COMORO ISLANDS: Maverick Island Votes For Independence

By Moyiga Nduru Reprint | | Print |

Moyiga Nduru

NAIROBI, Oct 28 1997 (IPS) - The Indian Ocean island of Anjouan has voted overwhelmingly for independence from the Islamic Federation of Comoros.

Latest counting from the tiny island, whose leaders declared it independent from the Comoro Islands on Aug. 13, said 98 percent of eligible voters there voted in a referendum held on Sunday. A local journalist in Anjouan said Monday that thousands of r esidents feted the pro-independence vote throughout the night.

He said Anjouanese leader Abdalla Ibrahim was being held as a “hero” by the island’s 150,000 inhabitants for standing up to Comorian President Mohamed Taki who had tried to force the renegade island to rejoin the Comoros.

Taki suffered a humiliating setback when a special force of 300 soldiers he had despatched to crush the secession bid was repulsed by the Anjouanese separatists on Sep. 3.

On Monday, Ibrahim was quoted by European radio stations as saying that his next step would be to form a government in the capital, Mutsamudu. “We are setting up a government within hours to organise for presidential elections,” he said.

There was no immediate reaction from the federal capital, Moroni, but prior to the referundum, Taki had warned that he would not recognise its result.

The campaign for Anjouan’s independence heightened early this month when Ibrahim urged the islanders to register for the referendum to decide whether the island should secede or remain part of the Indian Ocean archipelago.

The Organisation of African Unity (OAU) and the Arab League had urged Ibrahim not to hold the referendum, warning that the exercise would complicate negotiations that were then being.

“If such a plan is carried out, it might seriously compromise the success of the process that is underway,” OAU envoy Pierre Yere had told journalists in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, early this month.

The OAU launched its mediation bid in July after Anjouan and another island, Moheli, broke away from the federation. Secretary- General Salim Ahmed Salim, who appointed Yere to sort out the conflict, said the OAU would help the government in Moroni addr ess the thorny issues raised by the separatists in the two islands.

The Comoros, an archipelago of four small islands (Grande- Comore — where the capital Moroni is situated — Anjouan, Moheli and Mayotte) lies between East Africa and the north-western coast of Madagascar.

Three of the four, with a combined population of some 540,000, won independence from France in 1975. The fourth, Mayotte, had opted in a 1974 referendum to remain under French administration.

Twenty-two years on, some of the residents of Anjouan and Moheli, who account for half the federation’s population, have changed their minds about independence which, they say, has brought only poverty, civil strife and numerous coups.

Apparently attracted by the higher standard of living, elaborate social security system and regular payment of civil servants in Mayotte, they want to return to French rule. However, Paris has rejected this, with Foreign Ministry spokesperson Yves Dout riaux repeatedly stating that France would only back OAU efforts to find a peaceful solution to the crisis in the Comoros.

In August, Salim had warned that the secessionist movement in Anjouan and Moheli represented a dangerous precedent for the Indian Ocean archipelago’s neighbours. “Anjouan and Moheli are not far from Mozambique, Tanzania and Kenya,” he had said. “The consequences of their moves will be felt beyond their borders.”

The OAU had insisted on face-to-face talks between Comoro’s belligerents, proposing the holding of an all-party conference on its future in Addis Ababa in early November.

It had also agreed to send a small force of about 25 troops to Anjouan as observers, following claims by Ibrahim that Taki was planning to invade the island again.