The Nigeria-Biafra War: Genocide and the Politics of Memory By C ...

ambivalent nature of the diplomacy in Biafra represent the inadequacy of the international system of the Cold War period. The American Jewish Congress declared the following on December 15, 1968:

The war in Biafra exemplifies in microcosm areas of stress that continue to agitate relations between states in many parts of the world. They include—the demands of competing nationalisms; the ambiguities of the principle of self-determination and the lack of clarity as to its limits; the continuing influence of religious considerations in contemporary politics; the tentative character of ideological groupings; the uncertainty by governments as to their own national self-interest and the emergence of incongruous and improbable alliances.⁵⁰

The memorandum concludes:

Obviously concurrent with political efforts both by our own government and by international agencies to stop the war, more immediate efforts to provide emergency relief both private and governmental must continue. Every means must be used to avoid the imminent starvation. History suggests that every age has its own time of moral trial. It is perhaps not too much to believe that Biafra fulfills that role for this generation.⁵¹

The conflation of politics, religion, and diplomacy was important in the Nigerian conflict and shaped the humanitarian response to the food crisis in Biafra. Mary-Noelle Ethel Ezeh addresses the ethnoreligious aspects of the conflict and ways the religious dimension shaped the humanitarian response to the crisis. Nigeria’s religious background—specifically, its predominantly Muslim population in the North and part of the southwest and its predominantly Christian Igbo population in the Southeast—gave the war a religious character. Widespread famine and starvation followed the economic blockade of the eastern region by federal Nigeria. To many this was an Islamic crusade against the Christian population of the East. That Christian humanitarian agencies were prevented from reaching the starving people in Biafra convinced skeptics that this was a religious war.