Tragedy in the Villages

After 20 months of fierce fighting, the Biafran war is at a virtual stale mate. The only thing about it that seems certain to intensify is human suffering. Ibo tribesmen under Lieut. Colonel Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu have retreated into what he calls "this steadily diminishing dot." Their only remaining city is an overcrowded market town called Umuahia. Their last significant link to the outside world is an airstrip 50 miles away at Uli. Though attacking Nigerians have the advantage of superior weaponry supplied by Britain and the Soviet Union, the Biafrans within the dot have shorter supply lines and less front to cover, plus increased supplies of French guns and ammunition. Above all, they have a grim determination to fight on.

Frustrated by the failure of their vaunted "final offensive" five months ago and intent on breaking Ibo morale, the Nigerian army continues to vent its rage with air attacks on an unarmed civilian population. Last week five raids on bush villages in a single day killed 30 people. Two days later a twin-jet IIyushin bomber roared over the market center of Ozuobam and plastered its post office, hospital, church and wel fare center with fragmentation and phosphorous bombs. Because Ozuobam was crowded for market day, perhaps 500 people died.

Village to Village. To learn what the grim struggle means to ordinary Ibos, TIME Correspondent James Wilde trekked from village to village and last week sent this report:

Black Africa's first modern war has been a traumatic experience for the Ibos. They marched off to battle singing. They had no conception of modern weaponry. Being an arrogant people, the Ibos thought that their brains and industry would offset the Nigerian superiority in arms, ammunition and airpower. They have learned to their cost that this is not true. Mass starvation, casual shooting of civilians, indiscriminate bombing and strafing have broken the spirit of the old and kindled the bitterness of the young.

Okorafor Nnamdi, who might be 50 or who might be 70, was once a great hunter. He was known throughout the countryside as a wily wrestler, quick as a snake, brave as a lion, cunning as a monkey. His village compound included 60 relatives. The once great hunter is now a shattered man: "I no longer sleep in my house because it is only two miles from the front. The vandals have strafed it four times in two weeks." Okorafor showed me around his house and assembled what remained of his clan. He broke out kola nut and handed it around to chew. It was dusk, and the fires in the cooking huts glowed softly. There was the croaking of tree frogs and the whimpering of children. Then the Nigerians began a mortar probe and the children began to weep.

The Guest Should Eat. Several shells landed on the outskirts of the village, and the people huddled up against their mud-walled huts or scattered to the surrounding bush. After the shelling stopped, the compound's inhabitants gathered again. I was given a meal, ground yam and soup made of stockfish, melon, vegetables, meat and stock. They all watched as I spooned up the yam with my fingers and dipped it into the soup. Strict custom dictated that the guest should eat, and the whole village had contributed to my meal.

In November the village had been captured by the Nigerians and held for three weeks. Seven young men decided to escape from their captors, but only two were successful. Mathew Ejam was one of them. "We had sent our families out two days earlier. Then one morning we tried to reach Biafran lines across the road. As we ran, we were caught by eight Nigerian soldiers who sprang from hiding. A Nigerian captain said that if we were made captive, we would only escape, so it would be better if we were shot. They pushed the first five into a pit. I ran for my life. I could hear them shooting, but I just kept on running."

Daily life in Biafra consists now of an acid combination of fear and hunger. A 17-year-old widow named Agnace Eke wept as she recounted the death of her 24-year-old husband, one of the five. "I have no child. I have no food. My parents are dead and my father-in-law cannot feed me. Surely it is better if I die too." Then she cried again, and the others present cried with her. Another widow called Catherine, who has one child, stood tightlipped, thin and desperate. "Give me salt," she said. "We Ibo are not beggars, but if my child is to live I must have salt." Farmer Ihedioha Ejam said that his barns were empty. "Vandals and refugees ate all my seed yams. Now I have nothing to eat and nothing to plant."

My Children Are Dying. The situation was much the same in other villages. Half of them were empty, half were bombed to pieces. The red carcasses of huts stood forlornly in the rain. Naked children with swollen bellies and testicles stood quietly about. I discovered one isolated refugee camp containing 20,000 people, where white worms cost $3 a cup and locusts $4. Salt was $20 a cup and gari, a leached cassava that tastes like sawdust, cost $1 for three cups. Before the war salt was 5-c- and gari went at 20 cups for a penny. "I can tell you," an Irish missionary said, "that thousands are dying every day in the bush, where no one can see them except God."

Even the army is suffering. I asked two soldiers when they had last eaten. "Barely once today, perhaps again tomorrow, who knows." How could they fight if they did not eat? "We must We simply must." A chief named Gabriel Ekpe asked: "Tell the people of the world that we are hungry, that my children are dying. If the world loves us, the war must be finished. Otherwise we are all dead."

Perhaps the worst sight was at Umuhiagu. There a French doctor had to choose 20 children out of 400 to be evacuated to Gabon. Three quarters of the children did not even look human; they were bags and bones and jellied things. Mothers wept and pleaded; then, if their child was chosen, they cried even harder because it was being taken away. A missionary named Father Michael Wallace turned to another priest and said, "What can we do?" "There is nothing you can do, nothing, nothing," the priest replied. The mothers crept away to weep, knowing that their rejected children would surely die. Father Wallace went home to find a man dying on his front porch. He was too exhausted from his day's work to do anything about him.

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