French Somaliland: Victory for Trouble

Laaska News  June 27,2011

Friday, Mar. 31, 1967(TIME)
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 over the nearby desert sands, statuesque Somali women contorted their faces into snarls at French troops.

FRENCH SOMALILAND: Nasser’s Friend

Laaska News  June 27,2011

Monday, Oct. 20, 1958 (TIME)
Among colonies voting an overwhelming (75%) out for the constitution of Premier Charles de Gaulle was parched, sun-baked French Somaliland, an 8,000-square-mile East African land of dry gullies, thorny scrub and shifting sand, on the Gulf of Aden. The out vote was in effect a vote of no for the territory’s chief native political leader, Mahmoud Harbi.

France: Incident in Djibouti – “Vive la liberte,”

Laaska News  June 27,2011

 “Independence totale,” “Vive la liberte,” and in English, “French, go home.”

Friday, Sep. 02, 1966 (TIME)

Image via Wikipedia

Charles de Gaulle climbed aboard an Air France DC-8 last week and headed eastward around the world. His trip was to last 19 days, and it would undoubt edly bring the glory of enlightened Gaul to three continents.

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In Ethiopia he was to confer with Emperor Haile Selassie on the future of Africa. In Cambodia he was to meet Prince Norodom Sihanouk, presumably

to condemn the war in Viet Nam. In Tahiti he was to watch the detonation of the eighth nuclear device of his celebrated force de frappe.