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397. National Intelligence Estimate/1/

NIE 64.2-68

Washington, May 2, 1968.

/1/Source: Central Intelligence Agency: Job 79-R01012A, ODDI Registry of NIE and SNIE Files. Secret; Controlled Dissem. According to a note on the cover sheet, the estimate was submitted by Director of Central Intelligence Richard M. Helms, and concurred in by the U.S. Intelligence Board on May 2.

CONSEQUENCES OF CIVIL STRIFE IN NIGERIA

Conclusions

A. The Federal Military Government's (FMG) forces clearly hold the upper hand in the Nigerian civil war and a military victory for Biafra seems highly unlikely. We cannot, however, rule out a settlement which left a Biafra with a large degree of autonomy. The Ibos, who dominate Biafra, are resisting stubbornly because they believe that Federal forces are intent upon exterminating them or at least reducing them to subjugation in a reunited Nigeria.

B. Whatever the outcome of the war, we believe that political instability will plague Nigeria for some considerable time to come, and that traditional tribal and regional dissension throughout the country will persist. The new internal division of the country into 12 states will exacerbate the divisive trends. Moreover, we see no national leadership in sight capable of winning the broad popular support or otherwise exercising the national control needed to deal effectively with the complicated tasks of political, social, and economic reconstruction.

C. The civil war and the preceding months of confusion have virtually halted economic development in areas controlled by the FMG, and have drastically disrupted Biafra's economy. If the FMG achieves a military victory, it would face complex problems of economic and political reconstruction, and would seek considerable outside help. Although it could expect large petroleum earnings, resumption of economic development will depend on political and security conditions. The economic outlook for a reunited Nigeria over the next several years appears dimmer now than it did a few years ago.

D. The position of the Soviets has improved as a result of Moscow's promptness in providing military equipment to the FMG; this is likely to persist. The US has lost influence primarily because the FMG resents the US policy of noninvolvement in the civil war. After the war, Nigeria is likely to follow a foreign policy more nonaligned and less pro-Western than in the past, and the competition among foreign powers will be a disruptive factor on the Nigerian scene.

[Here follows the Discussion section of the estimate.]

398. Memorandum From Edward Hamilton of the National Security Council Staff to the President's Special Assistant (Rostow)/1/

Washington, August 12, 1968.

/1/Source: Johnson Library, National Security File, Country File, Nigeria, Vol. II, Memos & Miscellaneous, 8/67-1/69. Secret.

WWR:

SUBJECT
Status Report on Nigeria

I thought it might be useful if I elaborated on the points I was making this morning. The Nigerian problem has not changed much in your absence, except to get progressively worse. It now stands as follows:

1. The two sides are in conference in Addis under the auspices of the OAU and the Chairmanship of Haile Selassie. The Feds have tabled a 9-point peace plan which, though still demanding that the Biafrans renounce secession, is by far the most realistic proposal yet offered. The proposal promises outside truce supervision by a neutral force (perhaps composed of Indians, Canadians and Ethiopians) an Ibo-dominated government for the Ibo heartland, a largely Ibo police force in Ibo areas, guarantee against a flood of Federal troops into Iboland, and a somewhat qualified promise of amnesty for the rebels. The Biafrans have flatly and publicly rejected this scheme, because it would require them to give up secession. As of Friday night, our people in Addis thought there was little hope that the talks would survive this week.

2. However, H.I.M. took things in hand and made it very difficult for either side to walk out. They are meeting again today on the basis of his secret proposals (to which we are not privy). Our betting is that Selassie is trying to get agreement on relief as a separate matter from the political settlement, which apparently is not yet possible.

3. We are doing everything we can--which is really very little--to help the Addis talks along. The President approved and sent a public message to H.I.M. before the start of the talks, as well as a confidential message to Houphouet-Boigny, who is likely to be the strongest influence on the rebels. We also made a demarche with Gowon in Lagos. We have now sent contingency messages from Rusk to H.I.M., to be delivered if the talks break down, which press for agreement on relief whatever the status of the political issues.

4. On the relief front, there has been little but frustration. Estimates of the extent of suffering vary, but the range (e.g., 400-600 per day passing the point of no return of protein starvation) are sufficiently horrible to make the differences meaningless. The Red Cross has been flying 16-20 tons of food a night in its lone DC-4 (3 more DC-4's are due soon). Even these flights have now been stopped, however, because Biafran arms planes have taken advantage of the reduced flak Gowon puts up against mercy flights, so that Gowon has stopped making any special provisions and the Red Cross has had some near misses. Thus, at the moment there is no relief food at all getting into Biafra.

5. Nor, I am afraid, is there a dependable mechanism for getting food in if the political settlement came tomorrow. The Red Cross has been woefully slow and ineffective in arranging the logistics, and I am afraid our Mission in Lagos is too sensitive to the feelings of the Federal Government to have done much pushing.

6. Today, therefore, we launched Bob Moore, Joe Palmer's Deputy, to Geneva to try to (a) get the Red Cross thinking in terms of the airlift proposition I mentioned this morning, and (b) get the machine built which could provide the food if the politics will allow. Moore's dispatch was made with a reasonable fanfare, which should help some at home.

7. The constraints on relief remain unchanged. The Nigerians will allow a land corridor, but not an airlift unless we can guarantee it won't be used to aid arms shipments to Biafra. Biafrans will accept food by air but not by land, on the ground that any food which passes through Federal territory is likely to be poisoned. The Red Cross will not engage in any relief operation which does not have the explicit approval and full cooperation of both sides.

8. There is one possible break this afternoon. The Red Cross thinks Ojukwu is about to agree to set aside a particular airstrip solely for relief use. The Red Cross has instructed its Lagos man to try that out on Gowon. This may work, although Gowon is under immense pressure from his hawks (which include almost the entire Hausa population) not to allow any relief, particularly any which involved air traffic into Biafra.

9. All of this is happening in the shadow of what is pretty clearly a buildup for a new Federal offensive designed to take the 10,000 square miles still held by the rebels. Joe Palmer, who has just returned from Nigeria, thinks this will happen within the next couple of weeks. There are also mounting reports on increased Biafran military activity, allegedly (though probably falsely) led by French officers. If either or both sides take the offensive, the relief problem becomes almost impossible. We have had a strong go at the Feds on this point, but their answer is a forbidding "The other side has left us little choice."

10. The public pressure here mounts daily. Biafran starvation has been front page news almost constantly while you were away, and I have learned this afternoon that Time now plans to do next week's cover story on this problem. American opinion is heavily pro-Biafran, though without much knowledge of the facts. Both the Vice President and Senator McCarthy have issued very strong statements urging that we "cut red tape" and "do more than futile gestures."

Unless Haile Selassie can bring off a miracle, we're clearly down to the nitty gritty on this one with no solution in sight. Gowon cannot accept Biafran secession and hold his Government and the rest of the Federation together. Ojukwu, bolstered by De Gaulle and Houphouet-Boigny, still believes he is better off holding out than allowing his troops to be disarmed and risking slaughter of the Ibos. The Red Cross is slow, timid and inept. The Brits are acting as though they have decided that the only solution is a military solution imposed by Gowon. The French are actively pro-Biafran. The OAU is pro-Nigerian but split by the fact that four of its members recognize Biafra. The Russians are largely disinterested and identify with the Nigerians to the degree that they are interested. U Thant and the Pope make strong statements but are largely powerless.

Our own approach has been and is to (a) stimulate the Red Cross to serve as the international cover for a relief operation; (b) press, largely confidentially, on both sides to agree to a settlement, or at least to a relief agreement; (c) offer any and all help necessary to make a relief operation work; (d) push particularly hard on Gowon to dramatize the fact that it is not the Federal Government that is keeping the food out of Biafra; and (e) work out the logistics of the relief scheme so that it is ready to move as soon as political arrangements are made.

As I told you this morning, my own view is that our best hope is to persuade Gowon to permit air drops of food from planes departing from Federal territory. This would allow him to inspect cargoes to be sure there are no arms; dramatize the fact that he wants to aid the hungry; and it would actually move sizeable amounts of food into Biafra. From here on in it's a race between this scheme and the military offensive we think is planned.

EH

399. Telegram From the Department of State to the Embassy in Nigeria/1/

Washington, August 15, 1968, 1553Z.

/1/Source: Johnson Library, National Security File, Special Head of State Correspondence File, Nigeria-Presidential Correspondence. Confidential; Flash. Drafted by Smith, cleared by Hamilton at the White House and Katzenbach, and approved by Palmer. Also sent to London. Repeated to Addis Ababa and the U.S. Mission at Geneva.

221355. Please deliver urgently following personal message from President to General Gowon./2/

/2/Telegram 11748 from Lagos, August 15, reported the delivery of the President's message to Gowon that day. Gowon told the Ambassador that he had already decided that the FMG could not accept the ICRC's proposal for a relief airstrip because the airstrip that Ojukwu had offered was already under attack and likely to fall into FRG hands soon and because he did not like the way the ICRC had handled the matter, attempting to "face the FMG with fait accompli." (Department of State, Central Files, POL 27-9 BIAFRA-NIGERIA)

1. "Your Excellency: I have been kept fully informed of the efforts of the International Committee of the Red Cross to make arrangements for the supply of urgently needed food and other relief supplies to the civilian victims of the Nigerian war. We have supported those efforts in the past and continue to do so now.

"Knowing that you share my own deep concern over the suffering of those innocent persons, I feel justified in addressing this personal appeal to you to give your urgent agreement to the ICRC proposals for an air mercy corridor. Hopefully, this can be followed by rapid agreement on a land corridor.

"Your Excellency, the conscience of the world has been deeply moved by reports of starvation in Nigeria, and tons of food are already in position near the most needy areas. The world will not easily understand any failure on the part of those most concerned to agree to effective, international, humanitarian arrangements to alleviate this suffering. I therefore most earnestly urge you to make it possible for relief supplies to move rapidly into the hands of the needy by facilitating the establishment of this relief corridor on an urgent basis.

"I trust that I need hardly add, Your Excellency, that in sending you this message I am motivated solely by compelling humanitarian concerns.

Sincerely yours, LBJ."

2. For London: Inform appropriate HMG officials of above message and urge that UK make parallel demarche.

Rusk

400. Editorial Note

At a meeting of the National Security Council on September 25, 1968, Representative to the United Nations George W. Ball briefly reviewed issues likely to arise at the forthcoming meeting of the U.N. General Assembly. Notes of the meeting prepared by W. Thomas Johnson of the White House staff record Ball's comments under the heading of "Biafra" as follows:

"Hardships and suffering are enormous.

"Both sides are willing to sacrifice millions of lives to win political position.

"Very little food getting in.

"Africans do not want the U.N. in on it--they say it's an African problem.

"I propose the President designate somebody to deal with humanitarian problems.

"There is great pressure to do something on it. We must help the ICRC and other international agencies."

There was no further discussion concerning Nigeria. (Johnson Library, Tom Johnson's Notes of Meetings, September 25, 1968, National Security Council)

401. Memorandum From Harold H. Saunders of the National Security Council Staff to the President's Special Assistant (Rostow)/1/

Washington, November 14, 1968.

/1/Source: Johnson Library, National Security File, Country File, Nigeria, Vol. II, Memos & Miscellaneous, 8/67-1/69. Confidential.

SUBJECT
The Next Step in Nigerian Relief

It is worth a moment of your time to catch up on the Nigerian situation. Joe Palmer is back from Africa and Nick Katzenbach is engaging himself more deeply than ever. They may be approaching a sharp policy disagreement.

For the past several weeks, we have been struggling with a situation with two major elements:

1. The great humanitarian concern for starving people, mostly in Biafra. Our body politic from Ted Kennedy to the major religious-relief organizations has shown increasingly vocal concern not only over the present situation but over a possible major carbohydrate famine beginning in December. Against this background, we in the White House and people at the Katzenbach level in State have become deeply concerned over the thought of Lyndon Johnson leaving the White House with this kind of seemingly preventable disaster at its height.

2. The work-a-day problems of getting aid to the people who need it. AF and AID have pointed all along to the very real difficulties of getting the relief agencies to pull together and of persuading the two sides in the civil war to let them operate as freely as necessary. However, we seem to have reached a point where it is impossible to get either AF or AID to think beyond current limitations, so our recognition of real practical problems has assumed an overtone of pure negativism, at least in the public eye.

Nick Katzenbach's response to this dilemma has been to set up this morning a working group that will report directly to him its analysis of a wide-range of new ideas--some wild, some not so wild./2/ The group will be mostly AF and AID types but Roger/3/ will sit in for us.

/2/The working group submitted a memorandum from Palmer to the Under Secretary on "U.S. Alternatives in the Nigerian Crisis," December 1. (Department of State, Central Files, POL 27 BIAFRA-NIGERIA)

/3/Roger Morris of the National Security Council Staff.

We don't predict startling success because the problem really is a tough one. However, I think we have done about as well as we could hope to in getting the Department to take a fresh look at what is already a tragic situation and could get a lot worse.

You should be aware that Roger deserves full credit for having pushed the issue to this point. Using me as a sounding board, he has carried the ball in engaging the Katzenbach staff and in letting AF know that we just couldn't afford to let this go on any longer.

Hal

402. Memorandum From Roger Morris of the National Security Council Staff to the President's Special Assistant (Rostow)/1/

Washington, December 24, 1968.

/1/Source: Johnson Library, National Security File, Country File, Nigeria, Vol. II, Memos & Miscellaneous, 8/67-1/69. Secret.

W.W.R.

SUBJECT
Nigeria at Tuesday Lunch

Secretary Rusk may raise Nigerian relief at lunch today, recommending that we provide 8 Globemaster transports (1948-vintage) to the international relief effort. Here are the facts:

1. We have a formal request from the church voluntary agencies--Catholics, Protestants and Jews--for 6 of these aircraft. Their application has political clout behind it, including Senators Kennedy, McCarthy, Mondale, Pearson; Speaker McCormack, and several other Congressmen.

2. Excess Globemasters are available, and Defense is ready to turn them over to anybody who can use them. The relief agencies have people to fly these planes. The airfields they are now using can easily accommodate Globemasters (where C-130's are a problem); and these planes would roughly double their current transport capacity per flight.

The voluntary agencies and their champions on the Hill are quite aware of all these facts.

3. Providing the planes would be a straight transfer of ownership. (Defense would "sell" the aircraft to the agencies at scrap prices, and we would juggle relief contributions, in effect, to pay ourselves.) No U.S. military personnel would be involved in any part of the relief operation of the aircraft in or around Nigeria. The transaction would be entirely routine on the grounds that these aircraft are available to any reputable buyer. Our sales contract would stipulate pro forma that the planes would not be used for military purposes.

4. The only real problem here is with the Federal Military Government. They are bound to object to our giving planes, if only because they regard the voluntary agencies as pro-Biafran and sometime gun runners. But everyone agrees that this is manageable:

(a) We have come up with 8 planes rather than 6 and can afford to split the contribution between the voluntary agencies and Red Cross, which puts a better face on it for the Feds.

(b) The voluntary agencies are ready to accept reasonable inspection arrangements to ensure that their Globemasters are flying strictly relief.

In any case, we are persuaded that it is much easier to justify Globemasters to the Feds than to explain the refusal to Kennedy, McCormack et al. And it's certainly preferable to explain to anybody a simple transaction now of old airplanes rather than U.S.-manned C-130's a month from now.

This deal makes eminent good sense. It will cost us nothing, can save lives, and will, for the time being at least, lessen the Congressional heat here at home. Having nursed this thing personally through the bureaucracy, I recommend you add a strong second to the Secretary, if he raises it./2/

/2/An attached memorandum from Katzenbach to the President, dated December 24, indicates Johnson's approval.

Where We Stand Otherwise

Our first priority is to try to get some food in during this Christmas truce. But the prospects are bleak. The Feds have flatly turned down the Emperor's appeal, and Gowon is "too busy" to see our man today in Lagos. I'll be huddling again today with Katzenbach and his people to go over ways to break (or publicly condemn) this logjam in Lagos. Meanwhile, there is also the following:

--Haile Selassie has asked us for our advice and help in following up his cease-fire plea. We are telling him today (i) he should lean hard once more on Gowon to reciprocate Biafra's de facto acceptance of the truce; (ii) the Emperor should push both sides on the opening of daylight relief flights and a land corridor (there are up to 2-3,000 tons of food we might get in overland in a matter of hours if both sides cooperate); and (iii) the Emperor might consider calling a conference of interested powers--the U.S., U.K., France, Soviet Union, relief agencies, the Feds and Biafrans--to get more resources and more coordination for the relief problem. The idea of a conference is just a long shot, but it has the advantage of putting some parties--the Soviets and in part the Feds--on the hook.

The Emperor can't do much, of course, so long as the Feds are absolutely inflexible on the cease-fire question.

The Biafrans have come to us quietly about outfitting an airfield to be used exclusively for relief, in addition to the one they now have, which takes both relief and arms flights. There are manifold problems with this. But we're quietly offering to send in an expert from one of the relief agencies to see what they have in mind. We're telling the Biafrans, as we tell everybody, that we are closing no options on saving lives.

If the situation goes true to form, everything above will be over-taken by events 24 hours from now. But I'll keep you informed as sensibly as possible over the next few days.

Roger

[End ]

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