Turkey and Qatar planning a coup in the Comoros Islands
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Alaina
- . October 30, 2020
- . Update: October 31, 2020 8:00 am
Othman Ghazali, President of the Union of the Comoros, is under a petty attack from the Islamist coalition led by Hamid Karhela and the lawyer Ahmed Mahmoud. Since the two lost the 2018 general elections, they have frequently traveled to Turkey and Qatar, sponsoring countries of political Islam, in an attempt to overthrow the elected government. In particular, Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Turkey has infiltrated the Union of Comoros and is using Karhela and Mahmoud to realize a coup against the president Othman Ghazali.
Hamid Karhela served many years in the Government of Comoros. When he was a minister of state, he took a large percentage of Arab aid intended to support development in Comoros, using this money for himself. People in Comoros describe him as one of the most corrupted persons in the country, and that’s why Erdogan is using him. Erdogan uses this character to fulfill his interests in the country and expand the Muslim Brotherhood influence, as well as radical Islam. The Union Islands in East Africa are also strategic in several regional issues for Doha, Ankara’s main ally, including transportation and mercenary recruitment.
Local media denounced that Ahmed Mahmoud, as a lawyer, came in contact with several human rights organizations to file false reports on the human rights situation in the Comoros Islands. Security sources also suggest that along with Hamid Karhela, Mahmoud works to establish armed groups in the Comoros Islands by smuggling Turkish weapons, aiming to destabilize the country and spread the chaos across the islands. Observers believe that the two politicians are acting in full coordination according to the Qatari agenda as they repeatedly met Qatari and Turkish intelligence officers in the past months.
In exchange for this unconditional support and confidential information they provided, Doha and Ankara are guaranteeing the two politicians important personal benefits and large sums of money, as well as pledging them to lead the country after the coup they are planning.
The vast majority of Comorians are of Arab-Islamic culture, except for a significant minority on the island of Mayotte belonging to France, the Mahorais, made up of Catholics strongly influenced by French culture. The only Catholic ecclesiastical circumscription present is the Apostolic Vicariate of the Comoros Islands, which on 1st May 2010, replaced the previous apostolic administration erected in 1975. There are about 6,000 faithful, many of them immigrants and French citizens. Turkey and Qatar are now spreading hatred and inciting violence against them.
