Police have arrested about 10 soldiers, including two army captains, on the separatist Comoran island of Anjouan after foiling an attempted coup, paramilitary police sources said on Wednesday.
Major Mohammed Bacar, the head of the army's police wing on the Indian Ocean island, told Anjouan's radio that while some soldiers were detained, "others turned themselves in to loyalist forces on [Wednesday] morning."
The paramilitary gendarmerie chief pinned blame for the unrest on Colonel Azali Assoumani, the military leader who seized power in Moroni on April 30, 1999 and in February this year cut a deal with the soldier then running Anjouan.
Bacar on Tuesday declared himself the head of Anjouan's separatist regime after his forces had recaptured the radio station from putschists, secured the airport and put down what he called a "coup d'etat" without bloodshed.
He and two other gendarmerie officers had formed a ruling "presidium" after a coup in August, but during Monday's tussle for power, one of his colleagues, Major Halidi Charif, told AFP, "I understand nothing at all about anything that is happening."
On Wednesday, gendarmes were still "actively searching" for other troops alleged to have had a hand in the power struggle, said sources reached from Moroni on Grande Comore island.
The two arrested captains were both members of the Rapid Intervention Section (SIR), which served as the personal guard of Lieutenant Colonel Said Abeid Abderemane, who ran Anjouan until he was ousted in a putsch on August 9.
Two sergeants were among those also detained.
The gendarmes were still looking for Major Combo Ayoub, the Anjouan-born deputy head of the Comoran army's general staff, who was blamed for instigating the coup attempt on behalf of the Moroni government.
Combo was detained on Anjouan and put under house arrest during the upheaval, but appeared Wednesday to have slipped his captors since a gendarmerie source said "We are looking for him."
The power struggle on Anjouan is the latest twist in the complex politics of the three-island archipelago located between Africa's eastern coast and the large Indian Ocean nation of Madagascar.
Anjouan unilaterally declared independence in 1997 and diplomatic bids, led by the Organization of African Unity, to get it back into the fold and create a loose confederation among the islands have constantly run into trouble.
On Grande Comore, Azali had still made no official response to the developments by Wednesday, while Prime Minister Hamada Madi Bolero, who was due to speak out publicly early Tuesday evening, said nothing.
The only reaction here came from the head of the Comoran opposition, former prime minister Abbas Djoussouf, who issued a statement to "denounce and condemn the avowed involvement of Colonel Azali Assoumani's military regime in triggering off these events".
Combo was able to speak to AFP late Monday, when he denied any part in the unrest.
"I simply came on an official mission to restructure the Anjouanese army," Combo said, adding that this assignment was "part of the reconciliation process" between Anjouan and the other islands -- Grande Comore and Moheli.
Since independence from France in 1975, the Islamic republic of the Comoro islands has seen no fewer than 20 successful or foiled coups -- MORONI (AFP)
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
