DURING a full year of civil war in Nigeria, the secessionist state of Biafra has banked more on winning the world's sympathy than a military victory. Last week the Biafrans had an undeniable claim to attention—and to pity. Malnutrition was killing off more Biafrans than the Federal troops who occupy most of their land. The chief killer was the protein- deficiency disease called kwashiorkor, which turns the hair to reddish gold and cruelly swells both limbs and stomachs. Workers of international relief agencies reported that as many as 3,000 Biafrans a day were dying and that total deaths might reach 2,000,000 by the end of August. Though those figures may be exaggerated, it was clear that the war's bitterness, the rigidity and suspicion on both sides, was preventing help from reaching many thousands of innocent noncombatants who are sick and dying.
Federal forces have encircled Biafra, the former eastern region of Nigeria. They have occupied its major cities, blockaded its coasts, and pushed an already-overcrowded population of more than 8,000,000—among them 4,500,000 refugees—into a patch of bush and swampland that is one-fourth the size of Biafra's former territory. The Biafrans, most of whom are Ibo tribesmen, fear that they will be massacred just as thousands of their kinsmen in northern Nigerian cities were killed two years ago. Many are starving, but they refuse to come out of hiding in the bush.
In villages that are nearly deserted, old men and women, along with sickly children, die quietly in their huts. At the missionary hospital in Emekuku, a mob of starving children gathers at the door. The hospital has room for only 100 of them: the strongest-looking children are taken in, and the least hopeful cases turned away. "This started out as an epidemic in March," says a London-trained Biafran doctor, Aaron Ifekwunigwe. "Now it is a catastrophe."
Beer & Cyanide. The Biafrans have little left to eat except fruit and their customary yams and cassavas—and even these starchy staples are becoming scarcer. Unable to ship in supplies, they have for months virtually had to do without the protein-rich dried fish, beef and milk that before the war they bought outside the region. More important, the Biafrans have been driven from their richest croplands. Farming has been utterly disrupted by the war and, now that the rainy season has come, there will be almost nothing to harvest for weeks.
The Nigerian military government, headed by Major General Yakubu Go- won, accuses the Biafrans of purposely allowing suffering for the sake of "waging psychological war and seeking diplomatic advantage." The government points out that the Biafrans, led by Lieut. Colonel Odumegwu Ojukwu, have turned down a plan to have the Red Cross ship food through federal territory to Biafra. But Gowon insists on federal handling of any such shipments, and the Biafrans fear that his men would poison the food: they cite instances of beer laced with cyanide and powdered milk infected with bacteria found in Biafra. Even if Gowon allows the shipment, says Biafran Chief Justice Louis Mbanefo, "we would not touch it."