A Lisbon diary
NIGERIA AUBERON WAUGH
Lisbon—This city has been the scene of some fairly intense diplomatic activity by the British Embassy to prevent Portuguese tolerance of the mercy flights to Biafra. These flights—they also include arms, journalists and missionaries in their cargoes—are all organised by the private airline of the mysterious Mr Hank Wharton, from his suite in the Tivoli Hotel. There is no other way in or out of Biafra, and he organises not only the arms runs but also, using the same three ancient Constellations which undertake the seventeen-hour trip from Lisbon, a shuttle service of food and medical supplies for Caritas, the Catholic agency, from Sao Tome, the Portuguese island some 300 miles south of Nigeria, and the now discontinued Red Cross flights from Fernando Po, the Spanish island just off the Biafran coast.
While 3,000 people a day are starving to death in Biafran refugee camps, it is heartening to report that British diplomatic activity in this field, as in many others nowadays, has been totally ineffective. A far more sinister initiative has been seen in the arrival of a number of scrUffily-dressed foot-tapping 'spooks,' alleged by some to emanate from the Commonwealth Relations Office in London. These people, it seems, have been offering $200,000 for the delivery of Mr Wharton to Lagos, $100,000 for the destruction of one of his Constellations and $200,000 for the delivery of a plane with cargo to Lagos. The money is to be paid in Frankfurt.
The story is told that when one of Wharton's planes blew up on the airstrip at Bissao, in Portuguese Guinea—the only stop in the flight from Lisbon—its pilot, a South African called Retief, was not to blame for the accident. How- ever, being human, he called in at Frankfurt, where he was indignantly refused any money. Next he re-applied to Wharton for employment, who took him back enthusiastically, but then became a little uneasy about the arrangement. An appointment was arranged to talk things over in Sao Tome, but Retief got wind of it and disappeared into South Africa where Wharton is still looking for him.
Farewell, Fernando Po
The International Red Cross refuses to use a Portuguese base for its relief flights. In Lisbon it is thought that this refusal emanates from a belief that Portugal is neither neutral enough nor respectable enough in Black Africa, but to do the Red Cross justice, I believe there were some awkward scenes when Portugal refused to receive a shipment of goods for Biafra int? Sao Tome which could have been purchased in Sao Tome. But the result of this embargo is that there is a huge build-up of essential medical and food supplies in Fernando Po which can never be moved across to Biafra until—an extremely unlikely eventuality— Lagos allows an air corridor.
The reason why Wharton no longer flies from Fernando Po may seem trivial, but it gives some idea of the logistic difficulties in- volved. The airfield at Fernando Po closes at 6 pm (this, apparently, is immutable) and so planes flying from there must circle for two hours before it is dark enough to make the trip across. Nigerian frontier pilots have flight- interception equipment, but they are not competent to use it because all the fighter pilots were lbos. Their anti-aircraft fire, according to Father Dermot Doran, a Catholic missionary who arrived in Lisbon on his way to London to raise funds, is extremely inaccurate. One rather hopes so. The last plane which Wharton lost—nobody knows whether it was shot down or crashed—was a Red Cross flight from Fernando Po, where there is a large Hausa population; it is felt that Lagos knew of all planes taking off, and had two hours to arrange for their reception. Consequently there are no more flights from Fernando Po, and the entire Red Cross effort is frustrated. Figures of aid received represent no more than crates of supplies which are slowly cooking in Fernando Po.
Black mischief
The party of journalists which included your correspondent was met at Lisbon airport by a Biafran agent who would only give his name as Yussuf. He told us that there was no question of a plane to Biafra until the following night, so he would take us to a hotel, which he accordingly did. Then he apparently forgot the name of the hotel, because the plane left in the early hours without us. Later we learned that the plane had always been ready to go, but the Biafrans could not find the money, and Wharton was not going to let the plane leave until the money was paid--$25,000 for the round trip. In any case, we were called at seven o'clock in the morning, having gone to bed at three, and told that the plane was ready to go. We were met by three smiling Ibo agents, shown a bus which would take us to the plane, ushered through the PIDE passport control, and were just about to leave when one of the agents burst into tears and said he had just heard that
the plane had left. • Disgruntled journalists always provide a certain amount of entertainment—'they should have had a white man at this end,' said one— and by the time we had all moved to the Lisbon Ritz, and your correspondent had resigned himself to sponging off his richer colleagues, it began to look as if there would be a plane quite. soon. We bought vitamin pills, tinned sardines, luncheon meat and sacks of salt for the starving Biafrans ('entertaining Portuguese Foreign Minister'), visited a bar or two ('enter- taining the Portuguese President') and ate what many thought to be their last dinner on earth ('useful contacts') before being told that the aeroplane had developed an oil leak in Bissao, the pilot was tired, or had gone mad, or been shot down, and we must wait yet another night. Your correspondent moved, with his twenty tins of sardines, his luncheon meat, his vitamin pills and his salt, into a somewhat humbler lodging house. Those left at the Ritz began worrying about Niamey, in the Niger Republic. where Colonel Ojukwu was said to be going. and the telephone service broke down between London and Lisbon.
The new alliance
Everyone in Lisbon has his own theory of why Portugal is so well disposed towards Biafra. (The Biafrans have their unofficial embassy in a delightful villa by the Torre de Belem, just outside Lisbon. The drawing room is decorated by maps of Biafra and a splendid golden plaque of Colonel Ojukwu. At one moment, having run out of money during the interminable wait for a plane for Biafra, I threatened to sleep on the embassy sofa, and caused considerable consternation.) There are those who claim that Portugal hopes to cash in on Britain's dismal performance in the unlikely event of Biafra winning, but this seems unconvincing. Portugal is already hopelessly over-committed in Africa, where Mozambique, Angola and Guinea are still regarded as parts of Portugal; an inde- pendent Biafra is scarcely necessary to their defence. There are those who say that Portugal will favour any cause which brings independent Black Africa into discredit, but there are surely less complicated ways of achieving this. My suggestion that Portugal might just possibly be inspired by simple Christian charity brought hoots of derision from the assembled British journalists, although they accepted this sug- gestion readily enough when it was applied to the recognition of Biafra by Nyerere of Tanzania, by Kaunda of Zambia and by the President of the Ivory Coast.
Worse to come
The Biafrans here claim that Gowon has no control over his commanders in the field—most particularly Brigadier Adekunle, in the Port Harcourt district, and Hassan Katsina, his chief of Staff. No agreements reached in Niamey. it is feared, are likely to be honoured by these two, even if Katsina does not take the oppor- tunity of Gowon's absence to stage a coup. Adekunle has announced that he would never be a party to a 'mercy corridor' by land, even if Biafran fears of its impracticability—and interference with the consignments—could be overcome. The great danger at the moment of writing is that English liberal opinion, sickened by what is going on in Biafra, will welcome a Nigerian drive against the three remaining Biafran towns—Aba, Owerri and Umuahia- with the ostensible purpose of ending Biafra's agony. The mortality rate from starvation is bound to increase into the first weeks of September—always the lean period there—but so far as Biafra's agony is concerned, a Nigerian conquest would only mean the beginning. So long as Mr Stewart and the ineffable Lord Shepherd continue to believe only what they wish to believe, there is very little hope that the daily starvation toll of 3,000 can be kept at its present level.
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