THE Green Pimpernel was what the Holy Ghost missionary priest Father Tony Byrne was known as during the Nigerian civil war of 30 years ago. The role of the Irish priests and their efforts on behalf of the starving Igbos created huge controversy at the time as both western and African governments opposed the rebels in principle and supported Lagos. Indeed when the State papers for 1966 were opened last January under the 30 year rule, 38 files, all from the Department of Foreign Affairs and covering the period 1966-70, were withheld. Thirty-two related to Biafra.
Now Father Byrne has written about his experiences. Airlift To Biafra, Breaching The Blockade will be launched in Dublin on Friday by Frederick Forsyth. In his foreword, the war reporter turned novelist says the 30-month war became one of the most emotive causes of the latter half of this century. Biafra was the first of the African mass starvations to reach the people of Western Europe by television. "Towards the crisis poured a welter of outsiders trying to help, or just help themselves: politicians, journalists, camera-men, philanthropists, doctors, pilots and pundits; along with mercenaries, arms dealers, oilmen, conmen and call-girls. No author could have invented such a cast-list."
Aid reaching the dying children, he says, was devoid of official backing, something that had never happened before or since and the task of keeping them alive while the fighting raged was taken up by the churches. Among. the most effective "fixers" of the airlift, says Forsyth, was the one his exasperated opponents in high places called the Green Pimpernel.