Word: djiboutis
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Eritrean Liberation Front, after more than a decade of fighting, claims it controls two districts and has Ethiopian forces pinned down in other urban areas. Another is the Somali border, where Ethiopians and Somalis have quarreled. Meanwhile the French Territory of Afars and Issas, with its key port of Djibouti, which provides an Ethiopian rail link to the sea, gains independence from Paris next month. Both Ethiopia and Somalia covet...
...Mozambique the Cubans help with sugar growing and perhaps with the training of Rhodesian guerrillas. In Somalia, on the Horn of Africa, they advise the army as well as the Somali guerrillas who are active in the neighboring French territory of Afars and Issas (otherwise known as Djibouti), which is set to become independent this summer. And now, judging by Fidel Castro's current swing around Africa, they seem to be extending their influence to Ethiopia as well...
...Marseillaise, TIME Correspondent Lee Griggs wondered why France bothers to maintain its presence in the territory. The same question, he reported, troubles some French officials. They rationalize that France's departure would almost certainly bring about a war for possession between Ethiopia, which uses an Addis Ababa-Djibouti railway link as an economic lifeline, and Somalia, which was the ancestral home of the Issas. As one official put it: "The problems we inherit by staying are not as bad as the problems we would cause by leaving...
Still, the existing problems are considerable. It costs France $60 million a year to administer the territory, and it brings practically nothing in return. Djibouti's fine natural harbor on the Gulf of Aden, near the entrance to the Red Sea, has some strategic value. It also used to produce revenue as a refueling stop for ships plying the Suez Canal. But since the canal was closed, shipping traffic through Djibouti has fallen by 80%, and the profits have vanished. So have thousands of jobs...
Contributing to unemployment is the constant flow of hinterlanders into Djibouti, which now contains about two-thirds of the territory's population. The French built a barbed-wire fence around the city in 1967 to curb the migration. Although the fence is dotted with watchtowers and searchlights and is seeded with flare mines that occasionally kill, more than 1,000 Afars and Issas slip into Djibouti each month...