Mahmoud Harbi
Mahamoud Harbi محمود الحربي | |
---|---|
Vice President of the Government Council of French Somaliland | |
In office 30 July 1957 – 8 December 1958 | |
Preceded by | Office Established |
Succeeded by | Hassan Gouled Aptidon |
Personal details | |
Born | c. 1 January 1921 Ali Sabieh, French Somaliland (now Djibouti) |
Died | September 29, 1960 Italy | (aged 38–39)
Political party | Republican Union |
Mahamoud Harbi Farah (
Biography
Harbi was born in
Political career
When he returned to Djibouti in 1946, and began his career working in the port of Djibouti, and then became president of the Union of Somali workers, and in 1947 founded the Democratic Union Party, which branched off from the union, he was able in his youth that dominates the political scene for a decade. He increased his circle of friends in the Middle East through gifts such as the lions he gave to the Imam of Yemen and the King of Saudi Arabia who in return (as is customary) backed him with funds. Harbi's main political rival was Hassan Gouled Aptidon, who in the mid-1950s allegedly expressed a desire to see all foreigners expelled from Djibouti. Harbi capitalized on the blunder by coming to the defense of the foreign communities. As a consequence, he gained the material support of the resident Arabs in general and of Ali Coubeche in particular, son of one of the territory's wealthier merchants.[4] Harbi would later appoint Coubeche as Finance Minister in his Cabinet.[5]
Through the
In 1958, on the eve of neighboring Somalia's independence in 1960, a
On 29 September 1960, Harbi and his comrades Djama Mahamoud Boreh and Mohamed Gahanlo were killed on a flight from Geneva to Cairo when the plane crashed. Speculation that the Organisation armée secrète was involved is unsupported by evidence. He went to African and European capitals in order to reach the goal of liberation before he died.[9]
Later years
Harbi would eventually settle in Mogadishu, where he frequently joined Somali radio programs and preached Pan-Somalism to the Somalis of the Horn of Africa. On 29 September 1960, he and several of his associates died in a plane crash under mysterious circumstances in Italy on a return trip from China to Somalia.[9]
See also
Notes
- ^ a b Djibouti - Worldstatesmen.com
- ^ Touval, p.125
- ^ Hempstone, p.158
- ^ Virginia Thompson, Richard Adloff, Djibouti and the Horn of Africa, (Stanford University Press: 1968), pp.65-66.
- ^ Virginia Thompson, Richard Adloff, Djibouti and the Horn of Africa, (Stanford University Press: 1968), p.68.
- ^ Jacques Foccart et Ali Aref
- ^ a b Barrington, Lowell, After Independence: Making and Protecting the Nation in Postcolonial and Postcommunist States, (University of Michigan Press: 2006), p.115
- ^ Kevin Shillington, Encyclopedia of African history, (CRC Press: 2005), p.360.
- ^ a b United States Joint Publications Research Service, Translations on Sub-Saharan Africa, Issues 464-492, (1966), p.24.
References
- Hempstone, Smith (1961). Africa, angry young giant. Praeger.
- Touval, Saadia (1999). Somali Nationalism: International Politics and the Drive for Unity in the Horn of Africa. IUniverse. ISBN 1-58348-411-6.
- page on the French National Assembly website