History of Mauritania
After his ten-year presidency, Mohamed Ould Ghazouani's victory in the 2019 Mauritanian presidential election was presented as having been the country's first peaceful transition of power since independence.
Mauritania, lying next to the Atlantic coast at the western edge of the desert, received and assimilated into its complex society many waves of these migrants and conquerors.
What is now Mauritania was a dry savanna area during classical antiquity, where independent tribes like the Pharusii and the Perorsi (and the Nigritae near the Niger river) lived a semi-nomadic lifestyle facing growing desertification.
[9] In the 11th century, several nomadic Berber confederations in the desert regions overlapping present-day Mauritania joined together to form the Almoravid movement.
[9][12] According to Arabic sources, he also led the Almoravids further south to conquer the ancient and extensive Ghana Empire around 1076,[13][12] but this narrative has been disputed and debated by modern historians.
[9] From 1644 to 1674, the indigenous peoples of the area that is modern Mauritania made what became their final effort to repel the Ma'qil Arabs who were invading their territory.
Rivalries among European powers enabled the Arab-Berber population to maintain their independence and later to exact annual payments from France, whose sovereignty over the Senegal River and the Mauritanian coast was recognized by the Congress of Vienna in 1815.
Because extensive European contact began so late in the country's history, the traditional social structure carried over into modern times with little change.
Colonial administrators relied extensively on Islamic religious leaders and the traditional warrior groups to maintain their rule and carry out their policies.
These reforms were part of a trend away from the official policies of assimilation and direct rule in favor of administrative decentralization and internal autonomy.
With independence, larger numbers of ethnic Sub-Saharan Africans (Haalpulaar, Soninke, and Wolof) entered Mauritania, moving into the area north of the Senegal River.
Moors reacted to this change by increasing pressures for Arabization, to Arabicize many aspects of Mauritanian life, such as law and language, and ethnic tension built up – helped by a common memory of warfare and slave raids.
[citation needed] President Moktar Ould Daddah, originally assisted to the post by the French, rapidly reformed Mauritania into an authoritarian one-party state in 1964, with his new Mauritanian constitution.
The mines were operated by a foreign owned consortium that paid its approximately 3,000 expatriate workers handsomely – their salaries accounted for two-thirds of the country's entire wages bill.
President Ould Daddah survived the challenge from left-wing opponents by nationalizing the company in 1974 and withdrawing from the franc zone, substituting the ouguiya for the CFA.
With the CMRN's leader reluctant to break with France and Morocco, the country refused to give in to Polisario demands for a troop retreat, and Ould Salek's careless handling of the ethnic issue (massively discriminating against Black Africans in nominating for government posts [3] Archived 2008-09-17 at the Wayback Machine) contributed to further unrest.
Mauritania, under its new government, immediately returned to the table to meet Polisario's goals, declaring full peace, a complete troop retreat, relinquishing their portion of Western Sahara and recognizing the Front as the Sahrawi people's sole representative.
[4] Archived 2008-09-17 at the Wayback Machine Morocco, occupying the northern half of Western Sahara and also involved in combat against Polisario, reacted with outrage, and launched a failed 1981 coup against the CMSN.
[5] Archived 2005-12-14 at the Wayback Machine[6] Archived 2008-09-17 at the Wayback Machine In interior policy, Ould Haidallah sought to improve relations between White Moors and Black Moors, among other things officially decreeing the ban of slavery for the first time in the country's history, but he neither tried nor achieved a radical break with the sectarian and discriminating policies of previous regimes.
[7] Archived 2008-09-17 at the Wayback Machine With Ould Haidallah's ambitious political and social reform program undone by continuing instability, regime inefficiency and a plethora of coup attempts and intrigues from within the military establishment, the CMSN Chairman turned increasingly autocratic, excluding other junta officers from power, and provoking discontent by frequently reshuffling the power hierarchy to prevent threats to his position.
[20] On June 8, 2003, a failed coup attempt was made against President Maaouya Ould Sid'Ahmed Taya by forces unhappy with his imprisonment of Islamic leaders in the wake of the United States-led invasion of Iraq and his establishment of full diplomatic relations with Israel.
A number of Government officials were detained after the coup including the head of the Supreme Court, Mahfoud Ould Lemrabott, and the Secretary of State for Women's Affairs, Mintata Mint Hedeid.
On August 3, 2005, the Mauritanian military, including members of the Presidential guard (BASEP), seized control of key points in the capital of Nouakchott, performing a coup against the Government of President Maaouya Ould Sid'Ahmed Taya who was out of the country attending the funeral of Saudi King Fahd.
On August 6, 2008, Mauritania's presidential spokesman Abdoulaye Mamadouba said President Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi, Prime Minister Yahya Ould Ahmed El Waghef and the Interior minister were arrested by renegade Senior Mauritanian army officers, unknown troops and a group of generals and were held under house arrest at the Presidential palace in Nouakchott.
[25] Mauritanian lawmaker, Mohammed Al Mukhtar, announced that "many of the country's people were supporting the takeover attempt" and the government is "an authoritarian regime" and that the president had "marginalized the majority in parliament.
