Word: shifta
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...have literary ambitions? Hardly. That grim promise is simply one dose of the tough talk that is familiar fare on Radio Mogadishu, the official voice of the Republic of Somalia. For the past four years, Somalia has been working over time to keep Somali guerrillas, who are called shifta (bandits), in revolt against the government of Kenya...
They were furious when Kenya got the territory from Britain as part of its in dependence package in 1963, and ever since, the Somalis have trained and equipped the terrorists. Like a small-scale Viet Cong, the shifta have am bushed army patrols, sown vast networks of road mines, and abducted and tortured village headmen. Their raiders have killed at least 645 civilians for not cooperating with them. But lately the Kenyan government has been successfully striking back-largely by forcing the nomadic tribes to settle down where they can be kept under scrutiny...
Barbed Wire & Bren Guns. Before the new pacification program began, many a shifta tended his herd by day and turned terrorist at night. He was hard to catch because he kept constantly on the move. Now thousands of Somalis have been shunted into manyat-ta (protected villages), a safe distance from the Somalia border. Such tribes as the Turkanas and the Boran, which have been nomadic for centuries, have been settled along with them in rows of dome-shaped huts that are protected from terrorists by barbed wire and Kenyan troops armed with Bren guns. At the same time, with...
...tactics are paying off. Taking advantage of an amnesty offer from Kenyatta, 340 shifta recently surrendered. Many of them have been entrusted with jobs in the army and police department. By last week, despite the provocative broadcasts from Somalia, terrorism seemed to be under control...
...their maroon tarbooshes and crisp khakis, the King's African Rifles stood tough and tall in the front rank of Britain's far-flung battle line. Whether the enemy was a spear-swinging Somali shifta or a Japanese marine behind a clattering Nambu machine gun, the well-disciplined askaris of the K.A.R. could be counted on to attack as ordered. Last week, from the headwaters of the Nile to the beaches of the Indian Ocean, the Rifles were barking again. But this time their muzzles were trained on British troops and their own recently independent governments...