Shock Waves

When Charles de Gaulle launched his stripling French Community two years ago, pundits the world over hailed him for his shrewd and generous accommodation to African nationalism. French officialdom, though less starry-eyed about the conversion of France's former African empire into a voluntary association of twelve states, thankfully noted the pro-French attitudes of most of the Community's moderate black leaders. But last week, suddenly struck from all sides by political shock waves, De Gaulle's liberal experiment was creaking at its seams.

Chief troublemaker was ambitious Modibo Keita, 45, boss of the arid, landlocked Sudanese Republic, which 17 months ago joined coastal Senegal in the Mali Federation (see map). As Mali's first Premier, Marxist-trained Keita clashed from the start with the federation's Vice Premier, tough pro-French Mamadou Dia of Senegal. Presumably to install the same kind of authoritarian regime he had already imposed on the Sudanese, Keita demanded more and more power for Mali's central government. Fortnight ago. after months of stubborn Senegalese resistance. Keita attempted a coup d'etat in Mali's capital city of Dakar, the very center of Senegalese strength. Warned in advance, Dia turned the tables on the Premier, booted him out of Dakar altogether and declared the Mali Federation dissolved.

One Down. Hoping to mediate the dispute, Charles de Gaulle invited both squabbling leaders to Paris, but only Senegal's Dia showed up--demanding immediate recognition of Senegalese independence. This De Gaulle could not give, since Keita--who had already asked for U.N. intervention--was warning of "extremely grave consequences" and insisting that both the Mali Federation and his job as Premier remained legally intact.

For France, the trouble in Mali involved much more than a power struggle between two strongmen. To accept the breakup of Mali a mere two months after its independence would invite political upheaval elsewhere in the Community. Even as Paris pondered the Mali developments, word arrived from the Chad that Gabriel Lisette, France's strongest friend in that sprawling, barren land, had been ousted as Vice Premier.

Third Front? More serious yet were the possible effects of the Mali breakup on France's bloody, six-year fight to hang on to Algeria. For months Keita had been quietly pressing Senegal to agree to throw Mali's weight behind Algeria's Moslem rebels. Last week, to France's consternation, Keita loudly proclaimed that Senegal's secession from Mali was part of a colonialist plot. The Senegalese, charged

Keita, "wanted to Frenchify Mali . . . because we have said that we already have delayed too long in taking sides in the Algerian question . . . and that we would, if necessary, recognize the Algerian provisional government."

Keita's blast did nothing to improve France's diplomatic position on Algeria--which was also complicated last week by the Algerian rebels' demand for a U.N.-controlled referendum on Algeria's future. The danger was that other African leaders of the French Community, silent on Algeria until now, might follow Keita's example and take the rebels' side in the U.N. to avoid being branded "colonialists" by their political foes at home. And there was the obvious threat that Keita would open a third front in the Algerian war by allowing the rebels to pump arms and men across Sudan's wide-open, 750-mile frontier with the French Sahara.

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