Consider the logistics of seizing a country. On September 28, 1995, Bob Denard required one trawler, thirty-three mercenaries, and a cache of weapons packed in sports bags. His target was the entire island nation of the Comoros. He had done it three times before. This fourth attempt possessed the quality of a retirement plan gone awry. Denard, a veteran of colonial wars in Algeria and Indochina, had first installed a president there in 1978. He served as the archipelago’s security chief for over a decade, running a personal fiefdom until international pressure forced his withdrawal in 1989. Six years later, dissatisfied with the current leadership, he decided to return.
The operation was executed with surreal nonchalance. His men, mostly former French legionnaires, met no resistance. They captured the presidential palace so quietly that the only casualty was the president’s peace of mind. Denard reinstated a former associate, Mohamed Djohar, as figurehead. For forty-six days, he held the state. He gave interviews to French journalists from the presidential villa, sipping cognac and lamenting his nation’s lack of gratitude. The world had moved on. France, under President Jacques Chirac, would not endorse this anachronism. Operation Azalée deployed 600 French paratroopers to remove him. They found Denard in his pajamas. He surrendered after negotiating the right to wear his uniform for the flight to Paris.
The event is a bizarre footnote in the post-colonial history of Africa. It represents the last time a private adventurer could physically capture a United Nations member state with a platoon-sized force. Denard’s trial in France focused on the legality of mercenary activity, not on the sovereignty of the Comoros. He was acquitted of most charges. The islands continued their cycle of political instability, a testament to the lasting damage wrought not by grand ideologies, but by a man with a boat and a grievance.