of African Unity.

"On the question of the Middle East, the Sudanese crisis, in the war between Nigeria and Biafra, militant Arabism has succeeded in imposing its point of view through blackmail and bluster. It has threatened African leaders and governments with inciting their muslim minorities to rebellion if the govern-ments adopted an independent line on these questions. In this way an O.A.U. that has not felt itself able to discuss the genocide in the Sudan and Biafra, an O A.U. that has again and again advertised its ineptitude as a peace maker, has rushed into open condemnation of Israel over the Middle East dispute Indeed, in recent times, by its performance, the O.A.U. might well be an organization an organization of Arab unity.

"From this derives our deep conviction that the Biafran revolution is not just a movement of Igbos, Ibibios, Ijaws, and Ogojas. It is a movement of true and patriotic Africans. It is African nationalism conscious of itself and fully aware of the powers with which it is contending.

For the full text of the Ahiara Declaration, which ought to be studied in courses on Africa, on colonialism, on Islam, and on the definition of statehoood, click on this link:

http://kwenu.com/biafra/ahiara_declaration.htm

And here is something recent, from the website www.biafraland.com, which shows clearly how much the grievances not only of the Ibo, but of so many other tribes, including the Ogoni on whose traditional territory the oil resources are to be found -- remember Ken Saro-Wiwa, and how he was hung for daring to call for the recogntion of the rights of the Ogoni People? -- have to do with Muslim oppression of the Christians of Nigeria (and as one knows, in the last 2-3 years more and more Muslim-dominated states have chosen to impose the Shari'a):

"It would be naive, even dangerous, to assume that the political and economic problems that sired Biafra have disappeared or have been addressed. To paper over a problem is not the same thing as addressing it. Biafra, lest we forget, was a struggle for self-determination; it was also a struggle to redefine the character of the Nigerian state, who exercised power over the whole, to what extent, and for what purpose. Are the Ijo, Ikwerre, Ogoni and several other communities in the Niger Delta not continuing that struggle today? Are the Tiv, Jukun, Fulani, and Hausa presently slugging out in the Middle Belt not struggling to redefine the very basis of citizenship in the Nigerian state? Are not the millions who trudge the streets of Lagos and the nation's other urban sprawls in search of food not fighting for self-determination and demanding the right to work and a decent wage?

"The Nigerian Federal Government violates the fundamental rights of Biafrans with impunity. The right to freely practice one’s religion of choice has been abrogated as Nigerian Moslems now impose fundamental Islamic law (Sharia) on non-Moslems Biafran Christians in Northern Nigeria. In February 2000, more than one thousand Christian Biafrans of all ethnic groups were butchered in Kaduna and property worth hundreds of millions of dollars destroyed and looted. All over Northern Nigeria churches that you spent millions of dollars of your hard earned money to build, have been systematically burned down.

"If you continue to be in Nigeria, it will only be a matter of time before the Diocese of Asaba, Calabar, Port Harcourt, Onitsha, Enugu, Owerri, Iselle Ukwu will be renamed Emirates of Asaba, Calabar, Port Harcourt, Onitsha, Enugu, Owerri, Iselle-Ukwu and your magnificent Cathedrals converted to Mosques. Many of your brothers, sisters, and parents have been forced out of Northern Nigeria and their businesses destroyed because Moslem governments in Northern Nigeria wouldn’t let them live and do business where they want. Nigeria has officially become a Moslem country.

"Your right to your own property including your ancestral land has been taken away from you by Nigeria. Today the Government of the Islamic Republic of Nigeria has seized your land, rivers and streams, exploits the minerals in your land, steals the money, uses the money to buy arms and ammunition to kill you, to enrich themselves and their relatives as well as to develop cities in their own homeland (Hausa and Yoruba) thousands of miles away from you.

"They leave you to die from drinking polluted water, eating poisoned crops from devastated farmlands, and breathing polluted air from gas-flaring. If you protest, they hang you, or send in the Mobile Police and Army to deal ruthlessly with you. This is why they killed Ken Saro Wiwa and other Ogoni Environmental Activists, wiped out whole villages in Ijaw land, destroyed Umuechem, Odi and other towns, burned down whole villages, raped wives and daughters, and pillaged several other towns in Biafra. This is why the Nigerian government has killed more than fifty members of MASSOB, imprisoned thousands without trial and is constantly harassing Chief Uwazurike, MOSOP, BAKASSI, EGBESU and other organizations asking for self-determination and the right to control their property in Biafra. The promise of life in abundance made to the Anang, Efik, Ibibio, Igbo, Ijaw, Ogoja, Ogoni is now being fulfilled with hangings, extra-judicial murders, rapes, broken bones, blood and tears, hunger, deprivation and desperation, denial of freedom, liberty and other civil rights. These are the harvest of “ONE NIGERIA ” promised you by these Nigerian Leaders from Yakubu Gowon in 1967 to Olusegun Obasanjo in 2002.

"What does the future in the Islamic Republic of Nigeria hold for you, the good people of Biafra ? We hate to tell you this but it is only going to get worse, a lot worse. To continue to stay in Nigeria is to sentence you to life of the living dead. We know of no sane human being who when he or she prays to God, pleads that God give him or her a life of hell on earth. Fortunately, you know that there is a better alternative to the abomination that is Nigeria . It is in this knowledge that the Biafra Foundation in collaboration with Biafra Actualization Forum, Ekwenche and other progressive organizations the world over is bringing you this broadcast. The goal is obvious, the objective is clear, and the message must now be absorbed.

"Every Anang, Efik, Ibibio, Igbo, Ijaw, Ogoja, Ogoni man, woman and child must now listen and imbibe this message of hope. The people of Biafra have intertwined history and collective destiny. For too long people who have no love for any group in Biafra , no tolerance for freedom, progress, and decency have used every means at their disposal to divide us and to make us fight among ourselves. As we were busy fighting and destroying each other they settled into the serious business of stealing everything you have and destroying whatever they could not steal. They stole your land and the resources in it. They stole your wives and daughters. They stole your brothers and sisters and turned them against you. They killed those who refused to be stolen through bribery. Your houses, land, rivers and streams that they could not steal, they destroyed and polluted. They have been working very hard to destroy your exceptionally progressive culture. As they commit these heinous crimes, they still tell you that they love and care for you. Sadly, you believe them. After suffering incredible humiliation and torture for more than thirty years, the blindfold has been removed and we all can see clearly now.

"An Independent Republic of Biafra is the destiny of every The Yoruba were mostly animists and Christians.

"The Nation of Biafra will be built on the principles of Self-Determination and Autonomy. Every group will exercise the freedom to govern itself, make its own laws, provide for the safety and protection of its own members, determine for itself what priorities it wants to pursue, plan its own educational program, economic development, industrial and technological program, social and cultural development and the general infrastructure for the welfare and destiny of its people without interference from any outside bodies.

"The Nation of Biafra will be built on the principle of Social and Economic Justice for all. Every Biafran will be guaranteed justice regardless of group affiliation, language, domicile, religion, or any other characteristic. Individuals and groups will exercise 100% control over their property and resources, including their lands and the minerals in them, farms, rivers, streams, houses, and any other private property. No government shall have the right to forcibly appropriate property and resources belonging to individuals or groups.

"Fellow Biafrans, this is how your country, Biafra will be governed. It will be a model Nation in the committee of Nations. It will be a country you will be proud to call home. The shame and torture of being called a Nigerian nationally and internationally will be gone for ever.

God bless you all and our nation Biafra."

Notice, by the way, that whether we look at Col. Ojukwu (who gave up his family's fortune, and secure employment with the Nigerian government in the north, to lead the fight for an independent Biafra), or the declaration of a future free Biafra in the second long quote above, in which the author refers constantly, and tellingly, to the "Islamic Republic of Nigeria" -- the probem, not merely for the Ibo, but for all the other peoples named in the piece above, result from the fact that they are Christians, living under a Muslim-dominated regime that is becoming, if anything, even fiercer in the determination of many Muslims to repress, make life difficult for, and ultimately islamize, all the many different peoples of a place now called "Nigeria."

Hugh,

It might not be a clear-cut Muslim/Christian divide, but the Yoruba are more of a mellow 'liberal' minded group, as far as one can generalize, than the Hausa, who are clearly prone to fanaticism.
So a Muslim Hausa cannot be compared to a Muslim Yoruba.

I still stand for the statement I made that the South was unequally yoked with the North by the decolonizing British in both Nigeria and Sudan.

"Yoruba are more of a mellow 'liberal' minded group, as far as one can generalize, than the Hausa, who are clearly prone to fanaticism."
-- from a posting above

The fact that the Yoruba tribe has both Christians and Muslims, and that the Yoruba, further to the south and west than the Hausa, do not -- unlike the Hausa-Fulani -- live in an entirely Muslim-dominated world, and are subject to other viewpoints and softenings, may explain the difference in attitude. In the same way, the Sunni Muslims under the old order in Lebanon were affected by proximity to the Christian Lebanese, and even the more prosperous Muslims in India now that they no longer rule have been slightly softened (outwardly, and by no means permanently) through contact with non-Muslim Hindus and Sikhs. Behavior, if not doctrine, can be modified by environment. Unfortunately, such results are temporary, while the doctrine is permanent and immutable.

The quotes are interesting Hugh...and certainly convey a context, at least within the mindest of the successionsts themselves.

Certainly today, with the advent of Sharia in certain states of the Muslim north, jihad and dhimmitude are creeping realities for the Christians of Nigeria. But in 1967, I don't feel it was nearly as clear-cut. President Gowan wasn't a Muslim as far as I know. Other high-ranking members of the military such as Gen. Obesanjo were non-Muslim. To fit the Biafran war neatly into the construct of jihad is to ignore the important contributions of non-Muslims to the federal side, men at the highest levels of power who were acting not as dhimmis, but as federalists seeking to hold their country together.

As for the reaction of the USA and the UK, it should be seen within the context of the OAU's constitution, in which the inviobality of the inhereted colonial borders was a sacred tenet. This was based on the quite credible fear that a disintegration towards tribalism would have devestating and murderous consequences for Africa...(read: Rwanda). Had Biafra successfully seceeded, there would undoubtedly have been a plethera of similar succession movements throughout the continent.

This doeasn't justify the blind eye the world turned to the great humanitarian catastrophy that occurred in Biafra. I was just a young boy, but I remember vividly the footage of the teeming refugee camps where thousands of Biafran children were starving, cut off from the outside world by the federal army. It was horrendous.