THE FEDERAL ISLAMIC REPUBLIC of the Comoros is an archipelago
situated in the western Indian Ocean, about midway between the island of
Madagascar and the coast of East Africa at the northern end of the
Mozambique Channel. The archipelago has served in past centuries as a
stepping stone between the African continent and Madagascar, as a
southern outpost for Arab traders operating along the East African
coast, and as a center of Islamic culture. The name "Comoros"
is derived from the Arabic kamar or kumr, meaning
"moon," although this name was first applied by Arab
geographers to Madagascar. In the nineteenth century, Comoros was
absorbed into the French overseas empire, but it unilaterally proclaimed
independence from France on July 6, 1975.
Comoros has had a troubled and uncertain course as an independent
state. Mahor�, or Mayotte, the easternmost of the archipelago's four
main islands, including Njazidja (formerly Grande Comore), Mwali
(formerly Moh�li), and Nzwani (formerly Anjouan), remains under French
administration, a majority of its voters having chosen to remain tied to
France in referendums held in 1974 and 1976. By the mid-1990s, the integration of Mahor�
into Comoros remained an official objective of the Comoran government,
but it had taken a back seat to more pressing concerns, such as
developing a viable national economy. Meanwhile, the Mahorais were
making the most of their close relationship with France. They accepted
large amounts of developmental aid and took an intense interest in
French political events. Although South Africa played a major role in
the Comoran economy in the 1980s, by the early 1990s France was the
island republic's foremost patron, providing economic aid, political
guidance, and national security.
Comoros is densely populated and dedicates only limited amounts of
land to food production. Thus, it depends heavily on imports of rice,
vegetables, and meat. Its economy is based on the production of cash
crops, principally ylang-ylang (perfume essence), vanilla, and cloves,
all of which have experienced wild price swings in recent years, thus
complicating economic planning and contributing to a burgeoning trade
deficit. A growing dependence on foreign aid, often provided to meet
day-to-day needs for food, funds, and government operations, further
clouds economic prospects. Comoros suffers the ills of a developing
nation in particularly severe form: food shortages and inadequate diets,
poor health standards, a high rate of population growth, widespread
illiteracy, and international indebtedness.
The country has endured political and natural catastrophes. Less than
a month after independence, the government of the first Comoran
president, Ahmed Abdallah, was overthrown; in 1978 foreign mercenaries
carried out a second coup, overthrowing the radical regime of Ali Soilih
and returning Abdallah to power. Indigenous riots in Madagascar in 1976
led to the repatriation of an estimated 17,000 Comorans. The eruption of
the volcano, Kartala, on Njazidja in 1977 displaced some 2,000 people
and possibly hastened the downfall of the Soilih regime. Cyclones in the
1980s, along with a violent coup that included the assassination of
President Abdallah in 1989 and two weeks of rule by European
mercenaries, rounded out the first fifteen years of Comoran
independence.
In the early 1990s, the omnipresent mercenaries of the late 1970s and
1980s were gone, and the winding down of civil conflict in southern
Africa, in combination with the end of the Cold War, had reduced the
republic's value as a strategic chess piece. However, as in the 1970s
and 1980s, the challenge to Comorans was to find a way off the
treadmills of economic dependency and domestic political dysfunction.
Comoros - Early Visitors and Settlers
Little is known of the first inhabitants of the archipelago, although
a sixth-century settlement has been uncovered on Nzwani by
archaeologists. Historians speculated that Indonesian immigrants used
the islands as stepping stones on the way to Madagascar prior to A.D.
1000. Because Comoros lay at the juncture of African, Malayo-Indonesian,
and Arab spheres of influence, the present population reflects a blend
of these elements in its physical characteristics, language, culture,
social structure, and religion. Local legend cites the first settlement
of the archipelago by two families from Arabia after the death of
Solomon. Legend also tells of a Persian king, Husain ibn Ali, who
established a settlement on Comoros around the beginning of the eleventh
century. Bantu peoples apparently moved to Comoros before the fourteenth
century, principally from the coast of what is now southern Mozambique;
on the island of Nzwani they apparently encountered an earlier group of
inhabitants, a Malayo-Indonesian people. A number of chieftains bearing
African titles established settlements on Njazidja and Nzwani, and by
the fifteenth century they probably had contact with Arab merchants and
traders who brought the Islamic faith to the islands.
A watershed in the history of the islands was the arrival of the
Shirazi Arabs in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The Shirazi, who
originated from the city of Shiraz in what is now Iran, were Sunni Muslims adhering to the legal school of Muhammad ibn
Idris ash Shafii, an eighth-century Meccan scholar who followed a middle
path in combining tradition and independent judgment in legal matters.
The Shirazi Arabs traveled and traded up and down the East African coast
and as far east as India and Maldives. A legend is recounted on Comoros
and on the East African coast of seven Shirazi brothers who set sail in
seven ships, landed on the coast of northwest Madagascar and on Njazidja
and Nzwani, and established colonies in the fifteenth century. The
Shirazi, who divided Njazidja into eleven sultanates and Nzwani into
two, extended their rule to Mahor� and Mwali, although the latter in
the nineteenth century came under the control of Malagasy rulers. The
Shirazi built mosques and established Islam as the religion of the
islands. They also introduced stone architecture, carpentry, cotton
weaving, the cultivation of a number of fruits, and the Persian solar
calendar. By the sixteenth century, the Comoros had become a center of
regional trade, exporting rice, ambergris, spices, and slaves to ports
in East Africa and the Middle East in exchange for opium, cotton cloth,
and other items.
The first Europeans to visit the islands were the Portuguese, who
landed on Njazidja around 1505. The islands first appear on a European
map in 1527, that of Portuguese cartographer Diogo Roberos. Dutch
sixteenth-century accounts describe the Comoros sultanates as prosperous
trade centers with the African coast and Madagascar. Intense competition
for this trade, and, increasingly, for European commerce, resulted in
constant warfare among the sultanates, a situation that persisted until
the French occupation. The sultans of Njazidja only occasionally
recognized the supremacy of one of their number as tibe, or
supreme ruler.
By the early seventeenth century, slaves had become Comoros' most
important export commodity, although the market for the islands' other
products also continued to expand, mainly in response to the growing
European presence in the region. To meet this increased demand, the
sultans began using slave labor themselves, following common practice
along the East African coast.
Beginning in 1785, the Sakalava of the west coast of Madagascar began
slaving raids on Comoros. They captured thousands of inhabitants and
carried them off in outrigger canoes to be sold in French-occupied
Madagascar, Mauritius, or Reunion to work on the sugar plantations, many
of which French investors owned. The island of Mahor�, closest of the
group to Madagascar, was virtually depopulated. Comoran pleas for aid
from the French and the other European powers went unanswered, and the
raids ceased only after the Sakalava kingdoms were conquered by the
Merina of Madagascar's central highlands. After the Merina conquest,
groups of Sakalava and Betsimisaraka peoples left Madagascar and settled
on Mahor� and Mwali.
Prosperity was restored as Comoran traders again became involved in
transporting slaves from the East African coast to Reunion and
Madagascar. Dhows carrying slaves brought in huge profits for their
investors. On Comoros, it was estimated in 1865 that as much as 40
percent of the population consisted of slaves. For the elite, owning a
large number of slaves to perform fieldwork and household service was a
mark of status. On the eve of the French occupation, Comoran society
consisted of three classes: the elite of the Shirazi sultans and their
families, a middle class of free persons or commoners, and a slave class
consisting of those who had been brought from the African coast or their
descendants.
Comoros - French Colonization
Politics in the 1960s were dominated by a social and economic
elite--largely descendants of the precolonial sultanate ruling
families--which was conservative and pro-French. During Comoros' period
of self-government as an overseas department, there were two main
conservative political groupings: the Parti Vert (Green Party), which
later became known as the Comoros Democratic Union (Union D�mocratique
des Comores--UDC), and the Parti Blanc (White Party), later
reconstituted as the Democratic Assembly of the Comoran People
(Rassemblement D�mocratique du Peuple Comorien-- RDPC). Dr. Said
Mohamed Cheikh, president of the Parti Vert and of the Governing
Council, was, until his death in 1970, the most important political
leader in the islands. The Parti Blanc, under Prince Said Ibrahim,
provided the opposition, endorsing a progressive program that included
land reform and a loosening of the monopoly on Comoran cash crops
enjoyed by the foreign-owned plantation soci�t�s. The second
most powerful member of the Parti Vert, Ahmed Abdallah, a wealthy
plantation owner and representative to the French National Assembly,
succeeded Cheikh as president of the Governing Council soon after Cheikh
died.
Well into the 1960s, the two established parties were concerned
primarily with maintaining a harmonious relationship with France while
obtaining assistance in economic planning and infrastructure
development. Given this consensus, politically active Comorans often
based their allegiance on personal feelings toward the doctor and the
prince who led the two main parties and on whatever patronage either
party could provide.
The independence movement started not in the Comoro Islands but among
Comoran expatriates in Tanzania, who founded the National Liberation
Movement of Comoros (Mouvement de la Lib�ration Nationale des
Comores--Molinaco) in 1962. Molinaco actively promoted the cause of
Comoran independence abroad, particularly in the forum of the
Organization of African Unity (OAU), but not until 1967 did it begin to
extend its influence to the islands themselves, engaging in largely
clandestine activities. The Socialist Party of Comoros (Parti Socialiste
des Comores--Pasoco), established in 1968, was largely supported by
students and other young people.
A growing number of politically conscious Comorans, resenting what
they perceived as French neglect of the Comoro Islands, supported
independence. Independence-minded Comorans, especially younger ones,
were energized by dramatic events across the Mozambique Channel on the
African mainland. Tanganyika had gained its independence from Britain in
1961 and soon adopted a government based on "African
socialism." Zanzibar, another longtime British colony, became
independent in 1963 and overthrew the ruling Arab elite in a violent
revolution the following year; the island state then merged with
Tanganyika to form the new nation of Tanzania. Meanwhile, nationalists
were beginning uprisings in the Portuguese colony of Mozambique.
Abdallah, although a conservative politician, saw independence as a
"regrettable necessity," given the unsatisfactory level of
French support and the growing alienation of an increasingly radicalized
younger generation. The violent suppression of a student demonstration
in 1968 and the death of Said Mohammed Cheikh in 1970 provided further
evidence of the erosion of the existing order. In 1972 leaders of the
Parti Vert (now the UDC) and the Parti Blanc (now the RDPC) agreed to
press for independence, hoping at the same time to maintain cordial
relations with France. A coalition of conservative and moderate parties,
the Party for the Evolution of Comoros (Parti pour l'�volution des
Comores), was in the forefront of the independence effort. The coalition
excluded Pasoco, which it perceived as violently revolutionary, but it
cooperated for a time with Molinaco. During 1973 and 1974, the local
government negotiated with France, and issued a "Common
Declaration" on June 15, 1973, defining the means by which the
islands would gain independence. Part of the backdrop of the
negotiations was a proindependence riot in November 1973 in Moroni in
which the buildings of the Chamber of Deputies were burned. A referendum
was held on December 22, 1974. Voters supported independence by a 95
percent majority, but 65 percent of those casting ballots on Mahor�
chose to remain as a French department.
Twenty-eight days after the declaration of independence, on August 3,
1975, a coalition of six political parties known as the United National
Front overthrew the Abdallah government, with the aid of foreign
mercenaries. Some observers claimed that French commercial interests,
and possibly even the French government, had helped provide the funds
and the mat�riel to bring off the coup. The reasons for the coup remain
obscure, although the belief that France might return Mahor� if
Abdallah were out of power appears to have been a contributing factor.
Abdallah fled to Nzwani, his political power base, where he remained in
control with an armed contingent of forty-five men until forces from
Moroni recaptured the island and arrested him in late September 1975.
After the coup, a three-man directorate took control. One of the three,
Ali Soilih, was appointed minister of defense and justice and
subsequently was made head of state by the Chamber of Deputies on
January 3, 1976. Four days earlier, on December 31, 1975, France had
formally recognized the independence of Comoros (minus Mahor�), but
active relations, including all aid programs, which amounted to more
than 40 percent of the national budget, remained suspended.
Comoros - The Soilih 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.
Soon after, Abdallah was named sole executive.
The continued presence of the mercenaries impeded Abdallah's early
efforts to stabilize Comoros. Denard seemed interested in remaining in
Comoros, and he and his friends were given financially rewarding
appointments with the new government. In reaction to Denard's
involvement with Abdallah, the OAU revoked Comoros' OAU membership,
Madagascar severed diplomatic relations, and the United Nations (UN)
threatened economic sanctions against the regime. France also exerted
pressure for Denard to leave, and in late September--temporarily, as it
developed--he departed the islands.
Abdallah consolidated power, beginning with the writing of a new
constitution. The document combined federalism and centralism. It
granted each island its own legislature and control over taxes levied on
individuals and businesses resident on the island (perhaps with an eye
to rapprochement with Mahor�), while reserving strong executive powers
for the president. It also restored Islam as the state religion, while
acknowledging the rights of those who did not observe the Muslim faith.
The new constitution was approved by 99 percent of Comoran voters on
October 1, 1978. The Comorans also elected Abdallah to a six-year term
as president of what was now known as the Federal Islamic Republic of
the Comoros.
Although Abdallah had been president when Comoros broke away from
France in 1975, he now moved to establish a relationship much more to
France's liking. Upon Denard's departure, he gave a French military
mission responsibility for training Comoros' defense force. He also
signed an agreement with France to allow its navy full use of Comoran
port facilities.
Making the most of 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. In 1979 his
government arrested Soilih regime members who had not already left or
been killed during the 1978 coup. Four former ministers of the Soilih
government disappeared and allegedly were murdered, and about 300 other
Soilih supporters were imprisoned without trial. For the next three
years, occasional trials were held, in many cases only after France had
insisted on due process for the prisoners.
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.
Thanks in large part to aid from the European Community (EC) and the Arab states, the regime began to upgrade roads,
telecommunications, and port facilities. The government also accepted
international aid for programs to increase the cultivation of cash crops
and food for domestic consumption. Abdallah endeavored to maintain the
relations established by Soilih with China, Nigeria, and Tanzania, and
to expand Comoros' contacts in the Islamic world with visits to Libya
and the Persian Gulf states.
Despite international assistance, economic development was slow.
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 Comoros.
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 Comorans--Union of Comorans (Front National Uni
des Komoriens--Union des Komoriens--FNUK-- Unikom). In 1980 the Comoran
ambassador to France, Said Ali Kemal, resigned his position to form
another opposition group, the National Committee for Public Safety
(Comit� National de Salut Public). A failed coup in February 1981, led
by a former official of the Soilih regime, resulted in arrests of about
forty people.
In regard to Mahor�, 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. At the same time, he kept
the door open to Mahor� 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. Having
established an administration that, in comparison with the Soilih years,
seemed tolerable to his domestic and international constituencies,
Abdallah proceeded to entrench himself. He did this through domestic and
international policies that would profoundly compromise Comoros'
independence and create the chronic crisis that continued to
characterize Comoran politics and government in 1994.
The Undermining of the Political Process
In February 1982, Comoros became a one-party state. The government
designated Abdallah's newly formed Comoran Union for Progress (Union
Comorienne pour le Progr�s--UCP) as the republic's sole political
party. Although unaffiliated individuals could run for local and
national office, the only party that could organize on behalf of
candidates henceforth would be the UCP. In March 1982 elections, all but
one of Abdallah's handpicked UCP candidates won. UCP candidates likewise
dominated the May 1983 National Assembly elections, and opposition
candidates attempting to stand for election in balloting for the three
islands' legislative councils in July were removed from the lists by the
Ministry of Interior. Abdallah himself was elected to a second six-year
term as head of state in September 1984, winning more than 99 percent of
the vote as the sole candidate. During the National Assembly elections
of March 22, 1987, the Abdallah regime arrested 400 poll watchers from
opposition groups. A state radio announcement that one non-UCP delegate
had been elected was retracted the next day.
Abdallah also kept opponents from competing with him in the arena of
legitimate politics by reshuffling his government and amending the 1978
constitution. As part of what one observer wryly called the process of
"remov[ing] his most avid successors from temptation,"
Abdallah pushed through a constitutional amendment in 1985 that
abolished the post of prime minister, a move that made the president
both head of state and head of the elected government. The amendment
also diminished the status of Ali Mroudjae, the erstwhile prime minister
and a likely future candidate for president. Another 1985 amendment took
away many of the powers of the president of the National Assembly,
including his right to become interim head of state in the event of the
incumbent's death. The amendment transferred the right of succession to
the president of the Supreme Court, an appointee of the head of state.
Feeling the effect of this second amendment was assembly president
Mohamed Taki, another man generally regarded as presidential timber.
Mroudjae's subsequent career in the Abdallah government illustrated
the way in which Abdallah used frequent reshufflings of his cabinet to
eliminate potential challengers. 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.
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. These changes, among other
things, would permit him to run yet again in 1990. A referendum on
revisions to the constitution was scheduled for November 4, 1989.
A weak, divided, and opportunistic opposition facilitated Abdallah's
efforts to undermine the political process. The character of Comoran
politics ensured that opposition would be sustained by an unwieldy group
of strong personalities. As the personal stock of these would-be leaders
rose and fell, coalitions coalesced and just as quickly fell apart in a
process that engendered distrust and cynicism. The ban on opposition
political organizations at home--brutally upheld, when necessary, by the
Presidential Guard (Garde Presidentelle--GP) and the Comoran
military--further undercut efforts to organize against the head of
state. The French government's displeasure at intrigues of Comoran
exiles in Paris also complicated opposition efforts.
Given the absence of an ideological basis for resisting the regime,
it was also not surprising that some opposition leaders were willing to
ally themselves with the head of state if such a move appeared likely to
advance them personally. For example, Mouzaoir Abdallah, leader of the
opposition Union for a Democratic Republic in Comoros (Union pour une R�publique
D�mocratique aux Comores--URDC), appeared with the president at
independence day celebrations in July 1988 amid rumors that the URDC
chief was being considered for a reconstituted prime minister's office.
In September 1988 another opposition leader, Said Hachim, agreed to join
the commission considering revisions to the constitution.
The credibility of Abdallah's opponents was also damaged by the
efforts of one opposition leader, former ambassador to France Said Ali
Kemal, to recruit mercenaries to help overthrow the Abdallah government.
Arrested in Australia in late 1983, six of the mercenaries gave
testimony discrediting Kemal.
Mercenary Rule
Abdallah complemented his political maneuvers by employing a GP
officered by many of the same mercenaries who had helped him take power
in 1978. 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.
Although Denard had made a ceremonial departure from Comoros
following the 1978 coup, by the early 1980s he was again openly active
in the islands. The GP, whose numbers were reported to range from 300 to
700 members, primarily indigenous Comorans, were led by about thirty
French and Belgian mercenaries, mostly comrades of Denard's in the
post-World War II conflicts that accompanied the decolonization of
Africa and Asia. Answerable only to the president, the GP operated
outside the chain of command of the French-trained 1,000-member Comoran
Armed Forces, a situation that caused resentment among the regular
military, Comoran citizens, and other African states.
The GP's primary missions were to protect the president and to deter
attempts to overthrow his government. During the July 1983 elections to
the three islands' legislative councils, the GP beat and arrested
demonstrators protesting the republic's singleparty system. During
elections to the National Assembly in March 1987, the GP--which had
become known as les affreux, "the
frighteners"--replaced several hundred dissident poll watchers who
had been arrested by the army. On March 8, 1985, one of the most serious
attempts to overthrow the Abdallah government began as a mutiny by about
thirty Comoran troops of the GP against their European officers. The
disaffected guards had formed ties to the Democratic Front (Front D�mocratique--FD),
one of the more nationalistic of the republic's many banned political
parties. The mutiny was quickly squelched; three of the rebellious
guards were killed, and the rest were taken prisoners.
President Abdallah used the uprising as an opportunity to round up
dissidents, primarily FD members, whose leadership denied involvement in
the coup attempt. Later in 1985, seventyseven received convictions;
seventeen, including the FD's secretary general, Mustapha Said Cheikh,
were sentenced to life imprisonment at hard labor. 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.
Perhaps the most notorious action of the GP on behalf of the Abdallah
government occurred in November 1987. 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. 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.
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. Denard was a
part owner of �tablissements Abdallah et Fils, Comoros' largest
import-export firm, whose primary owner was President Abdallah. Denard
also owned and operated a highly profitable commercial shuttle between
South Africa and Comoros, and owned Sogecom, a private security firm
with contracts to protect South African hotels being built in the
islands.
The GP officers, sympathetic to South Africa's apartheid government,
established themselves as a conduit of South African investment and
influence in Comoros. An official South African trade representative
conceded that a number of his country's investment projects, including a
525-hectare experimental farm, housing, road construction, and a medical
evacuation program, were brokered and managed by guard officers at the
mercenaries' insistence.
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. 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. The GP was widely understood to be funded by South
Africa, at the rate of about US$3 million per year.
Comoros as Client State: The Economics of Abdallah
President Abdallah generally put his personal interests ahead of
national interests in making economic policy. The result was the
creation of a client state whose meager and unpredictable cash crop
earnings were supplemented with increasing infusions of foreign aid.
Throughout the 1980s, export earnings from Comoros' four main cash
crops--vanilla, ylang-ylang, cloves, and copra--experienced a wrenching
sequence of booms and collapses because of weather and market factors,
or else steadily dwindled. The regime's principal form of response was
to apply the president's considerable diplomatic skills to developing an
extensive network of governments and international organizations willing
to extend loans and donate aid. The main suppliers were France, South
Africa, the EC, the conservative Arab states, the World Bank and related
organs, and regional financial institutions such as the Arab Bank for
Economic Development in Africa and the African Development Bank. Some
assistance went to projects of indisputable value, such as efforts to
create independent news media and improve telephone communications with
the outside world. Much of the aid, however, was questionable--for
example, loans and grants to help the republic meet the payroll for its
oversized civil service. Other more plausible projects, such as the
protracted development of a seaport at the town of Mutsamudu,
construction of paved ring roads linking each island's coastal
settlements, and the building of power stations, nonetheless tended to
be instances of placing the cart before the horse. That is,
capital-intensive improvements to infrastructure had not been
coordinated with local development projects; hence, little, if any,
domestic commerce existed to benefit from road networks, electrical
power, and world-class port facilities. The importation of huge
quantities of building materials and construction equipment provided
immediate benefits to importexport firms in the islands, of which �tablissements
Abdallah et Fils was the largest. In the meantime, the projects were of
little immediate use to Comorans and were likely to go underused for
years to come.
Throughout the Abdallah period, rice imports drained as much as 50
percent of Comoran export earnings. Projects to increase food
self-sufficiency, as one observer noted, "fail[ed] to respond to
the largesse" provided by international sponsors such as the
European Development Fund and the International Fund for Agricultural
Development. The president joined with vanilla growers in resisting
international pressure to divert vanillaproducing land to the
cultivation of corn and rice for domestic consumption. He also declined
to heed World Bank advice to impose tariffs and domestic taxes on
imported rice. Abdallah's importexport firm was heavily involved in
vanilla exports, as well as in the importation of Far Eastern rice at
three times its price at the source.
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. Little of the material used in building these resorts
was of Comoran origin. Also, once completed, the resorts would be almost
entirely owned and managed by non-Comorans. Although tourism, mainly by
South Africans who were unwelcome in other African resorts, was widely
considered the only promising new industry in Comoros, Abdallah guided
its development so that resorts benefited few Comorans other than
himself and his associates.
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. 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. By 1988, the last full year of the
Abdallah regime, 80 percent of annual public expenditures were funded by
external aid.
The Demise of Abdallah, 1989
Only weeks before the violent end of the Abdallah regime in late
1989, one observer noted that "Comoros is still run like a village,
with a handful of tough men in charge and supported by foreign
aid." 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 (IMF). Even those who would keep their
government jobs, however, were not guaranteed economic security. As
often occurred whenever export earnings slid, civil servants had not
been paid since mid-summer.
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. Balloting was marked by the now customary manipulation by the
government. Opposition groups reported that polling places lacked
private voting booths, government officials blocked the entry of
opposition poll watchers, and the army and police removed ballot boxes
before voting ended. Reaction to these abuses was unusually angry. In
Njazidja voters smashed ballot boxes rather than have them carted away
by the army; the governor's office was set on fire in Nzwani, and a bomb
was found outside the home of the minister of finance in Moroni. More
than 100 people were arrested following the election, and in subsequent
weeks the international media described a deteriorating situation in the
islands; the head of state claimed that France "authorizes
terrorism in the Comoros," and leaders of the banned opposition in
bold public statements questioned the legitimacy of the referendum.
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). 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.
Evidence emerged subsequently that Abdallah's assassination resulted
from the late president's proposed actions with regard to the GP. In
September 1989, Abdallah had engaged a French military consultant, who
determined that the GP should be absorbed into the regular army.
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. Denard and
his second in command were seen walking with Abdallah only hours before
he died. 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.
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. Twenty-seven police officers were killed, hundreds
of people were arrested, and all journalists were confined to their
hotels. The mercenaries disarmed the regular army, ousted provisional
president Haribon Chebani, who as chief of the Supreme Court had
succeeded Abdallah, and installed Mohamed Said Djohar, who just three
days earlier had become chief of the Supreme Court, as Comoros' third
president in less than a week.
The immediate reaction of the republic's two main supporters, France
and South Africa, was to isolate Denard. South Africa, admitting years
of funding of the GP, cut off all aid. France began a military build-up
on Mahor� and likewise suspended aid. On December 7, anti-Denard
demonstrations by about 1,000 students and workers were violently broken
up by the protests. By then the islands' school system had shut down,
and the civil service had gone on strike. Faced with an untenable
situation, Denard surrendered to French forces without a fight on
December 15. Along with about two dozen comrades, he was flown to
Pretoria and put under house arrest. 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. In
February 1993 he returned to France, where he was initially arrested,
tried, and exonerated of involvement in the death of Abdallah.
Comoros - The Issue of Mahor�
One of the touchiest issues in the negotiations between Comoros and
France over independence in the early 1970s had been whether the 1974
referendum would be considered for the Comoros archipelago as a whole or
on an island-by-island basis. Opposition to independence on Mahor� was
organized by the Mayotte Popular Movement (Mouvement Populaire
Mahorais--MPM), an organization that had been founded in the 1960s by
Zeina M'Dere, a spokeswoman for Mahor� shopkeepers, mostly women, who
had been affected economically when the colonial capital was moved from
the Mahor� town of Dzaoudzi to Moroni on Njazidja in 1962.
The reasons behind Mahor�'s 65 percent vote against independence
were several. First, the people of Mahor� considered themselves
culturally, religiously, and linguistically distinct from those of the
other three islands; they felt that their long association with France
(since 1841) had given their island a distinct Creole character like
that of Reunion or Seychelles. Second, given Mahor�'s smaller
population, greater natural resources, and higher standard of living,
the Mahorais thought that their island would be economically viable
within a French union and ought not to be brought down to the level of
the other three poorer islands. Third, most Mahorais apparently felt
that Mahor�'s future within a Comoran state would not be a comfortable
one, given a perception of neglect that had begun with the much resented
transfer of the capital.
In France and among conservatives on Reunion, the 1974 vote on Mahor�
in favor of continued association with France was greeted with great
enthusiasm. Comoran leaders, in contrast, accused the MPM and its
leader, Marcel Henri, of fabricating the illusion of Mahorais
"uniqueness" to preserve the power of Mahor�'s non-Muslim,
Creole elite. The issue poisoned Comoran relations with France,
particularly because the Indian Ocean lobby, whose leaders included
Reunion's deputy to the French National Assembly, Michel Debr�, pushed
for a "Mayotte fran�aise" (French Mayotte). Apparently
leaning toward the interpretation that the December 1974 referendum was
an island-by-island plebiscite, the French legislature voted in June
1975 to postpone independence for six months and hold a second
referendum. The Abdallah government responded by declaring independence
unilaterally on July 6, 1975, for all Comoro Islands, including Mahor�.
France reacted by cutting off financial aid, which provided 41 percent
of the national budget. Fearing a Comoran attempt to assert control of
Mahor� forcibly, France sent members of the Foreign Legion from Reunion
and a fleet of three vessels to patrol the waters around the island on
July 6-7. On November 12, 1975, the UN General Assembly passed a
resolution giving Comoros UN membership and recognized its claims to
Mahor�, which France opposed.
French policy toward Mahor� had been, in the words of one observer,
"to cultivate a more or less honest majority for reunification
among the uncooperative Mahorais," particularly after the
forthrightly anti-French regime of Ali Soilih ended in 1978. By
contrast, the Mahorais' objective appeared to be full departmental
status such as that of Reunion, where residents enjoyed full rights as
French citizens. In a 1976 referendum, the Mahorais expressed
dissatisfaction with their status as an overseas territory. France then
created a new classification for Mahor�--territorial community (collectivit�
territoriale)--under which Mahor� was administered by a prefect
appointed by the French government. Local government consisted of a
popularly elected seventeen-member General Council. The island was
entitled to send elected representatives to Paris, one each to the
National Assembly and the Senate. The French franc served as the
currency of the island. This status still applied in 1993.
After it appeared that Mahor� would not be tempted by the federalist
design of Ahmed Abdallah's 1978 constitution to join the Republic of the
Comoros, the National Assembly in Paris decided in 1979 to prolong the
existence of the collectivit� territoriale until a 1984
plebiscite, resolving meanwhile to study the situation and consult with
the islanders. In late 1984, with an overwhelming vote to remain
associated with France in the offing, the French government postponed
the plebiscite indefinitely. By late 1993, it had still not been held,
the Mahorais apparently still eager to remain part of France and as
disinclined as ever to reunite with the three troubled islands to their
immediate west.
Although many politically conservative French relished the Mahorais'
popular vow that nous resterons fran�ais pour rester libre
("we will remain French to remain free"), the Mahor�
situation caused some discomfort for France internationally. Every year,
resolutions calling on France to relinquish Mahor� to Comoros passed
with near unanimity in the UN, and the OAU likewise issued annual
condemnations. Although Comoran official distaste for the situation
became more muted in the 1980s and 1990s, the Comoran government
continued to draw French attention to the issue. In May 1990, newly
elected president Said Mohamed Djohar called for peaceful dialogue and
French review of Mahor�'s status. But feeling obligated not to change
the Mahorais' status against their will, the French could do little.
Anti-Comoran riots and demonstrations, and the formation of an
anti-immigrant paramilitary group on Mahor� in response to the presence
of illegal Comoran immigrants, were also sources of embarrassment to
France.
The economy of Mahor� in some ways resembles that of Comoros. Rice,
cassava, and corn are cultivated for domestic consumption; ylang-ylang
and vanilla are the primary exports. The main imports, whose value far
outstripped that of exports, are foodstuffs, machinery and appliances,
transport equipment, and metals. Construction, primarily of
French-funded public works, is the only industrial activity.
A five-year development plan (1986-91) focused on large-scale public
projects, principally construction of a deepwater port at Longoni and an
airport at the capital, Dzaoudzi. The plan and its two main projects
were later extended through 1993. Despite Mahor�'s great natural
beauty, tourism was inhibited by a dearth of hotel rooms and the
island's isolated location.
Under French administration, Mahor� had generally enjoyed domestic
peace and stability, although tensions appeared to be rising by the
early 1990s. In the summer of 1991, the relocation of people from their
homes to allow the expansion of the airport met with vociferous
protests, mostly by young people. The protests soon grew into violent
demonstrations against the local government's administration of the
island. Paramilitary attacks on Comoran immigrants occurred in June
1992, and a February 1993 general strike for higher wages ended in
rioting. Security forces from Reunion and France were called in to
restore order.
