The United Suvadive Republic.

In 1956 the Maldivian government granted Britain a new 100-year lease to reopen the Gan airfield as a Cold War staging post. The deal generated fierce resentment in Malé, and when the new prime minister Ibrahim Nasir demanded a drastic reduction of the lease and ordered the inhabitants of Addu to stop all work for the British, the economic impact on the south was catastrophic — the southern atolls had grown dependent on British wages in pounds and on the base's free healthcare.

On New Year's Eve 1958, an official arrived in Hithadhoo to announce new taxes on fishing boats alongside the British employment ban. A mob tore up the tax documents, burned down the atoll offices in Maradhoo, and stormed the British liaison building at Gan while British military police reportedly watched without intervening.

On 3 January 1959, the atolls of Addu, Huvadhu and Fuvahmulah — a combined population of around 20,000 — formally seceded from the Maldives and declared the United Suvadive Republic. A reluctant local chief, Abdullah Afif Didi, was pressed into the presidency. Writing to The Times of London that May, Afif cited decades of Malé's indifference to the southern islands' food, medicine, education and social welfare as justification.

The British quietly tolerated the secession as long as it kept their base running smoothly. But by 1963, under mounting diplomatic pressure, they withdrew their tacit protection. Afif was evacuated to the Seychelles aboard a Royal Navy warship, where he would live until his death in 1993. The Suvadive Republic lasted four years. Its memory in the south is still complicated.