Los mercenarios en Biafra luchaban por el bando que más les pagaba. Sin embargo,
muchos de ellos, se cansaron de las masacres de las que fueron testigos y
denunciaron ante la prensa la ayuda de los gobiernos extranjeros para la guerra.
Uno de ellos fue el conde Carl Gustav von Rosen que denuncia a los representantes diplomáticos británicos en Nigeria de
mentir. En vocabulario:
His Biafran Air
Force consisted of three Swedes: von Rosen, Gunnar Haglund and Martin Lang…
Only German born
Rolf Steiner a Lt. Col. with the 4th Commandos, and Major Taffy Williams, a
Welshman, would remain for the duration…
One of the
characters assisting Count Carl Gustav von Rosen was Lynn Garrison, an ex-RCAF fighter pilot…
In July 1969, Biafran forces launched a major land
offensive supported by foreign mercenary
pilots continuing to fly in food, medical supplies and weapons. Most notable of
the mercenaries was Swedish Count Carl
Gustav von Rosen who led air
attacks with five Malmö MFI-9 MiniCOIN
small piston-engined aircraft, armed with rocket pods and machine guns. His Biafran Air Force consisted of three Swedes: von Rosen, Gunnar Haglund and Martin
Lang. The other two pilots were Biafrans:
Willy Murray-Bruce and Augustus Opke. From 22 May to 8 July
1969 von Rosen's small force attacked
Nigerian military airfields in Port Harcourt, Enugu, Benin City and Ughelli, destroying or damaging a number
of Nigerian Air Force jets used to
attack relief flights, including a few Mig-17's
and three of Nigeria's six Ilyushin Il-28 bombers that were used to
bomb Biafran villages and farms on a
daily basis. Although the Biafran
offensives of 1969 were a tactical success, the Nigerians soon recovered. The Biafran
air attacks did disrupt the combat operations of the Nigerian Air Force, but only for a few months.
 |
| Lynn Garrison, 1966 |
In response to
the Nigerian government using
foreigners to lead some advances, the Biafran
government also began hiring foreign mercenaries to extend the war. Only German born Rolf Steiner a Lt. Col. with the 4th Commandos, and Major Taffy Williams, a Welshman, would remain for the duration.
One of the
characters assisting Count Carl Gustav
von Rosen was Lynn Garrison, an
ex-RCAF fighter pilot. He introduced
the Count to a Canadian method of dropping bagged supplies to remote areas in Canada without losing the contents. He
showed how one sack of food could be placed inside a larger sack before the
supply drop. When the package hit the ground the inner sack would rupture while
the outer one kept the contents intact. With this method many tons of food were
dropped to many Biafrans who would
otherwise have died of starvation.
Interview with Count Von Rosen, on the Aftermath of
the Biafra Civil War
—There´s
political interest for Great Britain and Lagos to hide the truth. Naturally,
the same as Hitler was hiding his gas chambers and even people who went to Berlin,
invited by the German government, could not believe in his gas chambers. This
is not gas chambers but the dying is anyhow going on. But you can remember that
anybody who has really looked in Biafra, but not only in the towns but in the
countryside, and all around, are in no doubt that this is a terrible disaster
for Africa, and the amount of dead people is counted in millions. And how can
those officials still can carry on in their way of trying to reduce this
disaster, in that talk I think is horrible.
—Are you
implying that Lord Hunt, the special
British envoy, is lying right now?
—I don´t know.
If you don´t want to see and you don´t see. I think he knows that the disaster
is great and I think he is trying to make it less than it is.
—He is
deliberately trying to conceal the facts then.
—You can read it
out what happened in London at The Times. For example, The Times of the 18 of
January states that Wilson has said “We didn´t increase the arms”, and Michael
Stewart, the secretary, said “We haven´t increased the arms.” And when they
checked with customs in Lagos, the newspaper people, they found it was nearly
35 times per year as much arms as has in 1966. And I don´t know what you call
it but to me it´s a deceiving of the people of Britain and of the government.
* Sir David Hunt
(1913 –1998) was a British diplomat. Hunt served with distinction in World War II, and entered the diplomatic
service in 1947. He served as Private
Secretary to Prime ministers Clement
Attlee and Winston Churchill, and
was knighted in 1963. From 1967 to 1969, he served as High Commissioner to Nigeria.
Frederick
Forsyth, then a journalist in Nigeria
and later a successful novelist, described Hunt
as "a snob and a racist" representing the diplomatic corps whose
"blithering
incompetence" failed to appreciate or deal with the tensions that erupted
into the Nigerian Civil War. Forsyth claimed that Hunt was responsible for Britain's complete misreading of the
war, contributing to the deaths of millions of Biafrans, particularly starving children. Subsequently, Hunt was British Ambassador to Brazil,
retiring in 1973.
Vocabulario
Blithering: complete;
utter (used to express annoyance or contempt).
"A
blithering idiot"
Artículos
relacionados
Los editores creían que un relato sobre un asesino
contratado para matar a Charles de Gaulle no tendría éxito… El
día del chacal
… fought between
the government of Nigeria and the secessionist state of Biafra from 6 July 1967
to 15 January 1970… Nigerian Civil War
… representaba las aspiraciones nacionalistas del
pueblo igbo, cuyo liderazgo sintió que ya no podían coexistir con el gobierno
federal… La
Guerra en Biafra
Esto es parte del archivo: ¡Biafra
o muerte!
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