Coup-prone Comoros faces instability after almost two decades of peace
THE world’s most coup-prone state risks renewed turmoil this week as a referendum threatens to destabilise the Comoros and draw France deeper into a migrant crisis that has bolstered its nationalist Right.
The archipelago of Indian Ocean islands off the coast of Africa had seemed to have shaken off the instability that saw 20 coups and coup attempts after independence from France in 1975.
But after 17 years of relative calm, a power-sharing agreement that restored peace between the state’s three bickering islands is facing deep strain after Azali Assoumani, the Comoran president, called a vote that could extend his hold on power by a decade.
For the opposition, Monday’s referendum to amend the Comoran constitution is the type of power grab witnessed with increasing frequency elsewhere in Africa.
But more is at stake than just the risk of renewed dictatorship. Until 2001, the future of the Comoros was in question. Angered by the perceived dominance of Grande Comore, the main island, Anjouan and Mohéli, its two smaller islands, had broken away.
Only by agreeing a new constitution that rotated the presidency among the three islands did the union survive – a provision that the referendum is poised to end, raising fears that the only way to remove Mr Azali would be through another coup.
“There is going to be a pushback from Mohéli and Anjouan, I’m sure of that,” said Simon Massey, a Comoros analyst at Coventry University.
“This is a calculated risk on Azali’s part. Does he have the military strength? That is the key question.”
The Comoros has festered under decades of misrule. Its 800,000 inhabitants are some of the world’s poorest. Healthcare, sanitation and basic infrastructure are severely lacking.
Perversely, the constitution – although it brought stability – has been blamed for deepening economic stagnation, because rotating power every five years gives little time for governments to pass reforms.
Prolonged penury has triggered a mass exodus of Comorans, often with fatal consequences. In the past two decades, at least 10,000 are estimated to have drowned trying to reach the European Union.
For desperate Comorans, Europe is only a 65-mile hop across the Gulf of Mozambique to the island of Mayotte, the fourth Comoran island. For ordi- nary Comorans, Mayotte – now officially part of the European Union after it voted to become a French department in 2009 – has been a magnet, promising the kind of prosperity impossible to achieve at home.
But for the Comoran government, Mayotte’s status has been an open sore: an affront to its sovereignty, a breach, it claims, of international law and a source of resentment against France, the country’s biggest donor.
More gallingly, Mayotte’s comparative wealth – its people are 14 times richer – is seen as an indictment of the independent state’s failure to thrive as much as the island that refused to cast off its colonial shackles.
Already, tensions are mounting. Mr Azali’s government has detained leading critics, including a former president, suspended the constitutional court and outlawed protests in the runup to the vote.
Last week, one of the country’s vicepresidents escaped an assassination attempt.
The days when white mercenaries charged up Grande Comore’s beaches armed with weapons are gone. But long-suffering Comorans, and an alarmed French government, worry that the use of coups to settle political scores may be about to make a return.