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In essence, nothing is likely to break the present stalemate until the Nigerian Government has been brought to the view that its own personal interests and those of an undelayed ceasefire have become synonymous. This conversion of view can only be brought about by the sort of diplomatic initiatives that alone the Big Powers can make effective.

In the event of the desire for an early ceasefire becoming mutual, it would probably be necessary for the ceasefire to be supervised by a peace-keeping force, either a body of international composition, or preferably that of a Protecting Power agreeable to both sides. On this basis alone can humanitarian aid of sufficient scope to even dent the problem have a chance of success.

Once a return to normality had begun, protracted negotiations would be necessary to find a formula capable of bringing lasting peace. At present it appears impossible that any such formula could have a chance of success that is not based on the will of the people. This presumes some form of a plebiscite, at least among the minority groups, whose destiny has become one of the key features in the present war.

Few seriously think that a Biafran state confined to the Ibolandmow called by Nigeria the East Central State, cut off from

the sea and surrounded on all sides by Nigeria, could have much chance of viability. And the Nigerians have made one of the pillars of their case the supposition that the non-lbo groups, inhabiting what Nigeria now calls the Southeastern and the Rivers States, were dragged into partition against their will by the Ibos. The issue having become so crucial, it must be tested.

So far it is General Gowon alone who declines to put the matter to the test, though it should be admitted that circumstances at present are hardly apposite to the holding of a plebiscite. Yet if one were held now, the advantage would he with Nigeria, for her army occupies the area, and millions of minority people supporting Biafra have become refugees in the unoccupied zone. All the same, conditions for a plebiscite would have to be created before it could be conducted in a manner other than one calculated to bring protests from one

side or the other. Ideally such an operation would be supervised by the Protecting Power, with Federal Army garrisons quarantined in their barracks for the hours necessary.

Whatever the permutations and combinations, they are at the moment purely speculative and must remain so pending a ceasefire. But it is no speculation to assert that the way things stand at the end of 1968 the degree of incompatibility between the peoples east and west of the Niger has become so absolute that for the immediate future at least some form of partition will be necessary to prevent further bloodshed.

The longer this is delayed the worse becomes the situation, the deeper the hate, the more intractable the tempers and the darker the portents-,

PostScript

DURING the first three months of 1969, the basic situation in Biafra scarcely changed at all. Both armies were still locked in bitter combat; the shortage of staple foods, according to eyewitness sources like Professor Jean Mayer of Harvard University and New York Republican Senator Charles Goodell, meant that Biafra was veering towards another bout of mass stawrvation; there was no change in British Government policy.

From a purely military standpoint the three months from

1 January to 31 March 1969 had shown some gains and some losses for the Biafrans. Throughout the first two months the Biafrans continued their new military policy of 'surround and by-pass', avoiding big conventional confrontations

with the Nigerians except from prepared defensive positions when the Nigerians attacked, and confining their own attacks, to picking off isolated Federal outposts, harassing the roads used by the Nigerians as supply lines, and encircling the major concentrations. The encirclement of the 4,000 Federal troops in Owerri, achieved just after Christmas 1968, was maintained after heavy fighting along the main road leading from Port Harcourt to Owerri. During early February the Federal troops broke through the encirclement for five days and a number of lorry convoys managed to reach the troops at Owerri. Then the Biafrans re-established their control of the road, and the Federal garrison inside the town had to be maintained by air drops from Nigerian planes. Further east, around Aba, the technique was the same. On his return from Biafra in March Mr. Winston Churchill told the author that he had been driven by the Biafran Army to the village of Eberi, about ten miles southwest of Aba. The news came as something of a shook, for in late August the author had watched Williams, Erasmus and their thousand Commandos being driven foot by foot backwards out of Eberi, as Colonel Adekunle's Third Federal Division rolled remorselessly northwards, That the Biafrans

should not only be back in Eberi, but be able to drive a foreign correspondent there in a truck, indicated that in one area they had quietly achieved a considerable advance of over twentyfive miles from their late-September positions.

With the Biafrans also close to Azumini, fourteen miles southeast of Aba, the geographical position indicated they were adopting the same tactics that led to the encirclement of Owerri - a twin-pronged drive down both flanks leading to a final inward attack towards the main road and supply line. Further north things had not gone so well for them. In the six months since 30 September 1968 the Federal concern had been to build up not the prestigious Third Division but the more quiescent First Division based on Enugu, and the Second Division at Onitsha.

In early March the Second Division attacked simultaneously westwards from Awka and eastwards from Onitsha and succeeded in closing the ten-mile gap of roadway that had previously eluded them for twelve months. The Biafrans counterattacked and regained control of a section of that road. At the end of the month possession of this last section of the 68-mile long main road from Enugu to Onitsha was still fiercely in dispute. In the last week of March, the First Division threw in an enormous attack based on Okigwi, apparently in an attempt to drive down on Umuahia. It seemed probable the attack was timed to coincide with the visit of Mr. Wilson to Nigeria, but there was another equally likely reason for it -

the coming onset of the rains. Towards mid-April the annual monsoon breaks over the landscape in a drenching downpour lasting until October. It was on the monsoon that Colonel Ojukwu was counting to impede the'Nigerians' nightly bombing of Uli airport; to prevent the air drops keeping alive the

4,000 weary Federal troops in Owerri; and to wash out the myriad earth-roads capable of supporting the Nigerian Army's spearheads of British armoured cars in the dry season, but impassable in the wet season. The Nigerians were no less conscious of the race against the rains, which the Biafrans love since they favour the defender and which the Nigerian infantry, exposed miles from home, have come to loathe.

These same hundred days also saw another of the periodic

upsurges in parliamentary, press and public interest in Britain, and the addition of a large number of allies in all three fields to those few journalists who had hitherto maintained in beleaguered isolation the view that warfare

was not a feasible solution to the Nigeria-Biafra problem. The 'credibility gap' was (unwittingly] widened by Mr. Winston Churchill. With a commission from The Times for a series of news reports and articles he went first to Nigeria and later to Biafra. After returning from the latter visit, he admitted that after visiting Nigeria he had become wholly convinced that Biafran civilian and refugee centres were not being repeatedly bombed and that the famine victim figures were being grossly exaggerated. These convictions, he said, had been primarily induced by assurances from the British High Commissioner in Lagos, Sir David Hunt, and the British Military Attach6, Colonel Bob Scott. A few days in Biafra came as a jolt. Mr. Churchill came to the view that nobody in official British circles had much idea of what was really going on. He was the first journalist to have the courage to say (in his first news report) that he was 'ashamed' to admit that he had fallen for the misinformation fed to him in Lagos.

His articles caused a stir in Britain, engendering a spate of articles, letters and reports. They sparked off the first counterattack from Fleet Street to the smearing by the British High Commission in Lagos and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in Whitehall of individual journalists who had reported from Biafra what they saw and the conclusions they, and many others, had come to. In an editorial on 12 March, The Times complained of a 'niggling campaign' against Mr. Churchill and concluded by condemning 'an attempt to cover over the facts of starvation, bombing and death by resorting to personalities'. I

The following day, in a letter to the editor of The Times, Mr. Michael Leapman related how a Commonwealth Office official had taken the liberty of ringing a provincial newspaper assistant editor to warn him against believing what Mr. Leapman, after three visits to Biafra and one to Nigeria, had got to say. Mr. Leapman further intimated that he had heard that the suggestion- had been put about that he had taken money fftrom

Ojukwu to write as he did.

One of the upshots of the concern in Britain, over Mr. Churchill's reports - although the latter were. mainly concerned with the bombing, which was a continuing process and had been reported many times before - was increased concern in Parliament, culminating in the third debate held on the subject, which took place on 20 March. It was another exercise in futility. The major argument against present British policy of sending arms to a civil war or supporting a military dictatorship to inflict suffering on the Biafran scale was avoided. Ile Conservative Party, to judge from the somewhat uninformed nature of its spokesman, did not seem to have any policy, or to be prepared intelligently to oppose the Government on the one major issue on which it could command some support from Mr. Wilson's own backbenches.

But in the wake of the debate, Mr. Wilson announced that he himself would go to Nigeria. Scepticism of the value of such a personal appearance, and of its practical usefulness, was manifest in press and Commons. But since correspondents hinted on the eve of the visit that Mr. Wilson might not be averse to flying on from Nigeria to Biafra to see Colonel Ojukv/u (and the other side of the coin), a glimmer of hope arose that perhaps at last the British Government might be prepared to examine the whole story, and not just those parts that supported its own preconceptions. Apparently in this hope Colonel Ojukwu issued an invitation to Mr. Wilson to visit Biafra, an offer that cost him great effort in overcoming internal opposition to the idea of entertaining a man whom the Biafran populace loathes so heartily.

The optimism was as premature as Colonel Ojukwua, offer had been disconcerting to British officialdom. It was known that Mr. Wilson wished to return to London to report to the Commons his eyewitness impressions. Following Ojukwu's invitation it became difficult to imagine how Mr. Wilson could go to Biafra, see what he would undoubtedly see, and report what he had seen, and at the same,time keep what he had to say commensurate with his own previous policy and his colleagues' utterances. The problem was knotty, but soon solved.

PostScript In the Sunday Telegraph of 30 March Mr. H. B. Boyne, accompanying the Premier's party through Nigeria, set puzzled readers' minds at rest. 'Incidentally,' he wrote, 'Mr. Wilson never had any intention of going into secessionist territory now.'

In the Sunday Times of the same date, Mr. Nicholas Carroll gave his readers

what could well be construed as the explanation of his colleague's brief aside. 'Still, superficial though Mr. Wilson's visits have had to be, he did see quite enough to confirm what he had already heard both from his hosts and from his own advisers!

1 April 1969,

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