Taking stock of the general situation on the wider Pan-Somali issue, the new Premier found little cause for comfort. The clandestinely supported Somali guerrilla campaign in Northern Kenya (known to the Kenyans as the shifta – i.e. bandits – war), which had developed in the region after Britain’s failure to implement the findings of the 1962 Commission, was making little headway at great cost to the local civilian Somali population. In Jibuti matters were even worse. In the referendum, held two months before the Mogadishu presidential election and carefully orchestrated by the French authorities, the inhabitants of the Côte (or at least those permitted to vote there) had again endorsed the continuance of French control, rejecting outright independence. The ‘Afars had now indeed seized the political initiative so long enjoyed by the Somalis and had turned the knife in the wound by changing the name of the Côte to the ‘French Territory of the ‘Afars and ‘Ises’. Nothing could more directly reflect the new political complexion in Jibuti.

I.M. Lewis, I. M. Lewis, A Modern History of the Som…, loc. 502