John Fowler went expecting to find a sort of lotus land. But on the
sun-kissed Comoro islands he found
fascinating tales of intrigue and murder, mostly centering around a
mysterious French mercenary
' Abdallah's death led to Denard's enforced disappearance, with the
question of his implication in the assassination still open '
WE WERE standing on a beach of silken sand shaded from the midday sun
by the fronds of a few palm trees. The barbecue sputtered and the smell
of grilled seafood mingled with the salty tang of the sea.
Tony Kaye was answering our questions patiently. What sort of man is
Bob Denard? ''I'll tell you,'' he said, ''Bob Denard is a gentleman. He
always stands up when a woman comes into the room.''
Denard, you should know, has been a merchant of death. He was big in
the mercenary line.
Kaye got to know him when Denard was kingmaker on Grande Comore, the
largest of four small volcanic islands dotted in the Indian Ocean
between Madagascar and the the mainland coast of Mozambique. A South
African, Kaye ran the island's diving and sea sports business from a
beach house beside the air-conditioned hotel filled with South African
holidaymakers which is the island's biggest employer. Cool in his sweat
shirt and shorts, he gave a graphic description of how he scuttled
Denard's invasion vessel in a sheltered bay, where it now lies encrusted
with weed and coral, a haven for underwater life.
It all seemed unreal in this lotus land. Here on a tropical isle,
separated from the local impoverished, black population by barriers
stronger though less tangible than the hotel's perimeter fences, it
seemed unlikely that any white European should want to engage in the
murky power politics of a tiny, third world community, a place as
insignificant in the world as it is on the map.
Yet the Frenchman Robert-Pierre Denard, mercenary fighter in a host of
unstable states from the Congo to the Yemen, had been heavily involved
in Comorean politics for more than a dozen years. He had been a key
figure in three revolutions and counter-revolutions there, had trained
and led its security force, had been the friend of successive presidents
(and, some suspect, possibly implicated in the assassination of one) and
had finally been spirited into exile with the connivance of both France
and South Africa when international disapproval made the place at last
too hot for him.
I'd not heard of Bob Denard until I was invited to join a visiting
party of half a dozen travel writers. To tell the truth, I'd never heard
of the Comoros. But as the days passed -- we were there for only a week
-- more references to this strange episode in the recent history of
paradise island began to emerge.
Much of the information came from Ali Toihir, a smartly dressed man in
his early forties who lived in one of the villages nearby but spent his
days as ''public affairs attache'' at the hotel -- a title I took to
mean liaison officer with the island's officials.
Ali Toihir -- educated, articulate and intelligent -- had played his
part in island politics. I was never quite clear what his involvement
had been, though we were told he had once been speaker in the island
assembly and he had certainly been a minister in the government of Ali
Soilih, a young radical who came to power on the back of a coup
engineerd with Denard's help in 1975. Ali Soilih attacked privilege and
corruption and tried to overturn old established ways with the help of a
cadre of youngsters he called his jeunesse revolutionaire, an outfit
which bore a passing resemblance to the young zealots of China's
cultural revolution.
Denard later masterminded Ali Soilih's overthrow once his regime had
come to grief. Ali Soilih did not survive.
For 12 years after Denard and his band of 46 desperados waded ashore
from their ship, the converted 75-foot trawler antinea, he controlled
security on the island for his new boss, the restored president Ahmed
Abdallah. He also dabbled in various commercial ventures. He married a
local woman, raised a family, and fell in love with the place. Opinions
differ about whether he was a good or bad influence. Opinion is also
split over the coup which ended in Abdallah's death with five bullet
wounds in his chest. This led to Denard's enforced disappearance from
the scene, with the question of his implication in the assassination
still open.
I was reminded of all this when I came across a recently published
book, Last of the Pirates -- the search for Bob Denard, by journalist
Samantha Weinberg. We knew of Weinberg because shortly before our
arrival on Grande Comore she had spent time there pursuing her
researches. ''She's writing Bob Denard's biography,'' we were told.
Weinberg has made a good stab at chronicling Denard's dubious career
and untangling his curious involvement in the politics of Grande Comore,
though Denard himself remains something of a shadowy figure. He seems to
be a quiet and undemonstrative man, quite unlike such heroes of
mercenary derring-do as ''mad'' Mike Hoare, and -- as some of his
acquaintances maintain -- he may have acted conscientiously and not
dishonourably, according to his lights. But, as I said, opinions differ.
Having read about the Antilea landing, Clint Eastwood briefly
considered starring in a film of the Denard story, and Denard spent time
on Eastwood's ranch near Hollywood discussing it. The project never
reached the stage of shooting.
Last year Denard returned to France, where charges against him were
virtually dropped after a brief trial. He is now a mercenary in
retirement.
On my last morning in the Comoros I set out to discover the wreck of
his rusting trawler. It's one of the tourist attractions, and can be
viewed from one of the glass-bottomed boats on hire from Tony Kaye. My
companions on board were a boatman an d a middle-age South African
couple. But the sea was choppy and when we got to the reefs the woman
became unwell and we had to turn back for the shore. All that I saw
through the glass bottom (actually, a rather misty plastic) were some
highly coloured grenadier fish.
And that's appropriate. Like his sunken vessel (renamed yet again as
the Masiwa), Bob Denard remains somewhat shadowy. But at least the
wreck, now that it teems with marine activity, is life enhancing in
decay.
* Samantha Weinberg's Last of the Pirates -- the search for Bob
Denard, is published by Jonathan Cape at #16.99.
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