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Comoros 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 Démocratique--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 Établissements
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.
Data as of August 1994
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