SUMMARY
The Presidential Guard (Garde-Presidentelle, GP), commonly referred to as les affreux, or the frighteners, was a special force tied to former president of the Comoros, Ahmed Abdallah, in office 1978-1989. In fact, it was the subsequent head of GP – the infamous French mercenary Bob Denard – that helped Abdallah seize power in a coup in May 1978, deposing former president Ali Soilih.
Soon after the coup, Abdallah employed a Presidential Guard, containing between 300 and 700 Comorians, all but 24 of which came from Abdallah’s commercial and political base, the island of Anjouan. These troops were divided into three companies and officered by about thirty French and Belgian mercenaries who had taken part in the ouster of Soilih.
GP played a central role during Abdallah’s 11-year rule. Heading an increasingly unpopular and authoritarian regime, the president came to rely on the force for the country’s internal security. With the Comorian regular army completely disarmed and partly disbanded for many years, GP was so powerful, that it was at times difficult to tell who was actually ruling the country. Some observers argued that Abdallah merely served as a front for the mercenaries and that the real ruler of the island state was GP leader Bob Denard.
Regardless of whether the force took orders from president Abdallah or not, it systematically deterred attempts to change the ruling order. It was involved in brutally clamping down on any opposition to the regime, thus earning the nickname the frighteners. The most notorious of the force’s abuses was its 1987 arrest of 14 alleged coup plotters, and the subsequent torturing to death of seven of them.
The European officers of GP in general, and Denard in particular, became heavily involved in the Comorian economy. Denard had major shares in for instance the banking sector, was part owner of Comoro’s largest import-export firm, and owned and operated a commercial shuttle between the island state and South Africa.
Sympathetic to the South African apartheid regime, the mercenaries also served as a channel for South African investment and influence in the Comoros. The island state was of strategic importance in the Indian Ocean, and by the special relationship developed through the tight connections between Denard and his colleagues at the top echelon of GP, the Comoros became integrated into South Africa’s regional strategy. The island state e.g. became a forward base for intelligence gathering concerning apartheid’s enemies, and served as a staging area for shipment of arms to the rightist rebel group Renamo in Mozambique as well as to Iran, especially during the Iran-Iraq war. In return, South Africa assisted the Comoro state with large sums of development aid, building roads, and setting up housing projects. Furthermore, GP itself was by and large financed by South Africa, at the rate of about three million US Dollars per year. This special relationship between GP and South Africa was on the wane by the end of the 1980s, when a new reform-minded government came to power in Pretoria.
The demise of GP came in late 1989 and was fully tied to the brief intrastate conflict, played out in the form of a coup. Following the suspicious death of President Abdallah on the night of 26-27 November 1989, the Presidential guard seized control of the government in a bloody coup. However, this prompted both South Africa and France to isolate Denard, GP, and consequently the entire island state. Pressured by France and South Africa, Denard eventually conceded defeat, withdrawing peacefully from the island on 15 December 1989, together with his colleagues, thus dissolving GP.
