Sure, bro.
The notion that the Biafran war was waged against the genocide of the Igbo is not true. The killings ended around September 1966 while the war began in July 1967. Between these months there were negotiations, conferences, and accords which were not kept. War broke out because the East wanted to secede from the rest of the country. It is only logical that secession by a group would be seen as "treasonous" (Zik) by the federal government, which would do everything within its power to keep the nation united, especially given the prize to be won.
I'm not being original in stating that the war was not inevitable. Soyinka's The Man Died offers a glimpse of the abovementioned negotiations and the moral justification to sue for peace.
I fully understand the trauma my people suffered when truckloads of corpses arrived from the North in the months of September, 1966. I don't know how I would have reacted if I had been of age then. I cannot condemn those who called for secession. But a dispassionate look at the events that precipitated it all should also take into account the feelings of those whose leaders were killed during the 1966 coup.
On a more practical level, and this is where the adverb "easily" applies and why I invoked "wiser leaders": You don't go to war without a standing army and without allies. You don't go to war in the belief that God is on your side. One famous Rabbi once said: "Or suppose a king is about to go to war against another king. Won't he first sit down and consider whether he is able with ten thousand men to oppose the one coming against him with twenty thousand? (Luke 14:31). It wouldn't surprise me if he was quoting Sun Tsu who lived about 300 years before him, and who said: "Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win" - The Art of War.
Again, it is easy for me to judge the past from the comfort of my present. But that's why we go to school. That's why we strive to be intellectuals. That's why we ought to subject every aspect of the past to ruthless examination in order to avoid its repeat.
To be sure, some wars are unavoidable, the most notorious example being the Second World War. Most can be avoided by the application of good diplomacy. War is absolute evil. I've scars to bear witness.
Eze
https://neiu.academia.edu/ChielozonaEze
Eze,Could you summarize your view of how the war could have been avoided?I'm struck by the absolute conviction in your stating it could EASILY have been avoided.Thanks.Toyin--On Wed, Sep 30, 2020, 23:32 Chielozona Eze <chieloz@gmail.com> wrote:"Biafra was waging a war against genocide."
Gloria is spot on.
It's not just simplistic to claim that the war was fought to stop genocide; it is a dangerous self-deception. I, too, survived that war. I, too, grew up consuming the Igbo leaders' version of the war. But then I read books. I asked questions. I'm still searching for answers. But I'm now sure of one thing: that war could have easily been avoided. It only needed a wiser cadre of leaders. I don't easily blame the past, but if I were to do so, I'd begin with those who herded me and my family into a war that was totally avoidable. It's good to read books that seem to affirm our beliefs; it's also good to interrogate them.ChielozonaChielozona EzeBernard J. Brommel Distinguished Research ProfessorProfessor, Africana Studies, Northeastern Illinois University; Extraordinary Professor, Stellenbosch University, South Africa.Fellow - Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Studies, South Africa
https://neiu.academia.edu/ChielozonaEze--On Wed, Sep 30, 2020 at 3:37 PM OLAYINKA AGBETUYI <yagbetuyi@hotmail.com> wrote:--There were clearly genocidal tendencies against Igbo in the North following the January 1966 coups and it is undeniable. Danjuma has explained why: they saw some Igbo jubilating in the streets at the senseless murders of the Sardauna and other northern leaders.
Also word went round that most Igbo leaders were untouched by the coupists. These are undeniable facts. In psychoanalysis we call that the reign of mass hysteria. The first casualty is loss of reason and common sense. Its as though, to perpetrators, war had been declared unofficially against the North.
This explanation does not justify the genocidal tendencies it only demonstrates how people going through collective mourning and mass hysteria are prone to behaviour far below human standards.
I have also used this to explain how this same feeling propelled a person with lofty academic credentials as Mailafia to give the potentially explosive interview on the imminent invasion of the South by Boko Haram and Fulani Herdsmen, and false accounts of plane loads of arms already shipped to the South.
OAA
Mr. President you swore an oath to rule according to the Constitution. Where are the schools to promote the teaching of the country's lingua francas?
Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.
-------- Original message --------From: 'Biko Agozino' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>Date: 30/09/2020 21:08 (GMT+00:00)Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Complexity of Biafra
Gloria,
Genocide is always complicated. Read Achebe again on There Was a Country. Read Ekwe-Ekwe on Biafra Revisited. Read Daniel Jacobs, The Brutality of Nations. Read almost everything Soyinka has written in all genres. Read also Walter Rodney on HEUA. Then let us have the discussion about the complexity of genocide.
I am always be against genocide no matter who is targeted. Anyone who is in support of genocide or denies it because it is targeted at the Igbo has explanations to offer. There is never a justification for genocide.
Biko
--On Wednesday, 30 September 2020, 09:21:36 GMT-4, Gloria Emeagwali <gloria.emeagwali@gmail.com> wrote:
"Biafra was waging a war against genocide ."
This is a simplistic, unidimensional view of events, Biko. This was also a war against secession and the machinations of foreign powers who had their eyes on oil and resources. It intersected with panafricanism, anti-colonialism, Anglo-French rivalry, the military industrial complex of arms dealers and gun runners, federalism, Ojukwu-ism, personality conflicts, regional power blocs, intraregional and geopolitical power struggles, and a hundred more issues.
Gloria Emeagwali
--
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