Word: somalilands
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Even before the election returns were complete, unruly mobs began to surge through the streets of Djibouti, the sun-bleached and impoverished capital of French Somaliland. Then they heard the news: by a majority of 61%, Somaliland's 39,000 voters (out of a population of 125,000) had opted to maintain the country's ties with France, thus defeating a move to independence. Somali tribesmen, who wanted to break away from France, threw up barricades of sidewalk slabs and bedposts, began hurling rocks with the aid of crude slingshots. As their husbands lit oil fires that flashed...
Helping Matters Along. The Somali tribesmen, who make up the largest population segment of France's last colony in Africa, favor independence because they want their fellow tribesmen in neighboring (and independent) Somalia to annex French Somaliland. The trouble was that they were registered to vote in fewer numbers than the Afars, a rival tribe that wants to stay tied to France. Neighboring Ethiopia, which contains large numbers of Afars, backs the tribe's cause in French Somaliland. More than tribal loyalty is involved: Ethiopia has a sound economic motive in not wanting its outlet to the Gulf...
Charles de Gaulle ordered last week's referendum after the two rival tribes rioted in the streets of Djibouti during his visit there last August. De Gaulle sternly warned that French troops would never be committed to preserve "the appearance of a state," would withdraw and leave Somaliland to civil war unless the voters clearly demonstrated that they wished to remain with France. To help matters along, police rounded up some 6,000 Somali tribesmen in and around Djibouti before the balloting and expelled them to Somalia...
...fact, De Gaulle spent more time talking about tiny French Somaliland than any other foreign topic. Street rioting for independence greeted him in Djibouti on his visit last August, and the memory still rankles. De Gaulle announced that the Somalis will be given their independence if they opt for it in a forthcoming referendum. If they do, they will be sorry, for France will pull out entirely, and "certainly not engage its resources and its troops to support the appearance of a state"-which is at least brutally consistent with his views about the U.S. role in Viet...
Minister of Overseas Territories Pierre Billotte proclaimed that "whatever France's interests in Somaliland may be, they are not worth her being open to the times." Hence a new independence ref erendum will be held in the colony be fore the middle of next year...