Mauritania: It Ended as It Started

The Mauritanian crisis ended as it started: a presidential palace without a president, a president signing his own demise without any regrets, and an army that rules without military medals.

Postponing the presidential elections was not a goal in its own right, while the formation of a national unity government did not answer all ambitions.

When General Mohammad Ould Abdul Aziz chose to leave the presidential palace so that he could return to it draped in electoral legitimacy, his internal opponents and foreign critics implied that he did not lead a coup but a salvation movement. In as much as he found it hard to go back, his opponents realized that without their support, his ambitions were doomed to collapse.

Many things have changed in Mauritania since the August 2005 coup. It is no longer acceptable for soldiers to occupy the presidential palace with each sunstroke. It is no longer acceptable to marginalize the parties and the street. The winds that toppled the most tyrannical regime in Africa proved that tanks cannot rule on their own and that Generals who put their hands on the trigger are a thing of the past. But this did not prevent General Ould Abdul Aziz from wearing a silk glove to woo the civilians.

As the result is the most important thing, the Mauritanians did not waste 10 months of struggle to no avail. The opponents of the coup won all the extra rounds in the battle which the junta believed it had won on the dawn of August 6. The mere fact that an agreement was reached to hold a heated dialogue between the two factions suggests that this is an attempt to arrange a face-saving exit.

The opposition was talking to the men of General Ould Abdul Aziz based on the concept that he imposed this reality, while the men of the president-to-be succumbed to the fact that without wooing the opposition, they will never get out of their hole.

What is apparent beyond the calculations of the factions competing over power in Mauritania is that a much more important change was imposing itself on the internal reality.

The European and international sanctions imposed on the regime were the most salient sign that the time for usurping power is over. But those who imposed the sanctions are the same as those who donate aid: they are not moved by emotions. Without a confluence of interests, it would have been impossible for Mauritania to recover from its crisis without lasting harm. Perhaps it is the first time that European, African, and international mediators announce that they want Mauritania as it is with its parties, army, and various constituents.

It only remained for the Mauritanians to accept this formula that spares their country divisions and the sinkhole of civil and ethnic wars. Had Mauritania’s situation not been critical for the recipes of the war on terror and if not for the fears that the contagion might spill to other coastal countries south of the desert, those mediators would not have expended so much effort to convince the opponents to meet in Dakar. Had Nouakchott not been the center of a regional and internal power struggle that necessitated keeping it stable and less cracked, it would not have attracted all that attention.

For in all the calculations, Mauritania remains the weakest and strongest link into the African depth. It was not a coincidence that Israel chose it to host an embassy during the reign of the deposed president Mu’awiyah Ould Tayeh; it was not a coincidence that it hosted nationalistic, Islamic, and ethnic movements that found in it ample room to breath.

No one can compete with the Mauritanians in the pride they take in their Arab, Islamic, and African identity.

They have managed to overcome their bitter crisis without shedding a single drop of blood. Even though they needed someone to drag them to the tent of accord outside Nouakchott, their pride is what pushed them to give precedence to their country’s interests. They were helped by an American-French-regional accord in the making to prevent tragedies from recurring in West Africa.