Word: shifta
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Until a few months ago, guerrilla activity in the northern Ethiopian province of Eritrea amounted to little more than an occasional attempt to hijack an airliner. The Ethiopian government scornfully referred to the predominantly Moslem members of the Eritrean Liberation Front as shifta (bandits), and Emperor Haile Selassie dismissed their activity as "insignificant...
...Four of the seven 16-mm. cameras went out of commission the first three weeks, and the film kept melting. Holden's human brigade got through unscathed, though, thanks in part to the Kenya Army Camel Corps, which rode shotgun for the company to protect it against marauding Shifta tribesmen. Holden survived partly on a daily diet of 15 cans of Carlsberg beer (he brought along 120 cases...
...handful of white mercenaries and their rebel Katangese troops, who had managed to keep the Federal forces numbering 15,000 at bay for three months. Rumors of a plot to overthrow President Nyerere of Tanzania were circulating from ex-Vice President Kambona, in London for "health reasons." Serious Shifta terrorism occupied the Kenya army in the Northeastern Province along the border, while the ruling KANU party was denying that elections would be advanced from 1970 to '68 for their sake...
First of all, on settling their own differences: President Kuanda of Zambia took the lead in announcing that he would mediate for negotiations between Kenya and Somalia on the Shifta terrorism, as well as providing safe conduct out of the Congo for the mercenaries--whom he described as "human vermin"--and their one thousand rebel Katanga troops. Cynical observers doubted that much would come of either proposal: Kenya and Somalia had been at war for two years and no diplomatic relations existed between them. As for the Congo, the practical side of extracting the mercenaries from the city of Bukavu...
...government, which has killed more than 2,000 shifta during the revolt, warned that it intends to keep the pressure on. "We are willing to meet with Somalia anywhere, any time, to discuss this problem," said Defense Minister Njoroge Mungai. "We have extended the hand of friendship, but in the meantime we are going to hit the shifta very, very hard...