On November 29, 2024, the United States of Biafra once again declared their independence from Nigeria. The move comes more than 57 years after the long persecuted and overwhelmingly Christian region first asserted their independence from Nigeria. After that declaration, Nigeria reacted with seeking genocide against Igbo of Biafra, killing more than 5,000,000 outright and then starving three million more in a land and sea blockade. Muhammadu Buhari, one of its perpetrators, used his legacy in Biafra to propel himself twice into the presidency; both times, he unleashed Islamist militias into the region to slaughter Christians.
Biafra deserves independence. It was an ancient kingdom. Travelers and cartographers spoke of Biafra beginning in the 15th century through the 19th century, though the British creation of Nigeria in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries incorporated and forcibly subjugated the Igbo people into the new British colonial project. While Nigerian leaders often embrace the rhetoric of decolonization, they remain oblivious to the fact that many of Nigeria’s peoples—and especially the Igbo who seek Biafra’s restoration—see Nigeria as a colonial project.
Not surprisingly, Nigerian authorities reacted with fury to the reassertion of Biafra’s independence. Nigerian diplomats lobbied to compel Finland to arrest Simon Ekpa. Inside Nigeria, a country whose media freedom falls below Qatar, Serbia, or Haiti, journalists pillory Ekpa’s legitimacy and compel the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) to denounce him while ignoring the IPOB’s demands for a UN-organized referendum for Biafran secession inside Nigeria.
The Nigerian government should not campaign, however. After all, on May 10, 2024, it voted at the United Nations to unilaterally recognize Palestine, a country that never existed and whose territory remains under dispute. The UN vote undermined diplomacy and the rule-of-law as, under the Oslo Accords, Palestinian leaders previously based their autonomy in the Gaza Strip and West Bank on an agreement to negotiate their status and territory with Israel directly, rather than through resource to international bodies.
The same holds true with Spain. In 2017, Spain used force to crush Catalonia’s democratic and peaceful aspirations for independence. Authorities in Barcelona, not without reason, see Madrid as a colonial power forcibly subjugating a region with its own language and culture and ignoring its democratic aspiration for freedom. Yet, Spain also pushed aside the Oslo Accords to recognize Palestine.
Perhaps no country has been as vociferous as Turkey in its recognition and material support for Palestinian statehood, yet Turkey has killed more Kurds than it alleges Israel has killed Palestinians. Advocating for Kurdistan, a region with a distinct language, culture, and long aspirations for autonomy if not independence, will land Turkish Kurds in prison for decades. While Israeli Arabs win elections and serve as mayors (amongst many other positions), the Turkish government repeatedly replaces elected Kurds in order to appoint municipal leaders willing to rubber stamp the Turkish leader’s pronouncement.
Critics may say that the cases are not analogous. They would be right. Palestine has no founder nor history as an independent state. Palestinian identity arose as a reaction to and alongside Zionism, and most of the Arabs who today call themselves Palestinians were recent migrants from Syria who considered themselves Syrian. Yassir Arafat, the founder of the Palestine Liberation Organization whom many Palestinians consider their founding father, was born in Egypt and was actually an Egyptian military officer. Put another way, his origin story was fiction.
The Israel-Palestinian dispute is real, but the territory at its heart is disputed, not occupied because, to occupy territory requires occupying it from a recognized state. If authorities in Abuja, Madrid, or Ankara insist otherwise, then the precedent applies to them as well. Biafra is independent and a rightful state; therefore, by international law, Nigeria is an occupier and Biafra resistance, even violent, is warranted. According to the precedent set by former United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Mary Robinson’s read of international law, Catalonian freedom fighters can legally explode a car bomb in the heart of Madrid and justify it in resistance. The Turks are fortunate that the mainstream Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) today eschews terrorism, for by the precedents embraced by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan himself, actions analogous to Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack on Israel would be perfectly legal for the PKK to undertake in Istanbul.
European, African, and Middle Eastern officials criticized the United States for its dissenting UN General Assembly vote and its refusal to recognize the State of Palestine. Precedent matters, however. Too often, American diplomats eschew debate but, they should not. The fact is Biafrans, Catalans, and Kurds each deserve freedom and self-determination, historically even more so than Palestinians. Washington should call out their oppressors’ hypocrisy and support their aspirations.
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