Dropping in on Djibouti

On a world map the Territory of the Afars and Issas resembles a wart on the Horn of Africa. In reality, it is not much more attractive. Most of its 9,000 square miles (roughly the size of New Hampshire) is desert, a desolate mixture of searing sand, thorny scrub and boulder-strewn hills. Its estimated population of 200,000 is split between two unharmonious tribes, the nomadic Afars and the more industrious Issas, and about 90% of the inhabitants are illiterate. Djibouti, the territory's capital and only city of any size, has some of Africa's worst slums.

The city's unemployment rate commonly runs at 30% or higher; the largest single source of wages for the natives is domestic work for French and other foreign residents. Even the climate is dreadful: from May to October the temperature averages a windburned 92DEG. Afars and Issas, in short, is not even a nice place to visit. Yet dropping in on Djibouti last week, at the height of the cool (mid-80s) season, was French President Georges Pompidou.

Pompidou happened to be in the neighborhood, on his way to Ethiopia to repay a visit to France made by Emperor Haile Selassie last year. The territory, known as French Somaliland until 1967, is France's last remaining real estate on the African mainland. It sends one Deputy and one Senator to the French National Assembly. But the colony's voters will hardly play a major role in the French elections in March. In fact, by visiting Djibouti, Pompidou was courting trouble rather than making campaign gains.

The last time a President of France visited Djibouti, in 1966, the city erupted in anti-French riots. Though an Issa-led independence movement has weakened since then, French authorities imposed stringent security measures for Pompidou's call. Some 240 riot-control experts were flown in from France to bolster the regular military force of 5,000, which includes one of the two remaining units of the French Foreign Legion stationed abroad. (The other is in Madagascar.) A French frigate stood guard in Djibouti Harbor.

Pledge. As it turned out, the two-day visit by Pompidou fortunately did not produce any violence. Watching while a mostly native military band welcomed Pompidou at the seedy airport with a creaky rendition of the Marseillaise, TIME Correspondent Lee Griggs wondered why France bothers to maintain its presence in the territory. The same question, he reported, troubles some French officials. They rationalize that France's departure would almost certainly bring about a war for possession between Ethiopia, which uses an Addis Ababa-Djibouti railway link as an economic lifeline, and Somalia, which was the ancestral home of the Issas. As one official put it: "The problems we inherit by staying are not as bad as the problems we would cause by leaving."

Still, the existing problems are considerable. It costs France $60 million a year to administer the territory, and it brings practically nothing in return. Djibouti's fine natural harbor on the Gulf of Aden, near the entrance to the Red Sea, has some strategic value. It also used to produce revenue as a refueling stop for ships plying the Suez Canal. But since the canal was closed, shipping traffic through Djibouti has fallen by 80%, and the profits have vanished. So have thousands of jobs.

Contributing to unemployment is the constant flow of hinterlanders into Djibouti, which now contains about two-thirds of the territory's population. The French built a barbed-wire fence around the city in 1967 to curb the migration. Although the fence is dotted with watchtowers and searchlights and is seeded with flare mines that occasionally kill, more than 1,000 Afars and Issas slip into Djibouti each month.

Pompidou seems to want the Territory of the Afars and Issas to remain a part of France. Addressing local black leaders the President said: "The Republic assures you of its firm determination to stay here and give you its help." But his pledge may not be honored in the unlikely event that the Gaullists lose France's national election. The opposition left-wing coalition is inclined to regard France's overseas territories as leftovers from colonial days. It could cut them loose whether they want independence or not.

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