Mauritania – Neither Arab nor African

By: Garba Diallo, Director for International Programmes, The International People's College, Elsinore, Denmark

"Make new friends, but always keep the old ones". Its 40 years of search for cultural identity has led Mauritania to seek alliances with black African countries, the ex-colonial power France, later the Arab world and now the US and Israel. Making new friends here means abandoning the old ones.

Thus, after turning its back on black Africa during the 1970s in an attempt to become an Arab country, Mauritania has now ended up losing both Africa and the Arab world. While the recent withdrawal from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has further distanced the country from black Africa, the new rapprochement with Israel has served a heavy blow to three decades of image making to turn the country into mono-ethnic Arab. In addition, Mauritania is in a noisy row with France over the arrest and indictment of a Mauritanian army officer on torture charges. As the country cannot survive without a mentor, Mauritania has found a new ally in the US. Though those who invented Mauritania claimed that the country would be a bridge between Africa and the Arab world, today the state has become neither Arab nor African. In fact, with the unresolved ethnic conflict, human rights abuses, a heinous practice of slavery and a de facto return to a one-party military regime, Mauritania has become an endangered state. Despite massive foreign aid amounting to 2 billion dollars since 1985, the country's foreign debts have accumulated to USD 1,000 per capita while 57 per cent of the people have fallen below the poverty line and 37 per cent are unemployed.

Departure from ECOWAS: the black phobia
In view of the current regional and global integration, it is difficult to understand why the Mauritanian President, Colonel Sid Ahmed Ould Taya, decided to leave ECOWAS, especially at a time when Mauritania's relations with its traditional allies - the Arab world and France - are at their worst. Ould Taya's stated reason for leaving ECOWAS is the organisation's decision to establish a common currency by 2004, for which the regime is not ready to give up its own currency, the Ouguiya. However, the real problem is that Mauritania has no intention to integrate or have an open-border policy with black Africa. Mauritania has not paid its membership contribution to ECOWAS for the last 16 years, since Colonel Ould Taya seized power through a coup. Situated on the cultural divide between black Africa and Arab North Africa, Mauritania suffers from a serious identity crisis. The regime's approach to this crisis has been to deny its African identity and bend over toward the Arab World.

A meaningful West African integration will directly contradict Taya's ethnic cleansing policies: a campaign of terror by which tens of thousands of black citizens have been forcibly expelled and hundreds more have been tortured and killed. To cover up for the crimes, Taya granted a blanket amnesty to all members of the armed forces for crimes committed during the "period of exception" (1989-93). The amnesty was issued on 29 May, just before the 1993 International Human Rights Summit held in Vienna.

Ethnic makeup
Covering over 1,000,000 km2, Mauritania's population is estimated at 2.5 million. They comprise some 40-45 per cent slaves and descendants of slaves, known as Haratine, black African of the Fulani, Soninke, Wolof and Bambara plus 25 per cent white Moors known as Beydanes. The white Moors are of Arab/Berber stock. The Haratine are all black and of African descent, and were taken into slavery by the white Moors, who still control them. In spite of their minority status, the white Moors dominate over 80 per cent of power positions in the country. Discussion of demographic and ethnic distribution is a national taboo. Therefore, results from the three population censuses (1977, 1988 and 1998) have never been published. Even the UN surrendered to these policies when in 1995 the Mauritanian regime managed to prevent the UNHCR from publishing the result of their census of the Mauritanian refugees in Senegal.

Much to lose
The decision to leave ECOWAS was strongly condemned by the African Liberation Forces (FLAM) which described it as racist. According to FLAM, the next regional body that Mauritania may leave is the Senegal River Development Agency (OMVS), which groups Mali, Mauritania and Senegal. FLAM, formed in 1983, is the only political organisation which challenges the ideological foundation of the regime. As such FLAM is illegal and its members have been the main target for exclusion, detention and killing. Also the main legal opposition party the Unions for Democratic Forces (UFD) condemned the decision to quit ECOWAS, especially after "having sabotaged Mauritania's relations with the Arab World and France".

Exchanging Arabisation for Israel
After weeks of reports that Mauritania had allowed Israel to dump nuclear waste in the Mauritanian Sahara, it was announced in Washington on 28 October 1999 that the two countries had agreed to upgrade their ties into a full diplomatic relationship. This rapprochement meant normalisation, which is against the general Arab consensus not to normalise with Israel before a comprehensive peace agreement with the Palestinians is concluded. Within Mauritania itself, there was no information or discussion on the latest policy shift. Forced Arabisation has been at the core of the inter-ethnic strife in the country since the first Arabisation decree of 1966. The new and unexpected down grading of Arabisation is not meant to restore the cultural rights of the African community to use and develop its languages and culture. It is in fact intended to upgrade French while further marginalising African languages whose teaching has now been totally removed from both the primary and secondary school system.

As a dictator with a bloody human rights record, Colonel Taya's prime concern is to stay in power. Thus, the rapprochement with Israel is to please the US. Taya needs continued funds from IMF/WB, debt relief and resumption of direct development aid from the US that was suspended following Taya's alliance with Iraq during the Gulf War. The indictment of Captain Ely Ould Dah in France has generated a state of panic within the regime. Also, Taya wants to counter the increasing publicity in the US about the heinous practice of slavery led by the American Coalition against Slavery in Mauritania and Sudan (CASMAS). In response to the US campaign, Taya appointed Bilal Ould Werzeg, a freed slave, ambassador to the US and Abou Sow, a black African, foreign minister, making him the first black minister since 1966. However, the antislavery campaign in the US continues. Recently, religious leaders from 19 religious organizations sent a letter to Secretary of State Albright urging that the US deny trade benefits to Mauritania until slavery is eradicated and human rights restored.

Mauritania's obsession with slavery
It should be recalled that Mauritania was the last country on earth to abolish slavery in 1980, for the third time after independence in 1960. Like the previous abolitions, the last one has never been applied, because the release of the slaves was conditional to the payment of compensation to the slave masters. As Mesoud Ould Boubacar, president of SOS Esclaves, put it, Mauritania is obsessed with slavery. This obsession was recognised by colonial France which exempted the Moors from the 1905 abolition law, on the grounds that white Moors' survival depended on the black slaves. As the vice president of Association Mauritanienne de Droits de l' Homme (AMD), Mrs. Fatimata Mbaye who won the third Nuremberg International Human Rights Award for "the greatest contribution to the promotion of human rights in Mauritania in 1999" noted, "In its traditional form, the slaves are frequently offered as wedding presents, they do not even have the right to marry without permission, and any refusal to obey the commands of the masters can result in tortures. In the other form, the girls carry out domestic work without payment".

What has Mauritania to offer Israel and the US?
The vast desert and thinly populated and corruption ridden nation Mauritania can be an ideal site for a missile testing site. With its hitherto extensive military cooperation with "radical" Arab countries like Iraq, Mauritania is likely to possess sensitive information on Arab military capacity and be an important springboard to monitor and counterattack Islamic fundamentalism. The American public has already been warned of such a "terrorist and Islamic threat". The regime has recently arrested a Mauritanian national suspected of planning attacks against US interests.

While the US praised Taya's "'bold step' that will bring real benefit to the people of Mauritania", the opposition to upgrading ties with Israel is unanimous, though for different reasons. Moorish-led opposition parties described it as insult to Islam and Arab interests. Victims of human rights abuse consider it hypocritical of Israel to engage with a racist dictatorship.

The row with France
After years of intensive work to bring the perpetrators of crimes against humanity in Mauritania to justice, human right activists succeeded to have Captain Ely Ould Dah arrested and indicted in France last July. This was a major victory for the victims as it was a great shock for the criminals. Commenting on the indictment, Professor Cheikh Saad Bouh Kamara, president of the Mauritanian Human Rights Association, said that those close to the regime were frightened and amazed, as they did not expect that the Convention against Torture, which Mauritania had just ratified, could be applied to Mauritania's torturers. There are also others who have begun to understand the danger of committing or condoning such crimes. Furthermore, there are those who feel "happy that this problem could be solved or at least that the trial of those who have committed the crime will contribute to the fight against impunity".

Colonel Taya could not understand that the French government was unable to prevent the arrest of his lieutenant. It was even harder for him to accept the fact that the French president who routinely praised him as a wise and democratic Francophile, could not order the judicial system to set the indicted officer free. Therefore, Taya could not but overreact and expel French military advisers, recall Mauritanian officers undergoing training in France and impose the need for a visa on French citizens.

Conclusion
Mauritania's triple crisis: state racism, slavery and dictatorship is but a symptom of the deep identity confusion from which the ruling elite suffer. This confusion is expressed in the relentless search for alliances and mentors. Paradoxically enough, Mauritania has so far escaped condemnation, sanctions or sufficient exposures of its gross human rights violations. The crimes of modern day slavery, ethnic cleansing and violent military rule could never have taken place and continued on this scale without direct support or condoning by the local elite, neighbouring African countries, the Arab World and France, with the US and Israel joining recently as new accomplices. As part of the problem, the international community has a historical responsibility to help the Mauritanian people do away with the triple crisis so the country can be what it is supposed to be: a positive bridge between Africa and the Arab world.