Downloaded from Brill.Com09/27/2021 03:14:16PM Via Free Access 88 Anthony

Journal of African Military History
2 (2018) 87–118

“What Are They Observing?”

The Accomplishments and Missed Opportunities of Observer Missions in the Nigerian Civil War

Douglas Anthony*

Franklin & Marshall College, Lancaster PA

Abstract

Three separate observer missions operated in Nigeria during the country’s 1967–1970 war against Biafran secession, charged with investigating allegations that Nigeria was engaged in genocide against Biafrans. Operating alongside UN and OAU missions, the four-country international observer group was best positioned to respond authoritatively to those allegations, but problems with the composition of the group and its failure to extend the geographical scope of its operations beyond Nigerian-held territory rendered its findings of limited value.This paper argues that the observer missions offer useful windows on several aspects of the war and almost certainly delivered some benefits to Biafrans, but also effectively abdicated their responsibility to Biafrans and the international community by allowing procedural politics to come before commitment to the spirit of the Genocide Convention.

Keywords

Biafra – genocide – Igbo – international observers – military observers – OAU – Nigerian Civil War – United Nations

*

The author wishes to thank Jeffrey Kempler, whose initial foray into the United Nations archive seeded the research central to this article; the Franklin & Marshall College Hackman Fellows program; and Franklin & Marshall College for support for faculty research.

via free access

88

anthony

1

Introduction

Three separate observer missions monitored Nigerian military operations during that country’s 1967–1970 war against the secessionist Republic of Biafra, a conflict remembered by some as the Nigerian Civil War and others as the Nigeria-Biafra War. The war followed a series of political crises heavy with regional and ethnic overtones, including two military coups, that marked the endof Nigeria’sFirstRepublic. Afteraseriesof failedattemptsatresolution, the country’s Eastern Region declared its independence as the Republic of Biafra on May 30, 1967; Nigeria invaded five weeks later. The observer missions had no peacekeeping responsibilities or capacity, and were present only during the second half of the war. The most important of the three embodied an AngloNigerian response to persistent accusations by Biafra and its allies that Nigeria, with British support, was engaged in an ethnically inspired genocide targeting Biafransgenerallyandspecificallymembersof itslargestethnicgroup,theIgbo, charges Nigeria and the United Kingdom vigorously denied.1 The best known mission, the four-country “international” or “country” military observer team (also referred to as the “International Inspection Team” or the Observer TeamNigeria/OTN), operated alongside a small delegation of military officers from two Organization of African Unity (OAU) member states, and a small United Nations (UN) civilian team led by a special representative of the Secretary General.2
The observer missions to Nigeria do not fit familiar templates for discussing military observers. Military organizations have long used formal observers to gather information on other forces, mainly in wartime. Those officers from friendly or neutral powers, operating with varying degrees of access, worked primarily to benefit their own armed forces.3 More recently, in the post-World War II era, international military observers have become a mainstay of peacekeeping efforts, usually mediated by the United Nations or regional organizations. In the UN model, peacekeeping—including observer missions—usually occurs“atastagewherethetwogroupsaresomewherebetweenwarandpeace; they are in a state of truce, armistice, ceasefire.”4 These traditional peacekeep-

1 The older variant spelling “Ibo” appears in quoted matter. 2 The country observers left behind only a limited documentary record. This paper supplements their published reports with correspondence from UN staff, who experienced significantly less turnover during the 18 months the observers were active. Other key primary sources originate in the British Public Records Office (PRO).
3 See Alfred Vagt, Military Attache (Princeton University Press, 1967), 258ff. 4 Louis A. Delvoie, “International Peacekeeping: The Canadian Experience,” Pakistan Horizon

45 No. 3 (1992), 39.

Journal of African Military History 2 (2018) 87–118

Downloaded from Brill.com09/27/2021 03:14:16PM via free access

“what are they observing?”

89

ers are not in place to solve political problems, but rather, by being present, to make less likely intentional or unintentional resumptions of hostilities. The United Nations’ first forays into peacekeeping were such unarmed observer missions, as during the late 1940s in Palestine, Kashmir, and along Greece’s northern border.5 Unarmed observers constituted more than half of UN peacekeeping operations at least as late as 1988.6Those efforts stand in sharp distinction to armed peacekeepingefforts, such as the creation and deploymentof the UN Emergency Force during the 1956 Suez Crisis, or even more strikingly, the United Nations Operations in the Congo where, by late 1961, UN troops were engaged proactively in combat operations.7
As detailed below, while a small UN delegation was present, the Nigeria-
Biafra war was not a candidate for UN intervention, and there was no peacekeeping component. Moreover, international officers in the field had far narrower mandates than conventional military observers in wartime; rather, the

sin e q u a n on of their common missionwas Britain’sdesiretodiscreditgenocide

allegations. These factors combine to position the Nigeria observer missions as historical outliers, remembered mainly, and often in passing, in the context of debates about whether genocide occurred during the war, where observers’ conclusions bolster claims that no such crime occurred. As I argue below, those claims must be treated cautiously.
Charged specifically with determining if charges of genocide were justified, the country observers were the group best positioned to speak authoritatively on the matter. They famously reported, confidently, that they could find no evidence of genocide. But the methods deployed by all three teams, most notably their failure/inability to visit Biafran territory and interview Biafrans not under the control of Nigerian authorities, make it impossible for their findings to be dispositive on the genocide question. Further, in hindsight, all three observer missions reflected structural political biases that worked in favor of Nigeria. By allowing procedural and political considerations to undercut their responsibility to Biafrans and the global community, the observer project failed to uphold the spirit of the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG), this despite five of the six countries represented on the observer missions being signatory to the CPPCG and therefore

5 Larry M. Forster, “Training Standards for United Nations Military Observers: The Foundation

of Excellence,” African Security Review 6 No. 4 (1997), 25.

6 Marrack Goulding, “The Evolution of United Nations Peacekeeping,”International A f fairs 69

(3) (1993), 455.

7 Jane Boulden, Peace Enforcement: The United Nations Experience in Congo, Somalia, and

Bosnia (Westport: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2001), 35.

Journal of African Military History 2 (2018) 87–_D11_o8_{wnloaded from Brill.com09/27/2021 03:14:16PM}

via free access

90

anthony

bound by its terms.8 While the operations of the observer missions offer useful windows on contemporaneous concerns regarding genocide, the treatment of prisonersanddisplacedpeople, theconductof Nigerianforces, andontheroles of outside parties in the conflict, the existence and operation of the observer missionsalsodemonstratehowformalpoliticalconcernforthepeopleof Biafra was, in the final assessment, secondary to other considerations.
Such a critique comes with a significant caveat. It is folly to criticize the observer missions without also acknowledging the benefits to Biafran civilians and combatants that almost certainly followed from even a flawed observer presence. Journalist John de St. Jorre wrote in 1972 that the country observer mission constituted “a unique and civilising contribution to the history of warfare.”9 And even as vociferous a skeptic of the country observers as the Earl of Lytton, who deeply distrusted Nigeria’s Federal Military Government (FMG), wrote to the British Foreign Secretary that “there was no massacre of Ibos while theteamwaspresent”inpart“becausetheteamservedtodeterexcesses”bythe Nigerian military.10 Whether Lytton’s remarks are strictly true we shall never know, but two brief examples provide compelling evidence of how pressure fromobserverspushedNigerianforcestobetterconformtoboththelawsof war and Nigeria’s stated operational policies, both in ways that protected Biafrans. First, it is clear that visits from observers directly led to significant improvements in conditions of Biafrans imprisoned in several federal facilities.11 And, more dramatically, while Nigeria’s “Operational Code of Conduct for the Nigerian Armed Forces” specified that “hospitals, hospital staff and patients should not be tampered with,” Nigerian air attacks on clearly marked hospitals and other civilian targets were well documented. The presence of observers helped to temper those attacks.12

8

Ethiopia, Canada, and Sweden were among the original signatories. Poland acceded to the treaty in 1950, Algeria in 1963.

9

John de St. Jorre, The Brothers’ War: Biafra and Nigeria (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1972),

283.

10

PRO FCO65/249 “Britain/Biafra Association, Part A,” “Commentary on the Report of the Observer Team to Nigeria (22 September–23 November 1968),” Noel (Earl of) Lytton to Lord Shepherd, FCO, January 16, 1969, 4.

11

UN Series 303 Box 5 File 9 Acc 86/006, UN Press Services, 17 January 1969 “Fourth Interim Report by Representative of Secretary-General to Nigeria on Humanitarian Activities.” Major General Yakubu Gowon, “Operational Code of Conduct for the Nigerian Armed Forces,” undated but issued in early July 1967. In A.H.M. Kirk Greene, Crisis and Con f lict

in Nigeria: A Documentary Sourcebook 1966–1970, Volume 2 (London: Oxford University

Press, 1971), 455–457. For attacks on hospitals, see UN Series 98 Box 3 File 9, ObserverTeam

to Nigeria, Report on Activities of the Representatives of Canada, Poland, Sweden and the United Kingdom During the Period 24 November 1968–13 January 1969 (20 January, 1969).

12

91

What are more important, however, are the missed opportunities surrounding the observer missions. At the time the three teams deployed there was a general consensus that effective observation would necessarily include visits to Biafran-held territory. Still, in the end, none of the observer missions actually visited Biafra, despite its government’s stated willingness to host them. Partly to blame was Biafran distrust of the OAU, the UN, and the UK-inspired country team, and also problems with communication. The other major factors at play were Nigerian, British, and UN concerns about the political optics of official meetings between Biafran leaders and international representatives. In the weeksbeforebeginninghisobserverduties,theUNdesigneeworriedthatBiafra would treat an official visit by a UN representative “as tantamount to UN recognition” of Biafran statehood.13
In fact, visitation did not necessarily equal recognition, as fact-finding visits by Canadian and American officials demonstrate.14 Still, while the outside world heard about Biafra through its propaganda arm, the work of foreign journalists, and aid workers’ accounts, visits to Biafra by foreign representatives were comparatively few. One such occasion was the four-day visit of British LabourpartystafferTomMcNally,whoarrivedinBiafraNovember9,1968.After being delayed on Sao Tome by suspicious Biafran officials, McNally landed at Ihiala Uli (hereafter Uli) airstrip, under Nigerian fire, on a relief flight carrying several tons of stockfish for protein-starved Biafra.15
McNally reported being able to talk to ordinary Biafrans, and experiencing only “slight” restrictions on his movements. He met with Biafran leader ChukwuemekaOmedegwuOjukwu, whoexpressedconcernabouttheobservermissions not operating in Biafra, arguing that a prerequisite to testing charges of genocide was observing both sides of the conflict.16 British documents record Ojukwu asking

13

UN Series 370 Box 36 File 3 ACC 96/120, Letter, Gussing to Rolz-Bennett, 7 September 1968. Canadian parliamentarians were part of a delegation to visit Umuahia in November 1968 and two US congressional delegations visited in February 1969, led by Republican Senator Charles Goodell and Democratic Representative Charles Diggs. John T. Stremlau,

The International Politics of the Nigerian Civil War, (Princeton: Princeton University Press,

1977), 290 and 320n. PRO DO 186 / Eastern Nigeria, “Report of theVisit to Biafra and SanTomé byT. McNally, 7– 16November, 1968”, 2.TheUliairstripwasBiafra’slifeline, andassuchwascentraltothearc of the war. Uli could manage more than thirty landings per night and received, on average, 120 tons of cargo per night, and had handled twice that amount. Most was relief materials that arrived from São Tome on planes operated by Caritas and several Protestant organizations known collectively as Joint Church Aid, but there were arms shipments as well. PRO DO 186 / Eastern Nigeria, “Report of the Visit to Biafra and San Tomé by T. McNally, 7–16 November, 1968”, 9.

14 15

16

via free access

92

anthony

What are they observing? What kind of civilisation have observers to check that killing is properly done?The thing to do is to stop the killing— not to see if it is being done properly.17

McNally’sinterviewswithIrishandWestIndianmissionariesmirroredmuchof what Nigeria-based observers detailed: air attacks on civilian targets, including a feeding center and a hospital marked with, in the words of an Israeli doctor, “the biggest red cross in Biafra.”18 “There is no doubt in my mind,” McNally wrote, “that the Federal forces have bombed civilian areas of no military significance.” The attacks, he argued, were counterproductive since they reinforced prevailing sentiments about Federal intentions.19
Observer reports, by contrast, were based in virtual entirety on information gathered behind Nigerian lines. The observers’ only direct contact with Biafran civilians and combatants came from those taken prisoner or trapped behind Nigerian advances, or who crossed over on their own. In most such cases those informantswereinclosecontactwith—evenunderthedirectsupervisionof— the same Nigerian troops responsible for the wellbeing of the observers. As Lytton wrote to the Foreign Secretary in 1969, “… it would have been better to take at least some evidence from those who had fled and to have done so in their place of safety rather than where their interrogators were guests of the ‘oppressors’.”20 Communication with civilians also raised questions about the reliability of accounts observers recorded. During one of his early trips to a campfordisplacedIgboinBenin, andtoEnuguandAwgu, theleadUNobserver reported full access to people, places, and “sources of information.” But while he and an assistant were able to interview English-speaking displaced people and administrators without Nigerian intermediaries, they had to rely on Federal troops for translation with non-English speakers.21

17 18 19 20

PRO DO 186 / Eastern Nigeria, “Report of the Visit to Biafra and San Tomé by T. McNally, 7–16 November, 1968”, 6. PRO DO 186 / Eastern Nigeria, “Report of the Visit to Biafra and San Tomé by T. McNally, 7–16 November, 1968”, 3. PRO DO 186 / Eastern Nigeria, “Report of the Visit to Biafra and San Tomé by T. McNally, 7–16 November, 1968”, 10. PRO FCO65/249 “Britain/Biafra Association, Part A,” “Commentary on the Report of the Observer Team to Nigeria (22 September–23 November 1968),” Noel (Earl) Lytton to Lord Shepherd, FCO, January 16, 1969, 3.

21

UN Series 98 Box 3 File 9, “First Interim Report by the Representative of the SecretaryGeneral to Nigeria on Humanitarian Activities on his visit to the Northern Front,” 9 October 1968.

93

The accuracy and value of observations […] is qualified by the unwieldy size of the group when traveling as a whole together with members of the press, and the mode of operation which necessitates military escort and involves the presence of high-ranking officers. During short visits in thesecircumstances, ordinarypeoplemightbereluctanttorevealmatters of significance which they are afraid may tell against their own interest.22

The fact that none of the missions directly observed events and conditions inside Biafra represents, at minimum, a missed opportunity for Nigeria to reassureBiafrans, theirsupporters, andtheinternationalcommunity, thatitsintentions did not include their extermination. At worst, it represents a fatal flaw in the entire enterprise.

2

The Genocide Question

At the heart of the observer enterprise lay the question of whether Nigerian forces had committed and/or were committing genocide against Biafrans generally, andmembersof Biafra’sIgbo-speakingmajorityinparticular. Eventoday thegenocidequestionremainscontentious, andcastsapolarizingshadowover scholarly, popular, and personal accounts of the war. The question’s “very construction raises important questions on the issue of conflict and identity in Nigeria and has helped to redefine the relationship between the state and the varied groups that make up this multiethnic country.”23 Biafra argued that it was fighting for survival against a stronger opponent that enjoyed the support of both the former colonial power, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union, which had opportunistically agreed to provide armaments that Britain would not. On the other side, despite neither Nigeria nor the UK being signatory to the CPPGC, both wanted to undercut a discourse that brought them international scrutiny and generated sympathy for Biafra.24

22

23

24

UN Series 98 Box 3 File 9, “Second Interim Report by the Representative of the SecretaryGeneral to Nigeria on Humanitarian Activities on Visits to the Southern and Western Fronts”, 30 October 1968. RoyDoron, “MarketingGenocide:BiafranPropagandaStrategiesDuringtheNigerianCivil

War, 1967–1970” in A. Dirk Moses and Lasse Heerten (eds.), Postcolonial Con f lict and the Question of Genocide: The Nigeria-Biafra War, 1967–1970 (New York: Routledge, 2018), 72.

The UK acceded to the Convention two weeks after the war ended in 1970, Nigeria in 2009.

via free access

94

anthony

The discourse of extermination predated the war, when authorities in Nigeria’s Eastern Region argued that two waves of violence directed against eastern Nigerians living in other parts of the country, mainly the Northern Region, constituted a pogrom.25 Biafra’s claims to independence were accompanied by a surge in genocide allegations, attaching first to civilian deaths at the hands of Nigerian ground and air forces, and later to Nigeria’s blockade of Biafra, which exacerbated a critical food situation. The war’s early months witnessed large-scale civilian casualties on all three of Biafra’s fronts. Biafrans argued that deaths at Nsukka, along the northern front, in July 1967, constituted a massacre, as did incidents on the western front at Benin (September 20) and Asaba (October 7), and on the southern front at Calabar (October 19).26 That those events happened under three distinct division commanders fueled arguments that they shared a common genocidal intent.
Elevating Biafran fears were unfounded worries of British military intervention alongside Nigeria. In January 1968 Biafran Commissioner for Foreign Affairs Matthew Mbu reported to UN Secretary General U Thant that he had received intelligence that “one thousand British troops” were en route to Nigeria via Cameroon to assist in the invasion of Port Harcourt, in support of “naked British imperialism.”27 The allegation was false, but it reinforced Biafra’s narrative of a genocidal struggle. Other concerns were grounded in fact, as when Mbu telegrammed Thant in February 1968, interpreting as evidence of genocidal efforts air attacks on civilians, killings of prisoners, and mistreatment of civilians by Nigerian ground forces. He demanded UN intervention under the terms of the UN Charter and the CPPCG.28 Biafra’s rapidly deteriorating food situation made matters worse. By June Nigeria’s blockade compounded disruptions to agriculture and fueled famine in Biafra, reinvigorating charges that

25

See Douglas Anthony, Poison and Medicine: Ethnicity Power an d V iolence in a Nigerian City

(Portsmouth: Heinemann, 2002), 119ff.

Harneit-Sievers, Jones O. Ahazuem, and Sydney Emezue (eds.) A S ocia l H istor y o f th e N ige- rian Civil War: Perspectives from Below (Enugu: Jemezie Associates, 1997), 75. The Asaba