Word: somali
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Faced with such voter cunning, the Interior Ministry before the latest election grappled for weeks with the delibility factor, finally developed an ink so potent that many a horny-handed Somali ballot stuffer came down with a skin rash. That took care of most repeaters. Despite scattered reports of overenthusiastic balloting, not to mention a slight riot (13 dead, 20 hurt), Somalia's election was the straightest in its young history-and one of the freest in all Africa. All but final results announced last week gave the ruling, middle-road Somali Youth League of Premier Ab-dirashid...
...Somali election was exceptional in one other respect: it was held in the midst of a continuing shooting war, the border conflict with Ethiopia. Last week Ethiopian fighter-bombers pulled a surprise daylight raid on the Somali town of Hargeisa-less than 17 hours before the agreed start of an armistice between the two nations. The Somalis, who like fighting as much as voting, were not too perturbed. As Prime Minister Shermarke observed: "We can teach Ethiopia that democracy can be practiced while people defend their soil...
...what of the future? "I will be dead in nine months," he wept. "God has told me. Someone, a Somali I think, will shoot me in Nairobi. However hard I try to get away, death will be there." It wasn't. After keeping his appointment in Nairobi (where he claimed he had less than two shillings to his name), Okello found himself persona non grata. So he bought himself a dark blue Peugeot, packed his pistol and candy-striped cane, and set off for Uganda...
First, a band of 300 Somali shiftas (bandits) slipped across the border and shot up the Ethiopian crossroads town of Jijiga. Then the Ethiopians, after scanning the 30 bodies their troops had cut down, claimed that the raiders were led by a uniformed Somali army officer. Haile Selassie's Cabinet declared a state of emergency, claiming that 2,000 Somali regulars had crossed the border. Somalia alerted its own army, reported that eight Ethiopian armored cars had been destroyed in the border fight. By week's end both sides had called a "cease-fire," but the problem...
...poverty, Somalia is a stiff-necked nation. Its people pride themselves on their Hamitic heritage, their nomad hardiness. No Somali youth feels secure without an iron bracelet-won only by killing two men in combat. Argumentative and fiercely antiauthoritarian, the Somalis are often called the "Irish of Africa," although as Moslems they prefer cold camel's milk to a headier gargle. Well-meaning foreigners who stroll into their quaint, collapsible villages (stick-and skin aghals that can be packed onto camelback in a matter of minutes) often find themselves on the receiving end of accurately thrown stones...