World: NIGERIA'S CIVIL WAR: HATE, HUNGER AND THE WILL TO SURVIVE

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Africa one more step in the direction that most African scholars are convinced would lead to disaster. Far from splintering into countless anthill economies, they argue, Africa's nations should be consolidating their resources and widening their markets. Three nations in East Africa have moved in this di rection by founding a nascent common market, and elsewhere there are the beginnings of cooperation in handling currency and passports. But if Africa's most populous nation can fall apart, the prospects for successful regionalism look dim indeed.

For the time being, such questions pale before the immediate human one: What is to be the Biafrans' fate? Gowon himself does not want the "final solution" that the Ibos so deeply fear. But he does not speak for all Nigeria, nor can he control all his military commanders. Each day that passes, the matter becomes more and more irrelevant to many Ibos. Even should massive food supplies suddenly arrive, thousands of undernourished Biafrans would die with the first bellyful of protein food that they took. It would simply prove too much for their debilitated systems to handle. Already, famine must have caused brain damage in many of Biafra's children; if it goes on much longer, it could blight the minds of an entire Ibo generation.

The children of Biafra, like children in all wars, are the victims of a struggle beyond their control. Their parents, rightly or wrongly, believe that the Ibos must follow their own destiny and carve out their own mini-nation. The federal Nigerians believe in the vision of a united, pluralist Nigerian nation. The cruel dilemma has been eloquently summed up by Yoruba Playwright Wole Soyinka. "Every Ibo man, woman and child believes today that he is fighting a last-ditch battle for his home and his dignity," he says. "What that means in practical terms to the nation is that the federal government is faced with a choice of wiping out the entire Ibo race or administering a nation that has built into its flesh a core of implacable hate. There will be no victory for anyone."