The Great Big Book of Horrible Things: The Definitive Chronicle of History's 100 Worst Atrocities (85 page)
Authors: Matthew White
BIAFRAN WAR
Death toll:
1 million
1
Rank:
46
Type:
ethnic civil war
Broad dividing line:
Nigeria vs. Biafra
Time frame:
1966–70
Location:
Nigeria
Who usually gets the most blame:
usually Ojukwu, sometimes Gowon, rarely both
Another damn:
African civil war
Outbreak
Like most African countries, Nigeria makes no sense. It came into existence as an enclave on the Slave Coast that the British took in order to police the slave trade. Then the area was expanded inward to keep the interior from falling into French hands. Nigeria is split between a Muslim north and a Christian south, with a variety of tribes scattered throughout. In the first years following independence in 1960, it was a federation of largely autonomous provinces allotted to the major ethnic groups: notably, the Northern Region (mostly Hausa-Fulani—Muslim), the Eastern Region (Ibo, also called Igbo—Christian), and the Western Region (Yoruba—also Christian). The Ibo people had had the most success assimilating to Western ways under the British. They were richer, more educated, and had a disproportionate influence in the army.
In January 1966, Ibo officers in the Nigerian army tried to overthrow the corrupt and inefficient civilian leaders of the First Republic. A loyal Ibo general broke the coup, but he spared the plotters and then declared himself president in order to restore order. When he began to pack the government with fellow Ibos, the Muslims of the Northern Region began scheming a coup of their own. In July 1966, this countercoup put the government into the hands of Northern troops; however, to calm worries in the Christian half of the country, this new junta gave the presidency to Yakubu Gowon, a colonel from a minor Christian tribe who had not been involved in either coup.
At thirty-two years old, Gowon was Africa’s youngest head of state. Handsome and charismatic, he was well liked inside and outside of Nigeria. Even though he would oversee a war that killed a million of his countrymen, history has been kind to his reputation. Most of the blame has fallen on the equally young but less charismatic military governor of the Eastern Region, an Ibo named Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu. Ojukwu’s family was the richest in the country, and this fortune went a long way to keeping the Biafran army supplied during the upcoming war.
After the July countercoup, pogroms erupted across the Muslim north targeting Christian residents, especially Ibo. Angry at the January coup plotters, northern mobs killed around 30,000 Ibo and drove a million back to the Eastern Region. After Ibo protests and negotiations with the central government failed to protect the Ibo, Ojukwu declared a new nation, Biafra, in the southeast quarter of Nigeria.
War
The first attempt by the federal army to retake the province was easily swatted away, and the Biafran army followed the retreating federals across the Niger River into the Western Region, threatening the capital at Lagos. This raid was contained and driven back within a few weeks, and Biafra was entirely on the defensive after this.
Nigeria is Africa’s most populous state, so the federal army eventually built up to 250,000 while the Biafran army topped out at 45,000. Neither army impressed observers with its martial prowess. Whenever they clashed, the most important tactical objective seemed to be to make as much noise as possible. During a typical federal offensive, artillery would first pound the living hell out of the supposed Biafran position, regardless of whether the enemy sighting was confirmed or civilians were in the way. The Biafran troops, however, usually withdrew when the first shell fell because they had no artillery of their own with which to fight back. Then the federal infantry would run forward, firing their machine guns wildly in the enemy’s general direction until every round was expended. When their shooting stopped, the Biafrans might counterattack while the federal troops pulled back to wait for more ammunition.
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Famine
The federal army gradually whittled Biafra away at the edges. It fought its way along the border with Cameroon in the east, separating Biafra from overland contact with the rest of the world. Eventually an amphibious attack took Port Harcourt, cutting the last direct contact that Biafra had with the outside. Now only airplanes could bring supplies, but it was never enough. Starvation killed hundreds of thousands of trapped Biafrans. Photographs of emaciated children with bloated bellies stared out from the covers of news magazines worldwide.
As Nigeria surrounded Biafra and squeezed it down to a tenth of its original size, only humanitarian supplies were allowed through the blockade. Then, in June 1969, Gowon tightened the noose and banned Red Cross flights into Biafra. Although the international outcry forced Gowon to rescind his order within two weeks, the crisis started a chain reaction.
The Red Cross had to maintain a precarious balance among all sides in order to be allowed into the war zone, which meant the humanitarian organization had to play politics. Now a group of French doctors working in Biafra loudly criticized the Red Cross for playing favorites, and they began to organize medical assistance that bypassed politics. Over the next several years this became Doctors Without Borders, chartered as a nonpolitical funnel bringing medical aid to troubled countries—which, ironically, was one of the original reasons for establishing the Red Cross.
Surrender
As the enclave eroded over the next few years, Ojukwu tightened internal security and propagandized the Biafrans into believing that surrender would lead to genocide. Both sides accused the other of massacring civilians and then invited outside observers into the war zone to prove that they themselves were obeying all of the laws of civilized warfare—unlike those savages on the other side.
Biafra fought until there wasn’t much left to defend, and the final stronghold was abandoned in January 1970. Ojukwu fled to the Ivory Coast, but there was none of the customary retribution that followed most Third World civil wars. No massacres, no executions, just a general amnesty and reconciliation. Sure there were rumors, but none held up to outside scrutiny. Gowon was widely praised for his unusual leniency, which shows you just how rare that really is.
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BENGALI GENOCIDE
Death toll:
1.5 million
1
Rank:
40
Type:
ethnic cleansing
Broad dividing line:
West Pakistan vs. East Pakistan
Time frame:
267 days in 1971
Location:
East Pakistan
Major state participant:
Pakistan
Quantum state participant:
Bangladesh
Minor state participant:
India
Who usually gets the most blame:
Agha Mohammad Yahya Khan
Geography
The country of Pakistan began as two distinct territories on opposite sides of India that shared nothing more than the Muslim religion and a British imperial past. The western wing of the country, West Pakistan, was the ethnically diverse center of political power, while the eastern wing, East Pakistan, was mostly Bengali in language and treated by the west as a poor, downriver colony. The fact that slightly more people lived in the East made it a dangerous mix.
When a devastating typhoon overwhelmed East Pakistan in November 1970, the federal government bungled the response. The military dictator of Pakistan, Agha Mohammad Yahya Khan, was preoccupied instead with weighty matters of global politics. As an ally of both China and the United States, Pakistan served as the go-between for arranging talks between Nixon and Mao. Yahya was in China when the disaster struck.
Even though hundreds of thousands of his people were swept out to sea by the storm surge, Yahya did little to help the survivors. Other countries—Britain, the United States, West Germany, and others—stepped in to help before the government of Pakistan did. Because of the federal indifference, the local Bengali nationalists of the Awami League gained in influence throughout East Pakistan and were set to win the upcoming elections.
Politics
It may seem odd that Pakistan had both elections and a dictator at the same time, but that’s normal for them. The government of Pakistan has historically fluctuated between sort of democratic and sort of authoritarian. In fact, a little of both is not unusual. Pakistan usually has a parliament, a free press, and an independent judiciary (more or less), but the national leadership alternates between military and civilian. The top dog is either a military strongman who lets the civil service run the country as long as nothing explodes, or an elected president who rules via bribes and kickbacks and doesn’t force the army to do anything it doesn’t want to. Regardless of the career path that brought the ruler into power, Pakistani government is usually focused on the personality of the leader.
During the national elections in December 1970, the Awami League led by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman won almost all of the seats from East Pakistan, giving the league a solid majority nationwide, but this only convinced Yahya that free elections had been a mistake. There was no way that the junta would turn the government over to Mujibur, but it had to face the uncomfortable side effect of restoring democracy in Pakistan. As long as the Bengalis stayed united behind the Awami League, they would have the power to run the whole country.
Meanwhile, the voting showed that the People’s Progressive Party dominated in West Pakistan, but their leader, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, refused to sit in any parliament run by Mujibur. He held out for a two-part federation, which—no surprise—would put Bhutto in charge of the western half. Three-way talks between Bhutto, Mujibur, and Yahya dragged on until tempers broke. Mujibur called a round of strikes and protests in Bengali East Pakistan, and Yahya sent soldiers to arrest him and restore order in February 1971.
“Kill three million of them,” President Yahya Khan told his inner circle, “and the rest will eat out of our hands.”
2
Pakistani apologists now insist that he didn’t mean this
literally
.
Massacre
General Tikka Khan took command of the army in East Pakistan on March 7, and within weeks he began to massacre the Bengalis, starting at the universities. Bengali intellectuals and political leaders were hunted down. The army killed 3,000 people in Dacca the first day, March 25, and at least 30,000 within the first few days while the city emptied in panic.
“Peaceful night was turned into a time of wailing, crying and burning,” a Pakistani general described in his memoirs. “Gen. Tikka let loose everything at his disposal as if raiding an enemy. Instead of disarming Bengal units and imprisoning Bengali leaders, as he was ordered, he resorted to the killing of civilians and a scorched-earth policy.”
3
At the university, Pakistani soldiers set fire to the women’s dormitory and machine-gunned the students as they ran out the doors.
4
At the town of Hariharpara near Dacca, Pakistanis stashed prisoners in an abandoned warehouse. At night, roped together in batches of six or so, they were herded outside and waist deep into the river. Silhouetted by powerful electric arc lamps, they were shot and left to drift away on the current.
5
Archer Blood, the American consul in Dacca, telegraphed his government on March 28 with details of the ongoing genocide and begged, without success, for it to intervene. “Here in Dacca we are mute and horrified witnesses to a reign of terror of the Pak military.” The U.S. State Department, however, needed Yahya Khan to help hook up with Mao, so it issued orders to not annoy the Pakistanis.
6
There had been no armed separatist movement in East Pakistan before the massacres started, but now the survivors began to band together into militias to fight back using whatever weapons they could scrounge. Meanwhile, as many as 30 million Bengalis were uprooted internally during these months, and anywhere from 6 to 10 million Bengali refugees poured into India to escape the massacres. Overwhelmed by this mass influx of starving, desperate people, India decided to make East Pakistan safe for their return. On December 3, India invaded East Pakistan, and by the sixteenth, the local Pakistani army had surrendered. This allowed the creation of independent Bangladesh.
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