The old white sign on the main road leading to the Moroni port proclaims that Mayotte is and will forever stay Comorian.
Mayotte, one of four islands that make up the Union of the Comoros, remains under direct French control, more than 30 years after the Comoros, the small, four-island nation in the Indian Ocean off the southeastern coast of Africa, declared its independence from France in 1975.
France withdrew from three islands, including the main one, the Grand Comore, but kept control of Mayotte, which was the capital of the colony.
If one misses the signs, they would think the Comorians are in love with France. The signs on shopfronts are in French. Bonjour is the word people use to greet visitors. The main newspaper is an eight-page French tabloid.
But the Union of the Comoros is actually wary of France's designs to keep its influence over its agriculturally-rich former colony. And there is little the small country can do.
It is one of the poorest in Africa and needs foreign aid to sustain the administration of the state and state employees, and most of that aid comes from France. So, the Comoros government has lately been promoting the nation's Arab heritage and calling on the Arab states to come and invest in their long-forgotten sister nation.
However, two obstacles stand in the way of the "Arabisation" policy of President Ahmad Abdullah Sambi, who became president in 2006. One is that Arab countries seem to be reluctant to even acknowledge the Comoros. There are neither any Arab ambassadors there nor is there any trade or cultural representative office.
Faint traces
Second, and most important, is that Sambi's people don't even speak Arabic and the prevailing culture is that of the former occupier. Most senior officials speak either the local language, Shikomoro, which is a blend of Swahili and Arabic, or French. Yet they insist their country is "a proudly Arab nation".
They are technically correct. The Comoros has been a member state of the Arab League since 1993. But one cannot get over the feeling that there is a sort of identity crisis in this beautiful country.
"I am African, of course. But we are being told this is an Arab country," Eclilo, the taxi driver, said.
His sentiment, spelt heartily, is contested, however, by the officials who maintain that the Comoros is entirely Arab. "Even the [driver's] name is Arabic but he doesn't know it," one official said.
He went on to explain that the name Eclilo is actually derived from the Arabic word ekleel, which translates into "wreath".
The taxi driver's view was shared by many we met in the popular Volou Volou market, in central Moroni, the union's capital.
The Comoros Islands is an archipelago located southwest of Seychelles and between Madagascar and Africa. The archipelago consists of four islands; Grande Comore, Anjouan, Moheli and Mayotte, the one occupied by France.
The country derives its name from the Arabic word Qamar meaning the "moon". The islands are known in Arabic as Juzur Al Qumur, which means "Islands of the moon".
The islands became a French colony following the Berlin conference of 1884-85 in which European powers divided Africa.
The population, estimated at 800,000, is a mixture of Arabs and Africans. The majority of the Arabs are believed to have come from Oman and Yemen. Some of them are descendents of Sunni Persians from Shiraz who dominated the islands in the 19th century. More than 98 per cent of the population is Muslim.
Two years after its independence, the Comoros applied for membership of the Arab League. The request was rejected "because Arabic was not the dominant language", according to veteran diplomat Ebrahim Abdullah Ebrahim, who heads the Arab Affairs Department at the Foreign Ministry. Ebrahim, who is fluent in Arabic, served as an ambassador to Saudi Arabia from 1985 to 1987, even before his country joined the Arab League on September 13, 1993.
Between 1977 and 1993, the Comoros had to go through stringent scanning by an Arab League team to verify its eligibility. The late president Said Mohammad Djohar, who ruled from 1989 to 1995, organised an Arab Culture conference in which Egypt and Saudi Arabia took part. "The forum concluded that the Comoros was an Arab country," Ebrahim told Weekend Review at his office in Moroni.
A second request for membership was accepted by the Arab League. But nothing seems to have changed the French reality on the ground.
The population still communicates in French, which has remained the official language of government and business. Comorian officials admit that there is a long way to go before Arabic becomes the official language of their officially Arab country.
"There is a huge influence of French culture here. For centuries, there was no cultural competition to the French language. Hence it dominated society," Ebrahim said. "We also lack the resources to set up advanced institutes to teach Arabic. The previous governments never paid attention to that issue; they were too busy dealing with political affairs and combating the frequent coups and crises."
The Comoros is one of the poorest countries on the planet. Its federal budget for the year 2009 is a meagre 40 million euros (about Dh210 million), according to Sambi. "And 80 per cent of that goes to paying the salaries of government employees. You can calculate how much is left to do other things," he told Weekend Review.
Since its independence in 1975, the Comoros has witnessed some 20 coups, most of which were staged by the legendary French mercenary Bob Denard (see sidebar). It is believed he was operating with the French government's tacit approval and, sometimes, logistical help.
But since 2006, when the country held free presidential elections (won by Sambi), the Comoros has been largely stable. But in 2008, a rebellion took place in the second largest island, Anjouan. It was crushed by an African Union force, led by Tanzanian troops.
"With the election of President Sambi, we have witnessed an increased movement towards emphasising our Arab roots," Ebrahim said. This movement is increasingly accepted by the people, who actually believe that being a Muslim means that one is an Arab. And they would tell you that they are proud of their Muslim and Arab heritage. Even senior officials don't seem to make the distinction between the ethnicity and religion.
Of one league
"All Comorian people read Arabic because they read the Quran. We are Muslims. I am, too, but I have problems with pronunciation," said Djae Ahamada, the Telecommunications Minister.
"We are part of the Arab League. We are Arabs by blood and we are African by blood also and we are also Arabs through religion."
Like Ahamada, most Comorians believe in this dual identity. They are Arab but African, too.
"I am African, of course," says Mohammad Nour Abdul Baqi, an Arabic highschool teacher who graduated from a Saudi Arabian University. "But we are also Arab and we try to regain our language although it is a challenge for the government and the educators." Abdul Baqi says he insists that his children speak only Arabic at home and with their relatives and friends. But this seems to be a challenge.
Ebrahim, the foreign ministry official, said the curriculum drawn by the French, which is still being widely used, didn't help the cause of Arabising the language and the culture.
"But what also doesn't help us is the reluctance of Arab countries to embrace us as an Arab country," he said.
"We need our Arab brethren to feel our sense of Arabism. We need them to help our initiatives to spread the Arabic language," Ebrahim said.
An Arab diplomat acknowledged this "identity crisis" but told Weekend Review that the Arabs can benefit from helping spread the Arab language and encouraging the domination of the Arab culture in this strategically located country.
"It is the only Arab state in this vital area. The Arabs can use it as a base to ensure the security of their energy exports and also as a gateway to the countries of East Africa. For security and commercial reasons, the Comoros could be very important to us."
The Arab League's representative, the only Arab diplomat based in Moroni, agrees and laments the reluctance of Arabs to send envoys, leaving the country vulnerable to French domination and intimidation. "We should not let this country down, it is too important to neglect," says Abdullah Al Uraimi, a veteran Omani diplomat who came to the Comoros more than two years ago to represent the Arab League following a similar stint in Somalia.
"I know it is a poor country and perhaps some say that because it is far from the Middle East, it represents no real value to us. But this is absolutely wrong. It enjoys a strategic location that is very important to the regional security of Africa's Arab states such as Somalia, Sudan, Djibouti and even Egypt," said Al Uraimi who speaks several languages, including Swahili, which makes his life easy in the Comoros.
Ebrahim, the Foreign Ministry official, goes further: "I say to the Arabs, don't leave us easy prey to the [French] power that occupy Mayotte."
He added: "The Israeli foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, toured the region recently. Israel knows that this region is a strategic security belt for the Arabs. And it knows that these countries look at Israel as a belligerent state that occupies Palestine and oppresses its people.
"Nevertheless, the Israelis seek to buy influence and interests here. But the Arabs are nowhere to be found," he said.
Air crash tragedy
Ebrahim and other officials believe France would not be happy to see any contact between the Comoros and other Arab nations. Some officials, although low ranking ones, actually said the Yemeni airliner that crashed in the ocean on its way to the Comoros from Paris in June was "shot down". More than 150 people were killed in the tragedy.
Some officials in Moroni hint that "a French missile" brought down the Yemeni plane, "as a warning to Arab airlines that might think of flying to the Comoros", one ministerial assistant said.
The Yemeni airline has since stopped its flights. It was the only Arab airline flying to Moroni. The officials point out that immediately after the Yemeni plane crash, another French airline started flying to the Comoros. It is called Austral Airways, a small commercial company.
The conspiracy theory claims that the aircraft was shot down to cut off any link between the Comoros and the Arab world. To get to Moroni today, one has to take an agonising route via Nairobi and Mayotte. The trip can take a full day.
The French, Ebrahim claims, are "happy" to see the Comorians disconnected from the rest of the Arab world. "This would ensure their continuing occupation of Mayotte, which is an Arab land just like Palestine."
The Arabic movement of President Sambi is not solely cultural. It is part of his pursuit to attract Arab investors. The country is in dire need of investment in its three main potential revenue generators: agriculture, fishing and tourism. Salaries of government employees have been paid out late quite often in the past few months. Some of the employees actually have not been paid for months.
Sambi has been courting Gulf investors for the past two years. The Kuwaitis and the Qataris sent delegations recently and are planning a few mega projects in the northern areas of the Grand Comore, including resorts, shopping complexes and golf courses. But the president says Arab support is needed beyond the economics. It is about the identity of the country.
"We need Arab support not just financially, although it's important and urgent to keep our country running. We need their political support to regain our occupied land [in Mayotte] and preserve our Arab identity," President Sambi said. "This is our destiny."
Many of his countrymen and women would debate this and it is hard to ascertain it by driving around the capital. But to settle the identity crisis once and for all, officials say, is a long process.
****
'Pirate of the Republic'
By Omar ShariffDeputy Editor, Weekend Review
Frenchman Bob Denard was perhaps the only mercenary in the world to virtually run a country for an entire decade
Vive la mort, vive la guerre,
Vive le sacre mercenaire
- Mercenary toast in Congo during the 1960s
He has been described as Che Guevara of the capitalist world. In the course of his blood-stained 40-year career in Africa and the Middle East, French mercenary Bob Denard maintained that he was mainly driven by anti-communism. Nowhere did his actions have more impact than in the Comoros Islands, in which he carried out no less than four coups. Throughout the 1980s, Denard virtually ruled the Comoros, perhaps becoming the only mercenary in the world to run a country.
Born Gilbert Bourgeaud in Bordeaux in 1929, Denard joined the French navy in his teens and served in Indochina. In the early 1950s, he joined the French police in Morocco. In 1956 he was accused of involvement in a plot to kill France's prime minister, Pierre Mendès-France, and sentenced to a year in jail. Throughout the 1960s and 70s, he saw action on behalf of the Katanga rebels in Congo, with the Biafra secessionists in Nigeria and the royalists of Yemen. His life and times are said to have inspired such thrillers as Fredrick Forsyth's The Dogs of War and the Roger Moore starrer The Wild Geese.
Denard overthrew Ahmad Abdullah, the first president of Comoros, in 1975. It was widely believed that he did this on behalf of the French government, an allegation Paris has always denied. However, it is no secret that many European powers used the services of mercenaries throughout the 60s, 70, 80s and 90s to do their dirty work in their former colonies, especially in Africa. At his trial in 2006, a former French foreign intelligence official told the court: "When special services are unable to undertake certain kinds of undercover operations, they use parallel structures ... This was the case with Bob Denard." Denard maintained that he had "at least a yellow light" from France for his activities in Africa and that he was a "pirate of the [French] republic".
Following the coup against Abdullah, the brutal and allegedly mentally unstable Ali Soilih came to power. It was rumoured that he had been told by fortunetellers that he would be dislodged from power by a man with a dog. Soilih, the story goes, had all the dogs in the archipelago killed. Indeed, when Denard landed in Moroni in 1978 to carry out his second coup in the Comoros — this time against Soilih to re-install Abdullah — he reportedly had a German Shephard by the leash. Soilih was found dazed after a hashish session, and killed while "trying to escape", allegedly on Denard's orders.
Abdullah's second term was perhaps the best time in Denard's life. He appointed himself chief of the presidential guard. And with his band of European mercenaries ran the islands in all but name from the late 1970s to late 1980s. During this time, many Western governments were using the Comoros as a base to circumvent the international embargo against apartheid South Africa. In the course of Denard's long stay in the Comoros, the islands acquired the dubious name "Mercenary Isles". At an African summit, the Comoros delegates were derided as the "Denard delegation".
Denard claimed to have converted to Islam, and took the Muslim name Said Mustafa Mahjoub. He was duly granted Comoros citizenship. He married seven times, and had eight children.
Denard's fortunes turned again after Abdullah was assassinated in 1989 following a coup attempt, a crime in which the French mercenary was implicated. He escaped to South Africa, and lived there for three years before heading back to France. But never one to give up, he attempted another coup in the Comoros in 1995, this time against President Said Djohar. He landed in the dead of night with 30 other hired guns in inflatable dinghies, and the coup was initially successful. But times had changed, and Paris increasingly started to view Denard as a liability. A French expeditionary force was sent to capture and bring the mercenary back to Paris.
In 1999, Denard was tried and acquitted for the 1989 murder of Abdullah. There was another trial on appeal in 2006, when he was given a suspended sentence due to ill health. Denard died on October 13, 2007, age 78.
An island nation of 8,00,000
- The Comoros Islands is an archipelago located in the Indian Ocean about 480 kilometres west of the northern tip of Madagascar, comprising four islands: Grand Comore, Anjouan, Moheli and Mayotte. Mayotte, however, is occupied by France.
- The total land area of the four islands is 2,236 square kilometres.
- Population in 2009 was estimated at 8,00,000. The majority (98 per cent) is Muslim. The rest are Catholics or profess other religions.
- The first inhabitants are thought to have been Polynesians and Melanesian settlers. The islands became populated by a succession of diverse groups from the coast of Africa, the Arabian Gulf (especially Oman), Indonesia and Madagascar. By the 19th century, Sunni Arabs from Shiraz, Iran, dominated the islands. Since then the country attracted Bantus, Arabs (from Yemen and other areas), Shirazis, Malagazys and Swahilis. There is no ethnic tension in the country.
- French, Arabic and Shikomoro are the three official languages.
- Gained independence from France in 1975. Joined the Arab League in 1993.
- The constitution was adopted in 2001. It created the Union of the Comoros and gave more autonomy to each of the three islands.
- The 2006 election, which brought President Ahmad Abdullah Sambi to power, was approved as a free, transparent and credible exercise by international observers.
- In the May 2009 referendum, the people voted to have one president, one government and one parliament. The president of each island is now called a governor. The government's term was extended to five years.
- The economy is liberal but small and heavily dependent on foreign aid.
- The adult literacy rate was estimated in 2006 to be 74 per cent.
— Gulf News and Ernst & Young
