Never before did the Arabs know success such as this.
-
Pages
-
Recent Posts
-
Recent Comments

Tidinit on Ya Khatou 
Kal on My reflection on the Georgian … 
Brian on 0 
Aaron on Like a great man once said som… 
Aaron on Possible sources of Moroccan… Blogs
Geopolitics
Journals
Maghreb/North Africa
Near East
- ‘Aqoul
- …Or Does It Explode?
- Abu Aardvark
- Abu Muqawama
- Across the Bay
- Amarji
- Beirut Spring
- Big Pharaoh
- From Beirut to the Beltway
- Guide to the Perplexed
- Martin Kramer
- Michael J. Totten
- Middle East Strategy at Harvard
- Non-Arab Arab
- Orientalista: A Western girl in the East
- Project on Middle East Democracy
- Syria Comment
- The Angry Arab
- The Arabist
- The Orientalist Gallery
news
- Al-Bawaba
- Al-Sharq al-Awsat
- Aljazeera Online
- All Africa
- BBC
- Bloomberg
- Daily Star
- Dar al-Hayat
- Der Spiegel
- Ech-Chorouk
- El Khabar
- El Moudjahid
- El Watan
- Financial Times
- International Herald Tribune
- Kommersant
- LA Times
- Le Monde diplomatique
- Le Soir d’Algerie
- Liberte Algerie
- Magharebia
- Middle East Online
- Pravda
- Taqadoumy
- The Economist
- The Washington Post
- The Weekly Standard
Weltanschauung
- A New Westphalia in Beijing?
- Games with the insecure
- No Iraqi Civil War?
- No More Iraqs
- Observations on the Arabs and the Superpowers
- On Alcibiades
- On goals and tactics
- On historical maturity
- On talking to Syria and Iran
- Ottoman Redux
- Random thoughts
- Synthesis
- The glories of times gone by
- The trouble with too much idealism
- Vote Otto
-
So what is this? Are these french dissidents? Yah know descendant of colonists. I’ve never heard of this island, and i doubt they have a military.
Anjouan doesn’t have a military. But the Comoros system is copied on the French one, which means you have Gendarmerie on each island (armed national guard, to compare with the US system). The dissidents are not French, they are a mix of African Malagasy and Bantu, Persians and Arabs, like the rest of Comorians. The conflict is as old as the islands themselves. Their economy is not good and they have been fighting for twenty five years. It used to be a military dictature and is a federal republic since 2001. But Anjouan always felt discriminated by the two other islands and some of them are asking to join France back (like the fourth island, Mayotte, which refused independence in 1975). France refuses of course. But it is a bit moot. Comoros are actually more or less under French “protection” anyway (there is a French military base and France has been asked by the Comoros to defend the island against any external aggression, such as the recent attacks by mercenaries). The agreement does not cover civil war, though, which is why the AU had to intervene to help the Comoros army. This said, of course, it is actually France which transported the African units on Anjouan, ensured the logistics and probably paid the troops involved.
Thanks for the rundown.
I also want to add, that Malagasy are actually just a mixture of East African Bantu & Indonesian seamen/nomad.
And you would be absolutely right. The Indian Ocean, unlike the Atlantic, has always been more of a trade and migration route than a barrier. Populations in the islands and even on the Eastern African coast are extremely mixed. Colonization has only increased the phenomenon.