Stalin’s Postwar Terror Targeted Soviet Jews – In The Name Of ‘Anti-Cosmopolitanism

A plaque in Russia commemorates the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, whose leaders were executed in August 1952. Adam Baker/Flickr via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY

BY WENDY Z. GOLDMAN

PROFESSOR OF HISTORY,

CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY

Many Americans know of Josef Stalin’s Terror of the late 1930s, during which more than 1 million people were arrested for political crimes, and over 680,000 executed.

Fewer know about the repressions that began after World War II and ended with Stalin’s death in 1953. Much like the repressions of the 1930s, they involved fabricated plots, arrests, coerced confessions and purges. Unlike the Terror of the 1930s, they were accompanied by a wave of state-sponsored antisemitism – including the purge of Jews from multiple occupations and unwritten quotas that limited their professional and educational opportunities.

The abolition of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee on Nov. 20, 1948, and the arrest and execution of its members was central to this postwar assault. The committee’s elimination was accompanied by an “anti-cosmopolitan” campaign emphasizing Russian nationalism, Soviet patriotism and anti-Westernism. In certain ways, the campaign served as the mirror image of anti-communist and jingoistic propaganda in the United States at the time.

“Rootless cosmopolitan” became code for “Jewish,” and dismissals swept the arts, sciences and media. The Ministry of State Security arrested Jewish industrial leaders for sabotage and, in 1953, fabricated “the Doctor’s Plot,” which accused a group of predominately Jewish doctors who treated Kremlin officials of trying to assassinate Stalin and other party leaders.

The very idea of an antisemitic campaign following the massive Soviet losses in World War II presents an enigma. Of the 6 million Jews murdered in the Holocaust, almost 2 million were murdered by the Nazis on Soviet soil. Why would Soviet leaders, who fought a bitter and costly war to defeat fascism, choose to attack the very group that the Nazis tried to annihilate?

My forthcoming book, “Stalin’s Final Terror: Antisemitism, Nationality Policy, and the Jewish Experience,” addresses this difficult question.

Clashing with the state

The Soviet state created the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee in 1942 to aid the war effort at home and abroad. Its chairman, Solomon Mikhoels, was a renowned Yiddish actor and director of the State Yiddish Theater – one of the many cultural and scientific luminaries who led the committee.

The committee made an enormous contribution to the war effort, sending thousands of articles about fascism, the Jewish war experience and the Red Army for publication in the foreign press. Mikhoels and writer Itsik Fefer toured the United States, Mexico, Canada and Great Britain, where they were welcomed by rapturous crowds and raised millions of dollars.

In 1943, as the Red Army began liberating Soviet territories from German occupation, the committee was inundated by letters from surviving and returning Jews. Committee leaders tried to help people reclaim their homes, to distribute foreign aid and to identify and commemorate sites of Nazi war crimes. They wrote to Stalin suggesting the creation of a Jewish national republic in Crimea to replace destroyed communities in Ukraine, Belorussia and Russia.

But the state deemed these unsanctioned activities expressions of “bourgeois Jewish nationalism.” Some Communist Party leaders even insinuated that the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee was being used by spies, and advocated its elimination.

The minister of state security, V.S. Abakumov, convinced Stalin that Mikhoels was spying for Jewish organizations in the United States, but Mikhoels was too well known at home and abroad to be arrested. In January 1948, Mikhoels was lured to a house on the outskirts of Minsk, crushed by a truck and dumped on a deserted road.

The murder, disguised as an accident, signaled a turning point in the government’s policy toward Soviet Jews. In November 1948, the government abolished the committee as “a center of anti-Soviet propaganda.” Fifteen of its leaders were arrested over the following months. The state shuttered the Yiddish publishing house, press, theaters, literary journals and writers association, and arrested hundreds of Yiddish cultural figures.

Unbowed in court

The Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee’s leaders were charged with bourgeois nationalism, treason and espionage. Tortured in prison and kept in cramped, freezing cells, they were forced to confess.

The Ministry of State Security hoped to stage a public show trial, but as soon as the physical coercion stopped, the defendants began to retract their confessions and write letters of protest. The evidence was based on these extracted confessions, and the state feared an international outcry.

After the group had already spent more than two years in prison, the case was reopened. M.D. Riumin, the new head of the investigatory unit, was intent on showing that the defendants directed Jewish nationalist organizations that infiltrated the government at every level. After new interrogations, an indictment was drawn up, sent to Stalin and approved by the Politburo.

A secret trial began in May 1952. Despite being physically broken, the defendants presented a powerful rebuttal.

Solomon Lozovskii, an old revolutionary and former deputy foreign minister, shredded the state’s accusations. Historian Iosif Iuzefovich retracted his confession and told the court that after numerous beatings, “I was ready to confess that I was the pope’s own nephew, acting on his direct personal orders.” Boris Shimeliovich, the director of a leading Moscow hospital, testified that he had received over 2,000 blows to his buttocks and heels. Even the chairman of the court began to doubt the charges.

Yet the defendants were convicted. Thirteen of the 15 were executed on Aug. 12, 1952. The executions were later commemorated as “The Night of the Murdered Poets, though only five of the victims were poets. Solomon Bregman, a labor leader, died in prison; Lina Shtern, a renowned scientist, was sentenced to exile.

After Stalin’s death, the defendants were exonerated. The case only became public, however, in 1988, when the country began a full reckoning with the Stalin era.

The final Terror

How do we explain this final Terror?

Jews had benefited enormously from the revolution in 1917, which eliminated czarist oppression, granted them equal rights and opened new educational and employment opportunities. They entered professions and held leading posts in the Communist Party. They were considered an official nationality, like Ukrainians, Uzbeks, Armenians and hundreds of other groups in the new Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

Yet after the war, the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee’s efforts to help Jewish survivors and commemorate the Holocaust were not acceptable to the state, which minimized the singularity of Jewish wartime experiences. The government identified advocacy solely on behalf of Jews, either at home or abroad, as "bourgeois nationalism” or Zionism.

Amid the intensifying Cold War, the government sought to mobilize popular support by resurrecting Russian nationalism, once an anathema to socialist revolutionaries. It reestablished many czarist discriminatory policies, creating obstacles to Jewish advancement and education. Despite the government’s initial support for the new state of Israel, it blocked the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee from participating in Jewish international organizations, which it viewed as a conduit for Western spies and Jewish nationalism.

Some historians believe that Stalin was preparing a larger Terror, including the deportation of the Jewish population, but his plans were disrupted by his death in 1953. Others disagree, asserting a lack of evidence.

Yet one point is worth pondering: Using the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, Riumin aimed to build a larger case that would have targeted Jews in every institution for treason. He never succeeded, however, in staging a public trial or launching a wider hunt for enemies throughout the government.

The courage of the defendants thwarted Riumin’s venomous ambition. They testified bravely about their abuse and exposed the falsity of the charges. Revolutionaries committed to the struggle against fascism, they held firm to the end.

READ ORIGINAL STORY HERE

The World’s Forgotten States

BY JENNA REES

Being unrecognised does not just strip a population of sovereignty and legitimacy. It strips them of protection, visibility, and memory. Forgotten states leave behind not only contested borders but generations of civilians forced to endure the everlasting consequences of erasure.

I first came across the state of Biafra when I read Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimananda Ngozi Adichie. I had never heard of Biafra before. It was a foreign concept, a foreign place. A country that I didn’t even know existed had a history so complex and intricate that it displaced millions and left scars that echo today in modern Nigeria. And yet, Biafra has been forgotten. It has been lost to the history books of African post-colonialism. This has me wondering: how many forgotten states are there? And how does a state even become forgotten?

A forgotten state is not just a country that failed or collapsed. It is not a place like the Soviet Union, which is still highly relevant and spoken of in today’s modern discourse. Instead, a forgotten state is an unrecognised, erased, or deliberately sidelined country that has been lost to distant echoes and silenced memories.

The first example I thought of was Biafra (1967–1970), but there are other countries too. Katanga (1960–1963) seceded from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, before being reincorporated; East Turkestan Republic declared sovereignty twice in the 1930s and 1940s, and was then erased by the Republic of China, and later the People’s Republic of China; Chechnya, in the 1990s, declared independence from Russia, and after war, was reintegrated. Alongside these historical examples, there are many contemporary states that are also unrecognised or only partially recognised. There are the obvious examples such as Palestine and Taiwan, but I would not see these states as ‘forgotten’, since they are highly prevalent in today’s modern news. Rather, the forgotten states of modernity include places like Somaliland, which is stable yet ignored; Western Sahara, a UN non-self-governing territory, occupied by Morocco; and Tibet, a government-in-exile, erased from official world maps.

These forgotten states fall into the black holes of history; their legacies do not last through the social discourse due to the lack of recognition from the global north. The Montevideo Convention of 1933 sets out four criteria for statehood: a permanent population, a defined territory, an effective government, and the capacity to enter into relations with other states. Without all four of these factors, states have a difficult time showing legitimacy. However, even if they were to have all four of these factors, it ultimately comes down to powerful hegemonies, such as the United States and China, to determine whether or not they would like to recognise said state.

An example of this is the contrast between why Kosovo gets recognition in the UN but a country like Somaliland does not. Kosovo, a small country in Eastern Europe, once a part of Yugoslavia, seceded from Serbia in 2008. Kosovo, a state backed by the United States and recognised by the EU, is considered to be a state under international law. Whereas, Somaliland, also a state which declared independence, is not recognised by the international community. Despite having their own functioning government, a national flag, its own currency, a police force and even a military, it is not recognised. The UN and African Union warn that recognising Somaliland could trigger a domino effect of other separatist movements across Africa. Not only is this extremely neo-colonialist, it exposes the hypocrisy at the heart of international law: recognition is less about meeting the Montevideo criteria and more about whether a state’s existence is convenient to global powers. Somaliland has done everything a state is supposed to do — build institutions, govern its people, and maintain stability — yet it is punished because its recognition might unsettle borders drawn by colonial rulers centuries before.

Declaring legitimacy is not neutral, it is deeply intertwined with the global hierarchies of power. Recognition is seen as a geopolitical bargaining chip. Great powers use recognition strategically. China, for example, aggressively blocks recognition of Tibet. They insist that in acknowledging an independent Tibet, it would undermine their own sovereignty and affect their regional dominance. China wants to keep asserting their power within East Asia, and by recognising a region such as Tibet, it would affect their power, despite the region being lowly populated. Russia, on the other hand, selectively recognises small breakaway nations such as Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and more recently places like Donetsk and Luhansk, as tools to weaken neighbouring states. For example, Abkhazia is a breakaway state from Georgia and, following the 2008 Russian invasion of Georgia, Russia recognised the independence of Abkhazia. By declaring its legitimacy, and asserting that it is its own sovereign nation, Russia aims to weaken Georgia,a former Soviet Union state. In each case, sovereignty is not an impartial standard but a weapon of geopolitics. It is granted or withheld depending on the interests of the hegemonic power whose control is at stake.

The consequences of nation erasure are felt mostly by the citizens. Being citizens of an unrecognised and forgotten country creates problems that are inescapable. For example, Western Sahara remains unrecognised. As a result, Sahrawis have spent decades in refugee camps in Algeria, where education, work, and mobility are minimal. Those in Moroccan-controlled areas often face discrimination and oppression, with little recourse to international protections. Their ‘unrecognised’ status allows mistreatment to persist. History records also show the same situation happening in Biafra. The lack of recognition of Biafra from the international community led to a heightened brutal civil war, famine, and the death of millions. While this happened, the world simply turned away, unwilling to legitimise the seceded state. Once defeated, Biafra’s existence was erased from mainstream history, and remembered only through personal testimony and novel literature. Being unrecognised does not simply strip a population of sovereignty — it strips them of protection, visibility, and memory. Forgotten states leave behind not only contested borders but generations of civilians forced to endure the lasting consequences of being forgotten.

The question must be asked of whether the 20th-century model of the nation-state is still fit for purpose or whether it was ever truly universal. The Montevideo Convention, drafted over 90 years ago in the Americas and modelled on European traditions of statehood, continues to be held up as the standard. But this framework is deeply Eurocentric. It reflects an undeniable Western vision of sovereignty, rooted in fixed borders and centralised authority, a model exported during colonialism and imposed on diverse societies that often organised themselves through fluid boundaries and kinship networks. There is an undeniable tension here: between people’s right to self-determination and an international system whose primary obsession is preserving the ‘stability’ of borders drawn by European states. As such, recognition is less about whether a nation can govern itself and more about whether it conforms to an inherited European style. If recognition is ultimately political, filtered through these Eurocentric norms and enforced by global powers, can freedom ever truly rest in the hands of the civilians?

So, when I look at a forgotten state, such as Biafra, I can’t help but question how something as historically intricate as a nation can be reduced to only a footnote in the encyclopaedias. How a group of people can fight for survival, raise a flag, and yet still be erased because they were not recognised. This reveals the overarching, uncomfortable truth: the world map is not a neutral record of geographical reality, but a political document. Borders shift, and nations appear and disappear, memories fade, and not because people cease to exist, but because recognition is withheld. Forgotten states expose the fragility of sovereignty itself, highlighting how legitimacy is less about self-determination and more about power. If recognition is what makes a country real, then perhaps the world map is less a reflection of reality than a ledger of power. Entire nations can disappear at the stroke of a hegemony’s pen.

READ ORIGINAL STORY HERE

Don’t Conceal Truth About Aburi Accord, Civil War, Igbo Women Group Tells Gowon

BY STEVE OKO

UMUAHIA (VANGUARD NIGERIA) – Pan Igbo women group, Igbo Women Assembly, has urged former Head of State, General Yakubu Gowon to open up on “Aburi Accord” which he signed with the late Biafran war lord, Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, before the Nigeria civil war broke out.

This is as the group argued that “there is actually nothing wrong with honouring victims of the Nigerian civil war”, contrary to misconceptions about Biafra day anniversary.

IWA also renewed its call for the unconditional release of the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, as part of the healing process to protracted injustice against Ndigbo.

The group which spoke on the heels of the recent sit-at-home declared by Biafra agitators on May 30, in honour of those who lost their lives while defending the defunct republic, said “remembering fallen heroes and heroines is a global practice that should not be criminalised.”

National President of IWA, Lolo Nneka Chimezie, said that “Biafra remembrance day has got to be part of our history that cannot be suppressed “.

She commended all those who despite all odds, observed the sit-at-home in honour of all those both soldiers and civilians who died in the cause of “the avoidable war.”

According to her, observing a day in honour of the war casualties particularly the gallant soldiers who died defending their beloved ones, does not in any way amount to rebellion against the Nigeria State.

“Igbo women want to put it on record that those who died while defending us during the civil war were not goats but our beloved husbands and youths. We don’t believe that setting aside a day to remember them is a crime.

” So, we want to thank all those in South East and elsewhere who joined in honouring those heroes and heroines. It will be a mirage for anybody to think that we can stop remembering them. Biafra day is not about IPOB; it’s rather about our history which even the unborn generation will be told of”.

The IWA President further advised the Nigeria Government to find a way to recognize the Biafra day as indelible part of Nigeria’s history instead of “futile attempts to suppress the day or clamp down on those observing it.”

She argued that the continued injustice against Ndigbo gave birth to the renewed agitation for Biafra restoration, advising the federal government to stop using brute force, and rather engage the agitators for a peaceful dialogue with a view to addressing their grievances.

Lolo Chimezie further argued that contrary to misconceptions and propaganda by the federal government, members of the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, are not the architects of insecurity in the South East but criminal elements sponsored by enemies of Ndigbo.

” A militant leader who said he was asked to secure South East should be questioned about the insecurity in the zone. Today, the criminals have turned the once peaceful South East into a crime zone. This is part of their ploy to continue the civil war against us but we should be wiser”.

The IWA President queried why it was difficult for the Nigeria State to apologise to Ndigbo after the recent revelation by former Head of State, General Ibrahim Babangida, that the 1966 coup tagged ‘Igbo coup’, was a false narration.

“We have done a lot of research and discovered that the civil war was avoidable. The false narration that the 1966 coup was Igbo coup as recently confirmed by Gen. Babangida, has not been addressed. Why can’t Nigeria apologize to Ndigbo for the false accusation which led to the avoidable civil war?”

Chimezie argued that “if federal government could recognize June 12 in honour of Moshood Abiola, the perceived winner of the 1990 presidential election who died in questionable circumstances, “why can’t it do same in honour of Biafrans who died during the war?”

The IWA President told the former Head of State, Gen. Gowon, who executed the civil war that “no amount of prayers can bring true healing and reconciliation without genuine apologies to pacify the spirits of the war casualties.”

” Since after the war, what has Nigerian Government done to pacify the victims of the war? Why is it that Nigeria doesn’t want to talk about the war? What was the offense of those Igbo wasted during the war?

“Why is it that 56 years after the civil war, the shadow of the war and the blood of innocent Igbo shed during the pogrom are still haunting Nigeria? Instead of learning their lessons and apologizing, Nigeria is still harassing those remembering their loved ones who died in the war. We cannot stop talking of the war. Even the unborn generation will hear of it.

” Gen. Gowon who supervised the war and genocide against the Igbo is busy going around the country and praying. But we want to remind him that no amount of prayer can wash away the stain of the blood of over 6 million innocent Igbo children, women and men wasted during the war.

” Gowon should tell the world the truth about Aburi accord in Ghana and the Biafra war. He should not go to grave without confessing the truth if there must be true healing for those hurt by the needless civil war.

” There was a lot of war crimes including the Asaba massacre, church and market bombings. How can we shy away from talking about the sad history of the war?

IWA urged President Ahmed Tinubu to consider freeing Kanu as a mark of respect for Ndigbo who have contributed so much for the advancement of Nigeria.

According to them, Kanu’s release will rather fast-track the return of peace to the South East and not escalate tension in the region.

IWA disagreed with the National Security Adviser, NSA, Nuhu Ribadu, that IPOB is behind the insecurity in the South East, arguing that “criminal elements sponsored by Igbo enemies” are masterminds of the unrest in the zone.

IWA pledged continued solidarity with Kanu, declaring that the liberation cause he is championing is not selfish but a fight for justice and equity.

The Igbo women group also called for unity among Ndigbo while advising political leaders sacrificing the interest of the race on the altar of their personal gains to have a rethink.

BOOK REVIEW: 'ROAD TO VALOR'

BY JOEL FREEDMAN

Shortly after the Nazi occupation of Italy in September 1943, Italian Maj. Mario Carita and his men ingratiated themselves with the Nazis by zealously pursuing Jews and anti-Fascists and by turning the torture of suspected enemies of the Nazis and Italian Fascists into a grim science. Carita’s headquarters in Florence was known as Villa Triste (House of Sorrow), so named because of the screams of tortured victims emanating from it.

In July 1944, famed bicycle racer Gino Bartali, who had won the Giro d’Italia in 1936 and ’37 and the Tour de France in 1938, had good reason to be worried when he was summoned to appear at Carita’s headquarters. Had Carita learned that Bartali had hidden a Jewish family, had led Jewish refugees toward the Swiss Alps, and that he used his bicycle to carry forged documents that gave fake Christian identities for Jews on frequent arduous bicycle rides between Florence and Assisi? Bartali concealed these documents in the hollow tube under his bicycle’s seat.

Bartali feared not only for himself. He feared that under torture he might betray Luigi and Trento Brizi, a father-and-son team who used their Assisi print shop to manufacture the forged documents; Cardinal Elia Dalla Costa, the archbishop of Florence; the Rev. Rufino Niccacci; and others involved with Jewish rescue endeavors.

Bartali had not revealed to his beloved wife Adriana that he was involved in such endeavors. Nevertheless, would Carita retaliate against Bartali’s family if he broke down under torture?

Aili and Andres McConnon, the sister-brother authors of “Road to Valor,” explain that prior to interrogation, “Most prisoners, including Gino, were first dragged downstairs, to the subterranean cellars. Before their eyes could adjust to the dim shadows, their senses were assaulted by the sour smell of old blood and rancid sweat. Their feet crunched as they walked on the floor soiled with a mix of coal debris and blood. Carita liked to terrify his prisoners in advance of their interrogation, and among the first shocks, as their eyes began to focus on the inferno they found themselves in, was the array of medieval torture tools. There were thick whips, rods of steel, pincers, manacles, not to mention the primitive carpentry tools used to tear off earlobes of recalcitrant victims. In one room was a heavy wooden triangle, where Carita would splay and tie prisoners and then beat them until their flesh hung in bloody ribbons from their bodies. In another area, medical equipment stolen from hospitals was used to administer electric shocks to prisoners.”

This was what Bartali faced when he was led into a room to wait for Carita. Of course, he was petrified. While he waited, he noticed some letters addressed to him that had been placed on a table, which Carita’s squad apparently had intercepted. Bartali wondered how he could possibly respond if these letters had incriminated him for protecting the Goldenberg family or for transporting forged documents.

The authors describe what happened next. “Carita burst through the door. He was a force to behold, with his frog-like mouth and hooded eyelids covering his cold, lizard-green eyes. The major launched into a tirade against the Catholic religion, hoping to provoke the cyclist from the get-go. Gino struggled to stay calm.”

Carita read aloud a letter from the Vatican that thanked Bartali for his “help.” He accused Bartali of sending weapons to the Vatican. Bartali told Carita that “those letters refer to flour, sugar and coffee that I sent to people in need. I didn’t send arms. I don’t even know how to shoot! When I was in the military, my pistol was always unloaded.”

Carita had Bartali thrown into a cell for three days to listen to the screams from prisoners being tortured to secure information or to elicit admissions of guilt. On his third day at Villa Triste, in the interrogation room with Carita and three of his henchmen, Bartali stuck to his honest claim that he never sent weapons to the Vatican. Carita apparently did not know about Bartali’s other activities.

Carita was about to torture Bartali when something amazing happened. One of Carita’s henchmen sided with Bartali. “If Bartali says coffee, flour and sugar, then it was coffee, flour, and sugar. He doesn’t lie.” Bartali looked closely at this interrogator. He then recognized Olesindo Salmi, who had been Bartali’s military supervisor when Bartali was in Italy’s army, and who had permitted Bartali to use a bicycle instead of a scooter to perform his military duties.

As astonished as Bartali was by Salmi’s intervention, he was even more astonished when Carita relented. The authors explain that Bartali’s fame “had certainly helped save his skin, but Carita was also distracted by bigger worries than Gino. The allies were moving closer to Florence by the day.” (Carita would flee from Florence before the liberation. He would travel to northern Italy, where he was killed in May 1945 when Allied soldiers tried to apprehend him.)

After the war, Bartali once again won the Giro d’Italia in 1946 and the Tour de France in 1948. At the age of 40, Bartali stopped racing as a result of road accident injuries.

“Road to Valor” is the first book ever written about Bartali in English and the only book written in any language to explore, in depth, Bartali’s heroism in saving Jewish lives during World War II.

After the war, Bartali did not say much about his endeavors on behalf of Italian Jews. He explained that “If you’re good at a sport, they attach the medals to your shirts and then they shine in some museum. That which is earned by doing good deeds is attached to the soul and shines elsewhere.”

Bartali died on May 5, 2000. In September 2013, 13 years after his death and a year after “Road To Valor” was published, Bartali was recognized posthumously as a “Righteous Among the Nations” by Yad Vashem for his endeavors to help Jews during World War II.

Space does not allow me to fully explore Bartali’s professional career as a road cyclist. I’ll just quote one excerpt from “Road to Valor” that described the challenges that awaited Bartali when he entered the Tour de France in 1938: “Even the most exuberant recognized there were many reasons to remain cautious. First, there was a question of competitive endurance. With thirty-one stages fit into just twenty-six days, Gino would face a punishing schedule of races. Second, there were the mountains. For the first time in his career, Gino would face both the Alps and the Pyrenees in the same race. Finally, there was the unavoidable issue of distance. At more than 2,740 miles, the Tour was by far the longest race in which Gino had ever competed — and this distance would come just one month after he had raced some 2,300 miles around Italy.”

Thirty years ago, I purchased a 1960s Grand Prix bicycle at a yard sale for $5. I refer to it as “my Cadillac.” With the help of the good people at RV&E Bike and Skate store in Canandaigua, over the decades I have pedaled my bike thousands of miles around Canandaigua. Although I am fond of my bike, I never named it until I read “Road to Valor.” My bike now has a name: Gino, in honor of Gino Bartali.

It was when the authors began studying some of the historic Tour de France greats that they became fascinated by Gino Bartali. They explain that, “In a sport that celebrates endurance, he endured longer than most others, winning the Tour at twenty-four and then again at thirty-four. When we delved deeper and learned about the ways he used his bicycle between those victories — to help save lives during World War II — we discovered how rich and multifaceted his life had been and realized that his story needed to be shared with a much wider audience.”

Aili and Andres McConnon’s “Road to Valor” is a thoroughly researched, inspirational, fast-paced book that achieves all that the authors intended to accomplish.

READ ORIGINAL STORY HERE

France’s Geopolitical Calculations And The Biafra Question: Unraveling The Puzzle

BY MICHAEL MAHANTA

In the previous part of this article, we explained at length the Biafra movement and the historical roots of the crisis. The ethnic divisions in Nigeria and the resultant tensions have had a lasting impact on the country’s socio-political circumstances. We also discussed how the Biafran leaders used the issue of malnutrition to gain political support overseas. So, it’s important to examine where the whole Biafra crisis stands today and what implications it can have for the future of Nigeria. Let’s dig deeper.
The current state of the Biafra movement

In recent years, the Biafra movement has gained renewed momentum, with the emergence of various groups and organizations advocating for a separate Biafra Republic. One of the most prominent groups is the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), founded in 2014 by Nnamdi Kanu, a British-Nigerian political activist.

As the director of a United Kingdom-registered radio station, Radio Biafra, he propagated Biafra separatism. He was also arrested in 2015, on treason charges, but was released on bail in 2017 and fled Nigeria. He played a major role in the insurgency in south-eastern Nigeria.

To quell the activities of the IPOB and curb secessionism, the Nigerian military also launched an operation, code-named Operation Python Dance II, in 2017, in the south-eastern region of Nigeria, where the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) is based. In 2021, Interpol arrested Kanu again and handed him over to Nigeria. Kanu has also been a mentor to Simon Ekpa, another controversial leader of the Biafra movement, who was reportedly arrested recently at his home in Finland.

Simon Ekpa allegedly used social media to incite violence, and Nigeria’s government had previously asked Finland to act against him. Nigeria’s government has already proscribed IPOB and a court has designated it a “terrorist” organization. Regarding the general elections in Nigeria, the IPOB did not participate in the 2019 general elections and called for a boycott of the elections, urging Igbo people not to participate in the country’s politics.

However, the call for a boycott received mixed reactions with some heeding the call while many others participated in the 2023 elections in Nigeria. In a viral video, Simon Ekpa imposed sit-at-home and curfew on the South East and some parts of the old Eastern region during the election, but his call for a boycott was decried by many. For instance, the Igbo Elders Consultative Forum stated that anyone calling for a sit-in or boycott of the general elections would be treated and regarded as an enemy of the Igbo nation. The call was also denounced on the grounds that it would create fear and disenfranchise the community.

Role of France in Biafra

In the previous article, we informed our readers about France’s active support for the Biafra movement initially. France sent $30 million worth of material to Biafra and lent Ivory Coast’s President Houphouet-Boigny $3 million to aid Biafra operations.

According to some reports, France secretly armed Biafra, in a bid to weaken British and US influence in Africa. While, Nigeria’s former colonial ruler, Britain, backed the “One-Nigeria policy”, and covertly provided weapons and military intelligence. France’s tactic in this crisis was not to recognize Biafra diplomatically but to support its “just and noble cause”.

To sum it up, France also supported Biafra primarily to secure its own interests and gain an economic foothold in the oil-rich Niger Delta. Former French President De Gaulle chose a limited strategy for two reasons. One, if Biafra won the war, France would be Biafra’s greatest ally, and if Nigeria won the war, France could extricate itself from the situation relatively easily and re-establish relations. However, after initially providing support to the Biafra movement, France later had to withdraw its support for many reasons.

One of the most important reasons was the international pressure created by Nigeria’s government and other countries on France to put an end to its support. Further, France’s support to Biafra also strained its relations with Nigeria, which is a major supplier of oil to France and French companies had invested heavily in the Nigerian economy. Thus, France later ruled out any support for the secession of any part of the country and acknowledged that Biafra has no support.

France’s Ambassador to Nigeria, Denys Gauer, said that France would not in any way, work with any group agitating for the dismemberment of the nation. With France’s withdrawal of support, the Biafra movement lost a major western sympathizer that had supported it in many ways earlier.

There was a time when France used francophone states (Côte d’Ivoire and Gabon) as conduits and cover to provide unused stocks of weapons left from the Second War World to Biafra. In any case, Nigeria is one of the fastest growing economies in Africa with a large and diverse economy, and remains an important player in the continent’s economic landscape.

Apart from vast natural resources like oil and gas, it is also an attractive destination for foreign investments. Thus, seceding from such a country can prove to be counter-productive in the long run. Although many claim that the support for Biafra has waned in recent years, for example, the call to boycott the recent Nigerian elections did not receive as much support as the leaders would have imagined. Whether the Biafra movement will last long, given that countries are withdrawing their support, is a question we will answer in the next article.

READ ORIGINAL ARTICLE HERE

What Is A Pogrom? Israeli Mob Attack Has Put A Century-Old Word In The Spotlight

BY JOSHUA SHANES

Following the murder of two Israeli brothers in the West Bank on Feb. 26, 2023, a mob of around 400 Israelis attacked the Palestinian town of Huwara. They torched dozens of homes and cars, leaving one dead and hundreds wounded before being stopped by Israeli security forces.

Though some government leaders – including the head of the parliament’s National Security Committee – praised the mob or called for the state itself to erase the town’s existence, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned them for “taking the law into their own hands.” Others – including the top Israeli general in the West Bank – used even stronger language, calling the attack a “pogrom,” as did a statement against the attack by the Israeli Historical Society, signed by some of Israel’s most renowned historians.

According to historian of Russian Jewry John Klier, a pogrom is “an outbreak of mass violence directed against a minority religious, ethnic or social group [that] usually implies central instigation and control, or at minimum the passivity of local authorities.”

In other words, it is an explosion of mob violence by members of a majority group against a minority, with at least passive support of the state. Pogroms remind the minority of their lower place in the social order.

As a scholar of modern Jewish history, I am very aware that the use of this term is highly contentious. Because of their pivotal role in modern Jewish history in general – and the birth of Zionism and Israel in particular – pogroms have an oversize place in Jewish collective memory.

Russian origins

The Russian word was first made infamous around the world after a series of such attacks broke out against Jews across Russian-controlled Ukraine in 1881 and 1882 in response to the assassination of Czar Alexander II, which was blamed on “the Jews.” The 250 pogroms killed dozens of people and caused extensive property damage.

Despite the relatively low death toll compared with 20th-century pogroms, these first pogroms played a pivotal role in Jewish history. Millions of Jews abandoned hope in Russia and moved to the United States, while a small cadre considered Jewish national options in Palestine instead. In other words, the pogroms partially gave birth to modern Zionism.

One lone pogrom in 1903 in Kishiniv, Moldova, which killed 49 Jews, had a particularly powerful effect on Jewish politics at the time. It received worldwide condemnation, including by the renowned Russian authors Leo Tolstoy and Maksim Gorky, and was the subject of a powerful Hebrew poem, “The City of Slaughter,” that galvanized support for militant Zionism.

Often the government was in fact not behind the violence and sometimes even opposed it. This was particularly the case in 1881, for example, when Russian forces even occasionally fired on the rampaging mob.

Critically, however, the dominant ethnic groups, which included Ukrainians and Russians, assumed that the Russian government was on their side. After all, there was extensive, legal discrimination against the Jewish minority and constant incendiary rhetoric by government officials.

In subsequent decades, the level of violence in Eastern Europe dramatically increased, often with the open support of the Russian authorities. Thousands were killed during two years of unrest following the first Russian Revolution in 1905, while over 100,000 Jews were killed in Ukrainian pogroms from 1918 to 1921. Pogroms continued throughout the interwar period, leading up to the Holocaust, and beyond it.
From Russia to Israel

Although the word pogrom today has grown beyond its initial Russian Jewish setting – it can describe white violence against African Americans like the 1919 Tulsa race massacre – it is still widely associated with those East European events. Using it to describe this week’s attack on Huwara – or other similar attacks in Israel or Palestine – effectively puts Israel in the place of the Jews’ historic persecutors. This is a highly uncomfortable position for many Jewish people, particularly in Israel.

It is not surprising, then, that critics on social media have argued that this cannot be a pogrom because it was not directed by the state, or because it is the result of a two-sided ethnic conflict, not an act of one-sided oppression.

However, these comments are neither historically accurate nor fair to the current situation. In today’s Israel, minority rights have been suppressed as well, particularly in the West Bank. Palestinians in the West Bank, unlike the Jewish settlers next to them, face violence and discrimination in nearly every aspect of their lives. In other words, Israeli Jews and Palestinians are today not equal partners in an ethnic rivalry.

Moreover, as in czarist Russia, the state has also suggested its sympathy for violence through incendiary rhetoric and failure to prosecute violent Jews. In fact, historical records show far more rioters were arrested and punished by Russia in 1881 than in Huwara this week, where only eight of the 400 Jewish offenders were arrested, only to be quickly released.

This failure to punish any of the perpetrators sends a message of state support for the violence even clearer than the open support in statements by leaders of the government security apparatus. Some Israeli government officials even argue that by definition there can be no such thing as Jewish pogrom.

As to why the Israeli general, the Israeli Historical Society, or the former head of the Anti-Defamation League, Abe Foxman, among others, would use the term if it is so charged? Perhaps precisely because Jewish people using the word to describe the attack on Huwara know that it’s deeply uncomfortable, and that it might shock Israelis to address the violence more appropriately.

READ ORIGINAL STORY HERE

"The Reminiscences Of David Ejoor"

 

David Ejoor

BY EMMA OKOCHA

"Before he enlisted into the army, Nzeogwu told me he was going to South Africa to fight for the liberation of the Blacks ....We spoke Hausa each time he came around. We used to go see the Sarduana through Alhaji Muktar Tahir. When I saw him in 1967 and asked him why he overthrew the government, he said he felt shocked that what he complained about in South Africa was happening in Nigeria. He was unhappy that Nigerians were losing jobs to Pakistanis and Indians.’’

—John Edozie to Emeka Mamah, Sunday Vanguard Interview, March 28, 1999, Page 3.

"Chukwuma started thinking about military combat and dying in a battlefield somewhere in Southern Africa five years before Nigeria Independence. His readings in the late 50s had turned his focus towards the armed struggles of Southern Africa and his career choice was to prepare him for such conflicts. He understood what his father once told him about his choice, that joining the army was an invitation to early death...The Nzeogwu household had known him to keep his promises and resisted the family pressure to mould and shape his views

and choices; he followed his conscience on the senior class revolt at St John’s, rather than his parents’ desires; he joined the army instead of the police, he remained single, childless rather than become a progenitor....’’
—Nzeogwu, Okeleke: Major C.K Nzeogwu, Ibadan: Spectrum Books, 2003 Page119.

"The campaign period in Western Nigeria proved to be the bloodiest the country ever had; petrol was sometimes poured on opponents who were then set on fire, polling agents and electoral officers were shot. On the evening that Chief S.L Akintola was to make his first broadcast as Premier, a masked gunman entered the broadcasting station, seized the pre-recorded tape of Chief Akintola’s speech and submitted another tape.

Instead of Akintola’s voice, thousands of listeners heard a voice saying: ‘This is the voice, the true voice of the people of Western Nigeria. Akintola, get out, get out and take with you your band of renegades who have lost all sense of shame’. If there was any case for declaring a state of emergency in any region, the state of Western Nigeria in December 1965, was one very good case.

The Prime Minister and the Federal Government appeared not to take notice of what was happening in Western Nigeria. The situation in 1965 was worse than in 1962, when the Federal Government declared a state of emergency.’’
— Osadebay Dennis: Building A Nation, Ibadan:Macmillan Publishers 1978, Page174.

"Apart from these Yoruba officers, Major W. Ademoyega, Captain G.Adeleke, Lt.Oyewole, Lt. F. Olafimihan there were Northerners, close disciples of Nzeogwu who participated in the January 15 uprising. Captain Gibson Jalo, Captain Swanton, Lt. T. Katsina and Lt. John. Kpera [Pse.see The Five Majors, Pages 51 158-158...

Also see Blood On The Niger, New York: Triatlantic Books, Page 216].... it is most likely that the putsch was clearly anti-Igbo. The Majors overthrew a four regional structure that had two Igbo Premiers in the richest two regions of the East and the Midwest.

The main objective of the January 15 revolution was to release Chief Obafemi Awolowo from prison and appoint him the Prime Minister (See also the unpublished Findings on the Jan.15 1966 coup by the late Major Ibanga Ekanem, Provost Marshall, Nigerian Army)

There is a popular documentary on the Nigerian civil war showing presently on You Tube. Originally produced by the National Television Authority, the film featured interviews by some of the former top Nigerian civil war bureaucrats and army commanders on both sides of the civil war. I was elated to hear the voice of General Mohammed Shuwa, the former Commander of the Nigerian First Division, perhaps the most unsung hero of that war. Shuwa saved a lot of Igbos during the pogrom and continued in the same vein during his operations to reach his war objective.

He was the enduring commander of the Nigerian First Division. A Division which had the orders to capture the Biafran capitals of Enugu and Umuahia. To capture the hill top city of Enugu the First division was almost depleted as it battled through the red hot volcanoes of Nsukka, Opi junction, into the slaughter house of the Milkin hills. When the Biafrans evacuated Enugu and moved its capital to Aba and finally to Umuahia, the orders to the commanders of the First Division did not change.

To capture the city of knowledge, the Eastern Railway junction town, the city of the great Government College that gave the world Chinua Achebe, Chris Okigbo, Saro Wiwa, the gritty Division pushed through forests of Ogbunigwe-infested landscape, and through the perilous valleys of the truculent Biafran heartland. When the First Division finally limped into Umuahia, the earthquake casualties on both sides were beyond Carthage. It was time to call off the bluff. A coercive outcome to end the fratricide was the only option, as the two sides had by their intransigent and uncompromising stances ditched the resolution of the conflict through negotiations or diplomacy.

Through those bloody attrition in Biafra, and during the hours the Biafran Expeditionary Forces almost turned the tide of the war, after their entry into the Midwest on the 9th of August 1967, nobody heard of David Ejoor. Which side was he fighting for? There was no report on his field activities.

We therefore appreciate the stand of General Shuwa on You tube . Brigadier Conrad Nwawor, Brigadier S. Ogbemudia, Brigadier Johnson, Chief P.C Asiodu, Damcida, Tayo Akpata, Ojukwu and General Yakubu Gowon. These soldiers and gentlemen made decisions and answered the call as true soldiers.

They can discuss with authority the war in which they were actors. In his recent interview with a local newspaper where he allegedly denigrated the whole Igbos, following the failure of ‘their light Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe’ who never made it as the Prime Minister’’.

In the first place Zik was not an Igbo light. He was the African light of the 21st century. He inspired the seminarian Kwame Nkrumah, the Uwalimu Julius Nyerere, K.K. Kaunda, countless Nigerians including Festus Okotie-Eboh, Chief S.J. Mariere the late Governor of the Midwest, James Otobo, Shaka Momodu, Chief Humphrey Omo-Osagie.

As the pioneer Nigerian publisher, Zik appointed Anthony Enahoro the youngest editor of a Nigerian newspaper. Mandela lived with him at his Commercial residence in Yaba, when he returned from Accra to publish the West African Pilot and the rest of the Zik’s chain of papers.

Ejoor was disrespectful of the dead as he failed to see the difference between Major Nzeogwu’s revolution and the subsequent coups that have bedeviled the Nigerian nation. Major Kaduna Nzeogwu was not Igbo, he was the last of the Nigerian Mohicans. His coup saved from obliteration the rebelling Tiv peasants. Restored stability in the streets of the wild west.

Those streets were sentencing hundreds of innocent citizens to their early deaths. And the government of the day was irresponsibly standing by. His coup was unique. He did not come to be President or to make any Igbo one. According to Lateef Jakande in the Comet of January 15, 2000....he acknowledged that the January 15 boys were revolutionaries who were seeking relief to the suffering masses of the west and planned to release from jail the following; Obafemi Awolowo, Alhaji Jakande, Anthony Enahoro, Chief Onitiri, Chief Omisade etc. Chief Awolowo was going to be handed over the executive powers of the Federal Government. Nzeogwu and his colleagues were heading to South Africa to fight and die for the liberation of the oppressed Blacks in that region.

That is why Tai Solarin the prospective Minister of Education in the Majors’ list did not forget the last of the Mohicans. The good old headmaster did not care if the heavens fell and right then as the guns boomed in 1967, he went forward and immortalised the Nigerian hero by dedicating the street leading to the Mayflower College to the memory of Chukwuma Nzeogwu! Any other doubting Thomases should take a trip and visit Ogun state. Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu has a street to his name.

As for Ejoor’s vituperations against Ojukwu, we have no comments as the general is alive and can respond to him. However, his second stab into the dead scars of General Aguiyi Ironsi and Adekunle Fajuyi is unAfrican.
Contrary to your diatribe, it was General Aguiyi-Ironsi who elevated you and appointed you Military Governor and member Supreme Council.

Two officers from the Midwest who were higher than you in rank were not considered and did not hold it against you. Cols. Conrad Nwawo was commissioned before Independence and is the only living Nigerian officer ever to win the British highest medal of courage...the Victory Cross. R.F Trimnel after the bloodbath of July 29 1966, was the only standing officer second in rank to Brigadier Ogundipe and was tempted by the British to take over after the abdication of the Brigadier. However the late Aboh mullato was not the type. Ejoor told his interviewer that he was senior to everybody but for three other Nigerian officers.

Sir, when will your stories end? Were you senior to Generals Babafemi Ogundipe, Generals Adebayo, Olufemi Olutoye, Brigadier Nwawor, Col. Trimnel, Col Fajuyi, Col. Imo, Col. Phillip Effiong etc?

While we forgive you for your slips, we shall advise that the bitterness of the civil war is gradually becoming a thing of the past. David Ejoor, you cannot slander our history.

For only the lost tribe will allow others to write their history.

ARTICLE WAS PUBLISHED APRIL 2009 AT OHUZO VIA VANGUARD

Ephemeris Of History: Biafran War

A volunteer worker feeds one of 500 children housed in a disused maternity home. Volunteers from the town's English community undertook caring for the children in need of care when they were brought in from the former Biafran Enclave January 23, 1970. Image: Bettmann

BY PACA PEREZ

On July 6, 1967, the Biafra War began after the Nigerian army attacked this country, which had become independent a few weeks earlier. The tensions produced after decolonization pitted the inhabitants of southeastern Nigeria against the rest of the African nation and led to the constitution of an independent republic.

How was the Republic of Biafra?

A few days before this civil conflict broke out, this territory located in the south of Nigeria, in the Bay of Biafra, declared itself independent and was constituted as the Republic of Biafra, with its capital in Enugu. Almost 13 million people lived in this region, half of whom belonged to the Igbo ethnic group, who felt discriminated against by the Hausa majority. This new nation was only officially recognized by some African countries such as the Ivory Coast and Gabon, and by Haiti . He also received the support of France and two dictatorships: those of Portugal and Rhodesia. This last fact prevented him from getting more international recognition. Only Israel supplied it with weapons, while Nigeria reinforced its arsenal thanks to the great Western powers and the Muslim countries.

How was the Biafra War?

The unstable situation in Nigeria, which had suffered several coup attempts, was used by Odumegwu Ojukwu to declare the independence of Biafra. This was followed by one of the most devastating wars that took place in Africa and with terrible consequences for the population of this place. The Nigerian army started a war that in just three years left this region in the south of the country devastated. The internationalization of the conflict allowed both sides to have access to considerable weapons material that they did not possess until then. The end of the Biafra War brought with it a famine of great proportions. The total death toll — from disease, lack of food, and the shooting and bombing of Nigerian troops — is estimated to have been around one million people.

Historical ephemeris times for 6 July

On July 6, 985 Almanzor took the city of Barcelona after besieging it.

On July 6, 1809, the Battle of Wagram continued for the second day, pitting the Napoleonic and Austrian troops against each other.

On July 6, 1885, Louis Pasteur successfully vaccinated Joseph Meister against rabies.

On July 6, 1997, the remains of Che Guevara are found in a mass grave in Vallegrande (Bolivia).

Paca Pérez was born in Burgos a year not too far from the 20th century. He studied History and writes stories.

READ ORIGINAL ARTICLE HERE

How Civil Wars Start And Lessons For Today’s Nigeria

 

‘Civil wars ignite and escalate in ways that are predictable; they follow a script,’ writes author Barbara F. Walter.

BY KUNLE ADEBAJO

 How close are developments in Nigeria to this time-tested script?

For decades, social scientists have researched factors which, combined, best predict that a country will experience civil war. Nigeria ticks a lot of the boxes.

Wars are often thought of as spontaneous. The result of a spark that could not have been foreseen. Not just any spark too; one that erupts in the right environment. But with her book, Barbara F. Walter shows us that, through an extensive study of past wars, we can tell when a country is drifting dangerously towards disaster and guide it back to safety.

‘How Civil Wars Start’ was released by the international relations professor last January. Though it is generally a warning about growing militancy, political instability, and domestic terrorism in the United States, its lessons can easily be applied to the experiences of people across the world.

Walter points out that modern civil wars often do not involve “a single, regimented, and hierarchical fighting force in official military uniform using conventional weapons” as Nigeria witnessed in the decade following independence, but rather feature armed militias “who take violence directly to the people” and who rely on guerrilla warfare and organised terror.

The book dedicates different chapters to explaining the various factors that exacerbate civil war. This article will be following the same order.

I: Not quite a democracy, not quite an autocracy

Walter shares an interesting observation in the first chapter, which is that the countries most likely to descend into civil wars are not those with the highest rates of poverty, income inequality, or even cultural and religious differences. They are not those that are devout democracies or even those committed to authoritarian rule, but rather those countries that float in between these two extremes. This is because of the instability, lawlessness, weak governance structures, and sense of uncertainty that characterise such regimes.

The author points out one example: Iraq. A huge war did not break out during the 24 years that Saddam Hussein ruled with an iron fist, but after he was overthrown and the occupying U.S. forces tried to rapidly democratise the country. On the other end of the spectrum is Ukraine where there was a decline in democracy and the government became significantly autocratic with the administration and ouster of President Viktor Yanukovych.

In fact, the wave of civil wars flowing across the world seems to accompany the emergence of new democracies after the second world war.

Experts have come up with a name for countries in this grey area: anocracies.

There are various standardised measurements of anocracy and one of the most influential is the Polity Score produced by the Centre for Systemic Peace. Countries scored between +6 and +10 are considered full democracies, those scored between -6 and -10 are autocracies, while those scored between -5 and +5 are considered anocracies.

During the years of military rule, Nigeria’s polity score was -7 and then it rose by 15 points in 1992 when then military leader Ibrahim Babangida was preparing to conduct elections that would have allowed for a transition to civil rule. In 1996, following the infamous judicial execution of activist Ken Saro Wiwa and eight others by General Sani Abacha, the score dropped to -6 and only picked up again following the return to democratic rule in 1999.

It hovered between 5 and 6 for the next nine years and then dropped in 2009 when the Boko Haram insurgency broke out in the Northeast, and returned to the middle ground between 2011 and 2017. The score rose two places in 2018, apparently situating the country outside the danger zone, and has been silent about the years that followed.

A lot has happened since then though suggesting that Nigeria’s score would have worsened if an updated ranking was released. This includes state-sanctioned extrajudicial killing during the End SARS demonstrations, the crackdown on religious freedom, an unprecedented seventh months-long Twitter ban, and several attempts to restrict digital freedoms. Again, between 2018 and 2022, Nigeria’s score on the global press freedom index reduced by over 25 per cent.

There are other datasets that measure a country’s system of governance too. So how does Nigeria fare with them?

When it comes to internet freedom as well as access to political rights and civil liberties, Nigeria is ranked partly free by the research non-profit, Freedom House, alongside countries like the Philippines, Singapore, and Zambia.

V-Dem Institute’s latest Democracy Report similarly places Nigeria within the bottom 40 to 50 percentile, its score worsening compared to a decade earlier in 2011. The institute also noted that, in 2021, Nigeria became an electoral autocracy, joining the same league as the Central African Republic, Iraq, Russia, Serbia, and Uganda. In these places, “there are institutions emulating democracy but falling substantially below the threshold for democracy in terms of authenticity or quality.”

The security situation can easily get out of hand because of weak governance in such countries. The authorities become incapable of providing basic services like affordable food, healthcare, and insecurity. At the same time, they are unable to effectively crush uprisings. People become anxious about their future and survival. Public discontent grows and, eventually, armed violence.

II: Splinters and their sharp edges

Citing the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s as one example, Walter demonstrates how ethnic conflicts can set in and degenerate into violence big enough to engulf a country. Slobodan Milošević was able to stir nationalist emotions among the Serbs and, within a few years, a once-united country became notorious for conflicts that led to the death of an estimated 140,000 people. The term “ethnic cleansing” was, in fact, first popularised during these events to describe what befell the Bosniak and Croatian citizens.

People who have lived together for decades if not centuries could gradually turn against each other, not because of class inequalities or ideological differences but due to ethnic and/or religious rivalries — which, studies show, have inspired more civil wars in recent history. Afghanistan. Ethiopia. Iraq. Lebanon. Myanmar. Rwanda. Sri Lanka. Sudan. Syria. Ukraine. Yemen. The pattern repeats itself.

In Nigeria, there are about 400 ethnic groups.

The problem is, however, not the sheer number of ethnic groups present within a country but how they organise politically as well as their relative levels of access to power. Walter calls this factionalism and summarises it with two questions: “Did political parties in a country break down along ethnic, religious, or racial lines, and did they try to exclude one another from power?”

After anocracy, factionalism (unyielding, identity-based politics) is the best way to predict where war is likely to spring up. It gets worse when the people lose confidence in their leaders and feel uncertain about their future. So they become easily manipulated by ethnic entrepreneurs like Milošević who promise to protect their interests and traditions, especially from rival groups allegedly plotting against them. The fault lines become even more volatile when ethnic groups are roughly divided along religious, geographic, and economic lines as well.

To some extent, this rings true for Nigeria where different ethnic groups are generally identified with certain religions, especially the Hausa-Fulani in the North and the Igbo in the Southeast. Within specific states too, the followers of different religions often cluster together in different regions.

The political system is, however, possibly not as divided as it was, for example, in the First and Second Republics. And this is why party defections, or “cross-carpeting” as Nigerians call it, are extremely common. Generally, politicians do not feel tied to certain parties simply because of their ethnicity but join whichever platform offers them better chances of clinching or staying in power.

There are regulations that have helped to quieten regional political agitations too.

Political parties are lawfully required to be open to every Nigerian who may want to join, must be headquartered in the federal capital, and must have members and offices in at least two-thirds of all the states. The party’s branding can also not be associated with an ethnic group, religion, or person.

Currently, the two major political parties in the country are transethnic. Back in 2007, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) had executive power in 31 states, having dominance across the country except in the Northeast where the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) had equal influence. Now the tide has turned in favour of the All Progressives Congress (APC), which emerged in 2013 after a merger of three opposition parties. The APC controls 22 states and the PDP 13, especially in the South-south and Southwest.

III: When sons of the soil start losing grip

This part of the book helps us to understand why some ethnic groups are likelier than others to take up arms. There may be hundreds of different tribes in a country or tens of religions and only a few will ever breed ethnoreligious militias. Scholars find that the reason is often a fall from grace of sort.

When conflict broke out in the Mindanao region of the Philippines in the late 1960s, it was under a set of familiar circumstances: President Ferdinand Marcos had weakened the democratic institutions and ruled as a dictator, the country was deeply factionalised, and the Muslim-majority Moro people felt their influence slipping away as Christian Filipino settlers outnumbered them and gained more access to land resources and administrative power.

The same can be said about the Serbs of old Yugoslavia or the Sunnis of Iraq.

“The ethnic groups that start wars are those claiming that the country ‘is or ought to be theirs’,” notes Walter. “Human beings hate to lose… People may tolerate years of poverty, unemployment, and discrimination. They may accept shoddy schools, poor hospitals, and neglected infrastructure. But there is one thing they will not tolerate: losing status in a place they believe is theirs.”

There are several examples of this dynamic playing out in Nigeria as well.

Within just six days in the second week of Sept. 2001, over 1,000 people were killed and tens of thousands of others displaced in Jos, North-central Nigeria. The locals, comprising a Christian majority and Muslim minority, had coexisted so peacefully in the previous years that one resident had observed in shock: “If this can happen in Jos, nowhere is safe anymore.”

The conflict, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said, “stemmed from a longstanding battle for control of political power and economic rivalry between different ethnic groups and between those labelled ‘indigenous’ or ‘non-indigenous’ inhabitants of the area.”

The last straw was the controversial appointment of a Hausa Muslim politician, Mukhtar Muhammad, as the poverty eradication coordinator in Jos North — signalling to the original inhabitants that they were fast losing control and influence.

The trend of indigenes treating settlers with suspicion is not new in Nigeria. In one interview granted by former Premier of the Northern region Ahmadu Bello in 1964, for instance, he emphasised that it was important to him for all important civil service positions to be held by Northerners. “If we can’t get a Northerner, then we take an expatriate like yourself on contract,” he told a British journalist. “If we can’t, then we can employ another Nigerian but on contract too.”

On a national scale, a cursory look at a list of Nigeria’s past heads of state shows that many ethnic groups have not been well represented. There is the added problem of people from minority tribes being perceived as representing the majority ethnic groups they share most semblance with.

So, it’s logical to assume that if voting patterns change in a way that favours underrepresented groups in the future, this could worsen tensions in the country.

While countries like Tanzania alternate their presidency and prime ministerial office between the Muslims and Christians, in Nigeria what we have are only unenforceable and sometimes disregarded party zoning policies. What the law provides for is the federal character principle which regulates appointive public offices.

Towards the end of the chapter, Walter states that there’s hardly any correlation between income inequalities per se and conflicts. But then it is still important to pay attention when a group of people complain of economic discrimination.

“Sons of the soil tend to be disproportionately affected by these tectonic shifts [of modernisation and globalisation]: They frequently live in rural areas, far from a country’s economic, cultural, and political centres. They also tend to be poorer and less educated, and so more vulnerable to competition … As the world moves on without them, they feel forgotten and ignored.”B.F. Walter

We see a classic example of this in the raging herder-farmer crises as well as the rise of Fulani militias. As the country develops and industrialises, the nomadic herder does not have access to the same number of opportunities as the average Nigerian and this is one of the grievances fueling the conflict.

“The reason [I went into armed violence] is that we have been neglected,” one of the militia leaders told journalists last year. “This country is rich with natural resources, but we [the Fulani] have not been educated, we are not protected, we get killed, but we are always reported as the aggressors. We are never considered in anything … They stopped looking after the Fulani. Their forests and grazing areas were taken over.”

IV: Pushed to the wall

We travel back in time to 17th-century northern Ireland when British colonialists encouraged Scottish Protestants to settle in an area dominated by Irish Catholics. By the final decade of that century, the population tide had turned in favour of the new settlers. Soon, the Protestants were the prominent faces in government, schools, industries, the justice system, and so on.

Eventually, with Ireland gaining independence outside of this region in 1922, the Irish Catholics of Northern Ireland became a minority group in their own land. They became systematically marginalised and were treated like second-class citizens. All the major conflict triggers were present: “partial democracy, competing identity-based factions, and a deeply rooted native population that was excluded from politics.”

But the war did not really break out until the Catholics saw that the British government was not particularly keen on improving their conditions and when it did intervene, it was with a show of force that further victimised them.

Walter points out that with the loss of hope in the political system comes the rise of extremists who offer alternatives, and such hopelessness often comes after failed peaceful protests or when a downgraded ethnic group loses an election. Similar public disillusionments had preceded the outbreak of wars in Syria and Israeli-occupied Palestine.

Looking for examples of protests that have been met with excessive brutality in Nigeria’s recent history? There are plenty.

Between 2015 and 2016, Nigerian soldiers killed at least 150 peaceful pro-Biafra protesters, according to Amnesty International, “including at least 60 people shot dead in the space of two days in connection with events to mark Biafra Remembrance Day”. Four years later, the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) launched a militant arm that has since wreaked great havoc in the region.

The government has responded with force too to several demonstrations by members of the Islamic Movement of Nigeria (IMN) since 2015 when 347 members of the group were extrajudicially killed and their leader, Ibrahim El-Zakzaky, was arrested. The crackdowns following the initial massacre are said to have led to over one hundred deaths as of 2018. The following year, the government banned the movement, unpopularly classifying it as a terror group — just as it had done for IPOB in 2017.

Perhaps the government crackdown most vivid in the minds of Nigerians is the one that took place in Oct. 2020 following anti-police brutality ‘End SARS’ demonstrations. Soldiers had fired into a crowd of peaceful protesters at the Lekki toll-gate in Lagos. Estimates of deaths range between 10 and 20. A government panel later confirmed that nine people were killed, four presumed dead, and 35 others injured.

In all these cases, including the 2012 Occupy Nigeria protests during which 17 people were killed, no one has been held responsible for the murders.

This pattern of highhandedness and unwillingness on the government’s part to dialogue with aggrieved citizens has only succeeded in promoting an atmosphere of despair. One survey released this year showed that 95 per cent of Nigerian youth thought the country was moving in the wrong direction — the worst out of the 15 countries featured. Last year, seven out of 10 Nigerians said they wished to emigrate and 41 per cent said they no longer believed in the country’s future.

“Citizens can absorb a lot of pain. They will accept years of discrimination and poverty and remain quiet, enduring the ache of slow decline,” says Walter. “What they can’t take is the loss of hope. It’s when a group looks into the future and sees nothing but additional pain that they start to see violence as their only path to progress.”

V: Social media as a fuel

If you need an example of how much havoc the internet can cause when abused, Walter tells us to look no further than Myanmar.

Between 2011, when the ruling junta handed over to civilian authorities, and 2015, internet penetration had gone from a mere 1 per cent to 22 per cent. Facebook became a sensation, but it also became a way for Buddhist nationalists to target the minority Muslim population and share hateful, inciteful, and sensational posts. It became a new battleground for a century-old conflict. Before long, violence broke out.

More people gained access to Facebook when it became virtually free thanks to a new phone company and then the situation got worse. But, for a long time, Facebook turned a blind eye to how its platform was fuelling violence in the country.

Ultimately, thousands of Rohingya Muslims were killed, thousands of women and children were raped, and nearly a million became refugees.

Because of the algorithms that sustain them, social media platforms seem to promote false and outrageous posts far more than accurate ones, and this is why they contribute to escalating crisis situations.

“As social media penetrated countries and gained a larger share of people’s attention, a clear pattern emerged: ethnic factions grew, social divisions widened, resentment at immigrants increased, bullying populists got elected, and violence began to increase,” observes Walter.

“Open, unregulated social media platforms turned out to be the perfect accelerant for the conditions that lead to civil war … This is, of course, because myth, emotion, and the politics of grievance — all of which drive factionalism — make for incredibly engaging content.”

At the beginning of this year, there were over 109 million internet users in Nigeria — more than half of the population. Of those, there were about 33 million social media users. But, two decades ago, only 1 per cent of the population had access to the internet. A decade ago, only 16 per cent.

Already, we are seeing how social media platforms in Nigeria are spreading misinformation and hate speeches to bigger audiences and how this can lead to increased violence in already troubled places. A 2018 BBC report showed how misleading pictures shared on Facebook led to retaliatory attacks in Gashish, Plateau State, leading to the death of 11 people. “As soon as we saw those images, we wanted to just strangle any Fulani man standing next to us,” a Berom youth leader said to the news outlet.

Other pieces of misinformation shared on the internet have the potential to trigger similar results, such as this one about hundreds of Igbo travellers being burnt alive in Jos or this one about people being forcefully converted to Islam in Niger or this one that claims Nigeria is the country with the highest number of people killed because they are Christian.
What else are we missing?

Though Nigeria is home to different conflict situations, they may not necessarily qualify as civil wars. A civil war, according to the European Union Institute for Security Studies, is different from isolated acts of terrorism, riots, civil unrest, genocide or a revolution and requires a minimum level of coordination.

It could also be that the authorities are reluctant to use the expression because of the broader political and military implications.

Asides from the issues mentioned before, there are other developments in Nigeria that leave a bitter taste in the mouth, especially for people studying conflict patterns. Jihadi terrorists’ expansion beyond the Northeast. Separatist agitators waging war and conducting not only well-planned attacks but also an impressive propaganda campaign. Increasing calls for civilians to own firearms. And upcoming general elections with candidates who seem desperate for votes and victory.

The numbers are scary too. According to surveys conducted by the World Bank and the Credendo Group, Nigeria is both the 10th most politically unstable country and the country with the 19th highest risk for political violence.

It is as if the government’s lukewarm approach to addressing the problems is rooted in the illusion that it is impossible for Nigeria to fail or that the country is immune to ruin. As former United States Ambassador to Nigeria, John Campbell, puts it in his book, it’s like “Nigerians have mastered the art of dancing on the precipice without falling over.”

“Many of the elite are still convinced that Nigeria is ‘too big to fail.’ Such a view encourages the elites’ unwillingness to address the issues that so trouble the country and may even promote their irresponsible behaviour, such as the manipulation of ethnic or religious conflict for their own narrow political ends, over which they soon lose control.”John Campbell, Nigeria: Dancing on the Brink (2010)

Meanwhile, in her closing chapter, Walter leaves the reader with a comforting statistic, which is that less than 4 per cent of the countries that tick all the boxes for war actually descend into armed conflict in any given year.

“But where they do happen, they tend to repeat themselves,” she adds grimly. This, she says, is what’s known as the conflict trap, countries going through a cycle of multiple civil wars.

Thankfully, there’s a solution: working towards more transparent and participatory political environments and reinforcing institutional restraints on the power of the executive arm.

It is simply impossible to compress the wisdom of this book into an article of only a few thousand words. There are countless other warnings and observations made by the author that seems to mirror the reality in Nigeria and in other parts of the world.

If more people read its contents, it becomes easier for us to hear the warning bells of war so we can prevent catastrophe before it grows big enough to consume us.

READ ORIGINAL STORY HERE