Mauritania: Reopening the Military Chapter

By

Saad S. Khan

Newspapers appeared to be bald when there was no news of a military take over somewhere; but that was in the 1960's and 70's. The governments in the third world changed periodically, not because of elections but through frequent military take-overs.

But then, the governments became clever in devising means of perpetuating themselves. Torture, espionage and media control became organized and institutionalized traits of the third world style of governance. Qaddafi of Libya, Mubarak or Egypt, Saddam of Iraq, Zia-ul-Haq of Pakistan and Suharto of Indonesia are just few of the names whose dictatorial rules spanned decades. The coup this year in Mauritania and the wide acceptance and legitimacy it has been accorded by the world community appears to re-open the chapter of military intervention.

And with the US patting around the dictators all over the world, removal of an autocrat through recourse to force is the only means available for a political change. Donning a democratic gown has become a fashion for the autocrats. Hosni Mubarak continues to get re-elected in farcical elections and so will after him, his son, Gamal. On paper, at least, Uzbekistan's Karimov, North Korea's Kim Jong Il, Syria's Basahr Asad and Azerbaijan's Ilham Aliyev, all are purportedly elected leaders. Mauritania was no exception to the practice of "disguised despotism" as autocracy in democratic façade is known.

Ousted President Sid Mohamed Taya usurped power in 1984 under the promise of restoring civilian rule. And Instead of overseeing a transition from military rule to civilian, he just changed his own uniform to civil outfit in 1992 and continued being "re-elected" under sham multi-arty democracy ever since. He had no mood to part with the throne till, as the metaphor goes, death could do them apart.

Like all dictators in the Near East, Middle East and the Far East, he had embraced the illusion that he could only survive as long as he had the support from Washington D.C. So taking cue from other peer despots, he tried to impress and befriend the power centres in the West by changing weekly holiday from Sunday to Friday, recognizing Israel and killing a few of his people in routine in the name of the war on terror. His policies never won him favour anywhere but were generally seen with disapproval in the country. And he was finally kicked out in a bloodless coup in August this year, when he was on one of his public relations jaunts in Riyadh on the eve of the funeral of late Saudi King Fahd. This was, in fact, the fourth attempted coup in just under two years and he had not cared to read the writings on the walls. The military announced that it had rid the country of Taya's "totalitarian regime" and thousands of people flocked the streets of Nouakchott in jubilation. Taya ran to his friend President Amadou Tandja of Niger, then moved to Gambia and feeling unwelcome there, is presently in Qatar in anticipation of asylum. From all the three stations, he has been "ordering" the military and civil officers of Mauritania, as "President of the country" to "put and end to the criminal operation". This rings some familiar bells; the clowns like the ousted Kyrgyz dictator Askar Akayev from Moscow and deposed Iraqi tyrant Saddam Hussein from his prison cell make similar calls to their countrymen every now and then.

Initially, there was a strong uproar over the coup with the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan being "deeply troubled" by the reports of the coup and President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria declaring that the "days of tolerating military government in the sub-region or elsewhere" were "long gone". But within the first week, the US and the OAU dropped demands to reverse the coup and instead emphasized on the need for elections within the promised timeframe of two years. True, democracy means will of the people. And the Mauritanians were clearly not going to be flattered by the idea of Taya's return. So paradoxically, respect to popular will was synonymous with condoning a military take over.

Under Taya, Mauritania had not missed any misfortune that may befall a nation and there was no light at the end of the tunnel. Mauritania was affected by the drought and famine of West Africa, although the worst hit country was Niger. The problem of low rainfall was compounded by the annual attack of locusts that ate up huge fields. Last year they swarmed the capital Nouakchott as well and consumed whatever greenery was there. One tonne of locusts can consume the food equivalent for 2,500 human beings and that is only a fraction of the locusts that had swarmed the capital. In neighbouring Gambia, emergency was declared and even Sudan went on alert far away, since locusts can travel up to 100 kilometres a day.

Although Mauritania is one of the few African countries where girls are traditionally given more food than boys, a lot still needs to be done for gender equality. The concept of obesity of the girl are mixed with her beauty, in Mauritanian tradition. So even today, over one tenth of the girls are sent to, what can be called wife-fattening farms, where the girls would be force-fed so that they become fat and be able to find a good match.

Another skeleton in the closet is the dark fact of institutionalized slavery, though banned in 1981, remains a norm in some parts of the country. Sakina [real name concealed for privacy] points to her elder child, who was fathered by her former master. Her master's son and his nephew, she says, are the fathers of the remaining two of her kids, respectively. Sakina has since ran from her master and is under the care of an aid agency. The government of Taya in two decades had miserably failed to address any of the issues facing the nation and the society. Political victimization was the norm and torture was used as a policy against political dissent.

The man who had run these torture cells for two decades, as head of Mauritanian State Security, Col. Ely Ould Mohamed Vall, is the coup leader as well as the incumbent President. Can his promises of a new constitution, fresh elections in which sitting military rulers would not take part, and the restoration of fundamental rights, be taken seriously? Lessons of history dictate otherwise.

If the civilized nations fail to ensure a smooth transition to democracy in Mauritania, it would give wrong signals that a military coup still pays Many other heads would roll in Africa and elsewhere, which may not augur well for world stability.
The writer is a Cambridge-based scholar and a widely read analyst on politics, governance and human rights in the Muslim world. He is also the Asia Editor of Cambridge Journal of International Affairs.

SAAD S. KHAN University of Cambridge St. Edmund's College Mount Pleasant Cambridge, CB3 0BN, UK Saad.S.Khan1@gmail.com