Mahmoud Harbi

Who is Mahmoud Harbi?

Mahmoud Harbi Farah was a Djiboutian politician and one of the most prominent Somali nationalist leaders of French Somaliland during the 1950s. Born in 1921 in Ali Sabieh to a Somali family of the Fourlaba sub-clan of the Issa, he lost his father when he was seventeen and moved to the port city of Djibouti to find work, eventually becoming a waiter and later a dockworker. Politically active from a young age, he became president of the Union of Somali Workers and in 1947 founded the Democratic Union Party. He rose to become Vice President of the Government Council of French Somaliland from 1957 to 1958, using the position to campaign for the territory to unite with the newly independent Republic of Somalia rather than remain tied to France. In the pivotal 1958 referendum, the territory voted to stay associated with France, a result Harbi and his supporters attributed in part to the French expulsion of Somali voters before the poll. He continued to press his pan-Somali cause internationally until 29 September 1960, when he was killed alongside two companions in the crash of United Arab Airlines Flight 738 over the Tyrrhenian Sea while travelling from Geneva to Cairo.

Sources: Mahmoud Harbi — Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmoud_Harbi) · Time magazine archive, "French Somaliland: Nasser's Friend" · Stanford SearchWorks catalog, "Mahmoud Harbi: (1921-1960) un nationaliste djiboutien?"