A BITTER AFRICAN HARVEST

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."

As a result, about the only food that reaches the Biafrans is flown to the Spanish island of Fernando Po or the Portuguese island of Sao Tome and then, under cover of night, airlifted into the bush. The planes, which are used on other nights to fly in arms and ammunition, land on a lantern-lit stretch of highway somewhere between Owerri and Port Harcourt, frequently under fire from federal ack-ack guns. Because of the high risk, the pilots demand high wages, and the total cost of one shipment of food from Europe can be as much as $25,000. Thus, the relief agencies can afford only one or two a week, and about 1,000 tons of their powdered milk and eggs, baby food and other supplies have piled up in Fernando Po, awaiting reshipment. Meantime, Gowon's agents are reportedly trying to stop flights by offering the pilots as much as $100,000 to hijack and sabotage the planes.

Ojukwu has also said no to a British offer of $600,000 in relief funds. His reason: Britain sells arms to Gowon. Therefore, says Ojukwu, to give food at the same time would only "fatten the Biafrans for slaughter with British-made weapons." Meanwhile his countrymen need an estimated 200 tons of protein food a day to survive, and are getting only about 40. Ojukwu insists that the only way to protect Biafra's sovereignty is to fly the food in. He proposes mercy flights during the daytime, but these require the cooperation of federal Nigeria, which has threatened to shoot down the planes. At week's end relief officials were working on another plan: they reported that Gowon may be willing to let International Red Cross workers distribute food that would be shipped through Biafran ports now held by his troops.

Seeking Sovereignty. The suffering has not brought the two sides any closer to resuming diplomatic talks, which were broken off last month in the Ugandan capital of Kampala. The federal government demands that the Biafrans acknowledge that they are citizens of one country--Nigeria--before any serious bargaining can begin. On the other hand, the Biafrans, who walked out of the Kampala conference, insist on a cease-fire before talking further, since such an agreement would give them the status of a sovereign equal in any negotiations. Ojukwu himself admits that if the war turns into a guerrilla fight in the bush many of his army officers "are not tough enough for that." But the Biafrans apparently choose to die from starvation rather than reach an agreement with the federal government that might expose them to another slaughter.

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