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

secessionist Biafra. Britain was interested in ensuring the survival of a united Nigeria not only for obvious political reasons but also because British economic investment would have faced obstacles if Biafra’s war of independence had been successful. Moreover, Nigeria’s emergence as an important source of petroleum was not lost on Britain and the other western powers. Even France’s ambivalent support for Biafran humanitarian needs was a calculated risk that would have protected French economic interests if a Biafran state had emerged.

The war was not fought in the trenches alone; it was also waged on the pages of western newspapers. The horrific images of starving children in Biafra shaped world public opinion dramatically. It was, Time magazine argued, “the image of Biafra’s human agony has unsettled the conscience of the world. That image is of Ibo infants and children with anguished, vacant eyes, distended bellies, shriveled chests and matchstick limbs crippled from edema.”⁵² The overwhelming publicity given to the war by Markpress, a Geneva-based public relations firm hired by Biafra, brought the images of young children and scenes of ravaged cities and villages to the West. These images shocked the world and evoked deep sympathy for Biafra and its cause; they also attracted large-scale humanitarian campaigns on behalf of Biafra. Reports by the mainstream press, including Time magazine, added to the exposure and brought the harrows of the war into the living rooms of many in the West. The Time magazine report printed on August 23, 1968, described the magnitude of the suffering in Biafra but made abundantly clear that Nigeria was supported by the major superpowers through the supply of arms and through diplomacy:

In scope of suffering, in depth of bitterness, in the seeming hopelessness of any solution short of wholesale slaughter, there is no parallel to the tragedy that has been gathering force the past 14 months in Nigeria … One of the opposing forces, wielding a full array of modern weapons from Britain, Russia and much of Europe, is the federal government of Nigeria. It is determined to crush a rebellion that it feels will destroy its republic. On the other side,