History of the Comoros (1978–1989)

This article relies largely or entirely on a single source. Relevant discussion may be found on the talk page. Please help improve this article by introducing citations to additional sources. Find sources: "History of the Comoros" 1978–1989 – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (January 2023)

Part of a series on the
History of the Comoros
Sultans on the Comoros (1676–1912) Colonial governors of the Comoros (1841–1975) Territory of the Comoros (1946–1975) Abdallah regime (1978–1989) Operation Azalee (1995) 2008 invasion of Anjouan Wars Coups
v t e

The Comoros is an island nation in the Indian Ocean, located off the eastern coast of Africa. France first established colonial rule in the Comoros in 1841. Agreement was reached with France in 1973 for the Comoros to become independent in 1978. On July 6, 1975, but the Comorian parliament passed a unilateral resolution declaring independence. The deputies of Mayotte, which remained under French control, abstained. Referendums on all four of the islands excluding Mayotte showed strong support for independence. Ahmed Abdallah proclaimed the Comoros' independence on September 5, 1975 and became its first president.

In 1978, president Ali Soilih, who had a firm anti-French attitude, was killed and Ahmed Abdallah came to power. Under the reign of Abdallah, Bob Denard was commander of the Presidential Guard (PG) and de facto ruler of the country, trained, supported and funded by the white regimes in South Africa (SA) and Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in return to the permission to set up a secret listening station on the islands. South-African agents had to keep an ear on the important African National Congress bases in Lusaka and Dar es Salaam and to watch the war in Mozambique, in which SA played an active role. The Comoros was also used for evading arms sanctions.

When in 1981 François Mitterrand was elected president Denard lost the support of the French intelligence service, but he managed to strengthen the link between SA and the Comoros. Besides the Guard, Denard established his own company SOGECOM, in both the security and building business. He seemed to be pretty rich. In period 1985-87 the relationship of the PG with the local Comorians became worse.

At the end of the 1980s the South Africans did not want to continue to support a mercenary regime and France also wanted to get rid of the mercenaries. Finally, also President Abdallah wanted the mercenaries to leave. Their response was a (third) coup and the death of President Abdallah in which Denard and his men were probably involved. The SA and the French government subsequently forced Denard and his mercenaries to leave the islands in 1989.

Beginning of the Abdallah regime

Following a few days of provisional government, the two men who had financed the coup, former president Ahmed Abdallah (himself the victim of the 1975 coup) and former vice president Mohamed Ahmed, returned to Moroni from exile in Paris and installed themselves as joint presidents.^[1] Soon after, Abdallah was named sole executive.^[1]

The continued presence of the mercenaries impeded Abdallah's early efforts to stabilize the Comoros.^[1] Bob Denard seemed interested in remaining in the Comoros, and he and his friends were given financially rewarding appointments with the new government.^[1] In reaction to Denard's involvement with Abdallah, the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) revoked the Comoros' OAU membership, Madagascar severed diplomatic relations, and the United Nations (UN) threatened economic sanctions against the regime.^[1] France also exerted pressure for Denard to leave, and in late September—temporarily, as it developed—he departed the islands.^[1]

Abdallah consolidated power, beginning with the writing of a new

Although Abdallah had been president when the Comoros broke away from France in 1975, he now moved to establish a relationship much more to France's liking.[3] Upon Denard's departure, he gave a French military mission responsibility for training the Comoros' defense force.^[3] He also signed an agreement with France to allow its navy full use of Comoran port facilities.^[3]

Making the most of the Comoros' new presidential system, Abdallah induced the nation's National Assembly to enact a twelve-year ban on political parties, a move that guaranteed his reelection in 1984.^[3] In 1979 his government arrested Soilih regime members who had not already left or been killed during the 1978 coup.^[3] Four former ministers of the Soilih government disappeared and allegedly were murdered, and about 300 other Soilih supporters were imprisoned without trial.^[3] For the next three years, occasional trials were held, in many cases only after France had insisted on due process for the prisoners.^[3]

Although the restoration of good relations with France represented a sharp break with the policies of the previous regime, Abdallah built on Soilih's efforts to find new sources of diplomatic and economic support.

Despite international assistance, economic development was slow.[3] Although some Comorans blamed the French, who had yet to restore technical assistance to pre-1975 levels, others suspected that Abdallah, who owned a large import-export firm, was enriching himself from development efforts with the assistance of Denard, who continued to visit the Comoros.^[3]

Opposition to the Abdallah regime began to appear as early as 1979, with the formation of an exile-dominated group that became known as the United National Front of Comorians–Union of Comorians (Front National Uni des Komoriens–Union des Komoriens, or FNUK or Unikom).^[3] In 1980 the Comoran ambassador to France, Said Ali Kemal, resigned his position to form another opposition group, the National Committee for Public Safety (Comité National de Salut Public).^[4] A failed coup in February 1981, led by a former official of the Soilih regime, resulted in arrests of about forty people.^[5]

In regard to Mahoré, Abdallah offered little more than verbal resistance to a 1979 decision of the French government to postpone action on the status of the island until 1984.^[5] At the same time, he kept the door open to Mahoré by writing a large measure of autonomy for the component islands of the republic into the 1978 constitution and by appointing a Mahorais as his government's minister of finance.^[5] Having established an administration that, in comparison with the Soilih years, seemed tolerable to his domestic and international constituencies, Abdallah proceeded to entrench himself through domestic and international policies that profoundly compromised the Comoros' independence.^[5]

The undermining of the political process

In February 1982, the Comoros became a one-party state.

Mroudjae's subsequent career in the Abdallah government illustrated the way in which Abdallah used frequent reshufflings of his cabinet to eliminate potential challengers.[7] Mroudjae's next job was to share duties as minister of state with four other people; he was removed from the government altogether in another reshuffle four months later.^[7]

Looking to the end of his second (and, according to the constitution, final) term as head of state, Abdallah created a commission in 1988 to recommend changes to the constitution.

Abdallah complemented his political maneuvers by employing a GP officered by many of the same mercenaries who had helped him take power in 1978.[9] Denard led this force, and also became heavily involved in Comoran business activities, sometimes acting in partnership with President Abdallah or as a front for South African business interests, which played a growing role in the Comoran economy during the Abdallah regime.^[9]

Although Denard had made a ceremonial departure from the Comoros following the 1978 coup, by the early 1980s he was again openly active in the islands.

President Abdallah used the uprising as an opportunity to round up dissidents, primarily FD members, whose leadership denied involvement in the coup attempt.[11] Later in 1985, seventy-seven received convictions; seventeen, including the FD's secretary general, Mustapha Said Cheikh, were sentenced to life imprisonment at hard labor.^[11] Most of the prisoners were released in 1986 following Amnesty International charges of illegal arrests, torture, and other abuses. France had also exerted pressure by temporarily withholding new aid projects and purchases of Comoran vanilla.^[11]

Perhaps the most notorious action of the GP on behalf of the Abdallah government occurred in November 1987.^[11] After an apparent attempt by dissidents to free some political prisoners, an event quickly labeled a coup attempt by the Abdallah regime, the GP arrested fourteen alleged plotters and tortured seven of them to death.^[11] Officials of the Comoran government apparently were not allowed to participate in the prisoners' interrogation. President Abdallah was on a state visit to Egypt at the time.^[11]

With Abdallah's acquiescence and occasional participation, Denard and the other GP officers used their connections to the head of state to make themselves important players in the Comoran economy.^[11] Denard was a part owner of Établissements Abdallah et Fils, the Comoros' largest import-export firm, whose primary owner was President Abdallah.^[11] Denard also owned and operated a highly profitable commercial shuttle between South Africa and the Comoros, and owned Sogecom, a private security firm with contracts to protect South African hotels being built in the islands.^[11]

The GP officers, sympathetic to South Africa's

The GP also arranged for South African commercial aircraft to fly in the Middle East and parts of Africa under the aegis of the Comoran national airline, in contravention of international sanctions against South Africa.[13] Furthermore, the GP provided for South African use of Comoran territory as a base for intelligence gathering in the Mozambique Channel and as a staging area for the shipment of arms to rightist rebels in Mozambique.^[13] The GP was widely understood to be funded by South Africa, at the rate of about US$3 million per year.^[13]

Comoros as client state: the economics of Abdallah

President Abdallah generally put his personal interests ahead of national interests in making economic policy.^[13] The result was the creation of a client state whose meager and unpredictable cash crop earnings were supplemented with increasing infusions of foreign aid.^[13]

Throughout the 1980s, export earnings from the Comoros' four main cash crops—

The importation of huge quantities of building materials and construction equipment provided immediate benefits to import-export firms in the islands, of which Établissements Abdallah et Fils was the largest.[15] In the meantime, the projects were of little immediate use to Comorans and were likely to go underused for years to come.^[15]

Throughout the Abdallah period, rice imports drained as much as 50 percent of Comoran export earnings.

Abdallah's firm, whose co-owners included Denard and Kalfane and Company, a Pakistani concern, also profited from managing the importation of materials used by South African firms in developing tourist hotels.^[15] Little of the material used in building these resorts was of Comoran origin.^[15] Also, once completed, the resorts would be almost entirely owned and managed by non-Comorans.^[15] Although tourism, mainly by South Africans who were unwelcome in other African resorts, was widely considered the only promising new industry in the Comoros, Abdallah guided its development so that resorts benefited few Comorans other than himself and his associates.^[15]

Under Abdallah's tutelage, the Comoran economy finished the 1980s much as it had started the decade—poor, underdeveloped, and dependent on export earnings from cash crops of unpredictable and generally declining value.^[15] The critical difference, with enormous implications for the republic's capacity to have some say in its own destiny, was its new status as a nation abjectly in debt.^[15] By 1988, the last full year of the Abdallah regime, 80 percent of annual public expenditures were funded by external aid.^[15]

The demise of Abdallah, 1989

Only weeks before the violent end of the Abdallah regime in late 1989, one observer noted that the "Comoros is still run like a village, with a handful of tough men in charge and supported by foreign aid."^[16] As Comorans prepared for a November 4, 1989, referendum on constitutional changes that would enable President Abdallah to run for a third term in 1990, human rights remained in precarious condition, and the only avenue of economic advancement for most islanders—the civil service—faced cutbacks at the urging of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.^[17] Even those who would keep their government jobs, however, were not guaranteed economic security.^[17] As often occurred whenever export earnings slid, civil servants had not been paid since mid-summer.^[17]

The official result of the referendum was a 92.5 percent majority in favor of the amendments proposed by Abdallah, which now created "the conditions for a life presidency", warned one opposition leader.

President Abdallah was shot to death on the night of November 26–27, reportedly while asleep in his residence, the Beit el Salama (House of Peace).^[17] At first his death was seen as a logical outcome of the tense political situation following what was, in effect, his self-appointment as head of state for life. The recently dismissed head of the Comoran military was duly blamed for the murder.^[17]

Evidence emerged subsequently that Abdallah's assassination resulted from the late president's proposed actions with regard to the GP.^[17] In September 1989, Abdallah had engaged a French military consultant, who determined that the GP should be absorbed into the regular army.^[17] Following consultations among Abdallah, the French government, and South Africa's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, a decision was made to expel Denard and his fellow officers of the GP by the end of 1989.^[18] Denard and his second in command were seen walking with Abdallah only hours before he died.^[19] Although the mercenary initially blamed the assassination on the Comoran army, he later conceded that he was in Abdallah's office when the president was killed, but called the shooting "an accident due to the general state of mayhem" in the Beit al Salama.^[19]

Two days later, on November 29, the real reasons for the assassination emerged when Denard and the GP seized control of the government in a coup.

The immediate reaction of the republic's two main supporters, France and South Africa, was to isolate Denard.[19] South Africa, admitting years of funding of the GP, cut off all aid.^[19] France began a military build-up on Mahoré and likewise suspended aid.^[19] On December 7, anti-Denard demonstrations by about 1,000 students and workers were violently broken up by the protests.^[19] By then the islands' school system had shut down, and the civil service had gone on strike.^[19] Faced with an untenable situation, Denard surrendered to French forces without a fight on December 15.^[19] Along with about two dozen comrades, he was flown to Pretoria and put under house arrest.^[19] The French government later announced that Denard would remain in detention in South Africa pending the outcome of a French judicial inquiry into Abdallah's death.^[19] In February 1993 he returned to France, where he was initially arrested, tried, and exonerated of involvement in the death of Abdallah.^[19]

References

Footnotes

Works cited

• OCLC 32508646. This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain
  .

• Alain Deschamps (2005). Les Comores d'Ahmed Abdallah: mercenaires, révolutionnaires et cœlacanthe. KARTHALA Editions. p. 189.
  ISBN 9782845866287
  .
• Espace et pouvoirs en Grande Comore. Editions L'Harmattan. March 1996. p. 592.
  ISBN 2296314481
  . Guebourg.