The cargo plane flew low over southeastern Nigeria, its lights on, its radio off, its pilot navigating by the glow of refinery flares along the coast. Somewhere below, the runway was dark. The pilot let go of his wheels and nosed the plane down, seemingly into zero.
On the ground, a group of boys suddenly ran out of the bush to light rows of kerosene lamps to guide the craft toward a small airstrip only 75 feet wide and 1,200 feet long. On board was 26 tonnes of antibiotics, flour and salted fish and 34-year-old Irish priest Dermot Doran.
It was December 1968, and Nigeria was in the midst of a civil war. After nearly a decade of genocide against them, the Igbo people of the southeastern states of the country formed the independent Republic of Biafra. The Nigerian army immediately attacked, and it soon had a blockade around the region, leaving 14 million inhabitants to starve.
Father Doran was one of 1,000 priests and nuns, mostly from Ireland, working in the region when the fighting broke out. Overnight, he pivoted from his peacetime roles as an educator to help workers in one of the worst humanitarian crises of the 20th century—Father Doran was a high school principal.
In total, the Biafran airlift brought 60,000 tons of aid to the region, the largest mobilization of civilian aid in history at the time. Between 500,000 and two million non-combatants died due to the blockade – but an estimated one million survived by airlift.
Father Doran was its linchpin. Infiltrating in and out of Biafra, he discovered the first airplanes and recruited the first pilots. He went to New York City to arrange a first aid shipment. He mapped out the logistics of transporting thousands of tons of supplies from Europe and North America south to Gabon and Nigeria to airfields on the Portuguese-ruled island of Sao Tome.
He went from there to Biafra with several flights, coordinated supply distribution, held the locals and other priests, then set out to tell the world what he had learned. He befriended the news media, befriending Harry Reasoner of CBS and the BBC reporter Frederick Forsyth, whose experience in Biafra inspired his transition to writing political thrillers.
Father Doran testified before the United States Senate, Senator Edward M. Kennedy made a lasting impression on him, becoming Biafra’s leading advocate in Congress.
“He never did anything halfway,” Frank Carlin, retired overseas director of Catholic Relief Services, said in a phone interview. “He was always programming and planning, then he came back and told the story.”
Father Doran died in Dublin on 19th May. He is 88 years old. His niece Kathy Doran said the cause was myelodysplastic syndromes, a rare form of blood cancer.
His death in hospital was not widely reported at the time.
Father Doran arrived in Nigeria in 1961, shortly after being ordained as a member of the Holy Ghost Fathers, a Roman Catholic congregation also known as the Spiritans. The congregation has long had a strong presence in Nigeria, particularly in the southeast, where the Igbo population is largely Christian.
He had worked in developing countries before – he spent several years as a teacher in Trinidad – but he fell in love with Nigeria, and especially Igbo culture, with its rich storytelling traditions and history of intense suffering under English rule. A piece with the Irish experience.
“I was sent there, and they became my people,” he said in an interview for the 2018 documentary “Biafra: Forgotten Mission,” directed by Brendan Culleton and Irina Maldia.
The effects of the blockade were immediate and devastating, especially after Nigeria seized the oil-rich coast of Biafra in early 1968. Without it, the children quickly developed kwashiorkor, a protein deficiency that caused their stomachs to swell. At the worst part of the crisis, in late 1968, the Red Cross estimated that about 10,000 people were dying a day.
“It’s something you never expect to meet in your life,” Father Doran said in the documentary.
Nigeria was supported in the war by Britain, which it once ruled as a colony, and the two countries tried to maintain a news blackout. But by late 1967 Father Doran had made several trips to Lisbon and New York, and he and others had succeeded in smuggling journalists into the region to report on the unfolding crisis.
Biafra became an international rallying cry. Thousands took part in protests in London and Paris. In June 1969, a Columbia University student named Bruce Mayrock set himself on fire in front of the United Nations; He died the next day. In Britain, John Lennon returned his MBE medal to Queen Elizabeth II, partly to protest his country’s role in the blockade.
More aid agencies came. Roman Catholic, Protestant and Jewish groups, including Catholic Relief Services, came together under an umbrella effort called Joint Church Aid, which collected supplies for shipment by airlift. Father Doran was its relief organizer. The pilots nicknamed it Jesus Christ Airlines.
“This is a wonderful example of ecumenism,” Father Doran told United Press International in 1969. “We may not agree on theology – but we agree on bread.”
The Biafran Airlift is widely regarded as a watershed moment in international humanitarianism. It was the first time that nonprofits and private citizens led a crisis response.
Although several countries, including the United States and Israel, quietly supported the airlift, it received no official government approval. In New York, Ireland’s ambassador to the United Nations told Father Doran to stay out of Nigeria’s business.
The world came to a standstill when the Nigerian Air Force attacked the airlift, bombed the airfield and destroyed several aircraft, killing 25 crew members.
In a discussion with Father Dermot on the CBS program “The World of Religion,” Nigeria’s ambassador to the United Nations, Edwin Ogebe Ogbu, said the airlift was supporting the rebels and increasing the death toll by escalating the war.
“If you call innocent children and babies a few days old and babies a week or a month old who are dying of hunger – they have no milk, no food – if they are rebels, I don’t know what,” Father Doran said in response.
Michael Dermot Doran was born on September 22, 1934 in Athboy, a town 35 miles northwest of Dublin. His parents, Thomas and Mary Anne (Guinan) Doran, ran a pub; Years later one of Dermot’s brothers, Eamon, founded one of New York City’s most popular Irish bars. He died in 1997.
In addition to his niece Kathy Doran, Father Doran is survived by his sister Mary Mosley; three other nieces, Annemarie Wiley, Jen Mosley and Rosalind Mosley; and five nephews, Hans Doran, Dermot Doran, Eddie Doran, Alan Doran and Paul Doran.
Father Doran entered the Spiritan Novitiate in 1952 and graduated from University College Dublin in 1955 with a degree in philosophy. He spent three years as prefect at St Mary’s College in Port of Spain, Trinidad before returning to Ireland to complete his religious studies. . He was ordained in 1961.
The Biafran War ended in 1970, when Nigeria recaptured the breakaway region and expelled most European missionaries.
Father Doran was then assigned to work as a communications officer with Catholic Relief Services in New York, sending him to disaster zones around the world. In the early 1970s, when he was sent to Bangladesh and India, he became close to Mother Teresa, who invited her to deliver mass to her sisters in Calcutta (now Kolkata).
In 1975 he moved to Toronto, where he became director of another aid organization, Volunteer International Christian Service. He also served as Director of Brottier Refugee Services, a resettlement agency, before retiring in Ireland in 2008.
“Dermot was everywhere,” said Mr. Carlin of Catholic Relief Services. “He got more out of a day than anyone I know.”
