Mauritania: The Struggle for Democracy
2011; Boston University; Volume: 44; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
2326-3016
Autores Tópico(s)Global Political and Social Dynamics
ResumoMauritania: The Struggle for Democracy. By Noel Foster. Studies on North Africa. Boulder, CO, and London: Lynne Rienner Publishers/ First Forum Press, 2011. Pp. viii, 315; bibliography, index, glossary. $72.50. By the middle of 2011, Mauritania seemed largely immune to the currents of unrest and change sweeping much of North Africa and the Middle East. Aside from a single case of self-immolation in the center of the capital, Nouakchott, in February 2011 and protests in eastern Mauritania at about the same time, the country was strangely quiescent. This, however, could not disguise the fact that many, if not most, Mauritanian citizens harbored the same frustrations, grievances, and aspirations as their Tunisian, Egyptian, or Syrian counterparts. This is brought home forcefully by Noel Foster's book-length analysis of modern Mauritania focusing mainly on the 2003-2009 period. It was during this period that the young state was rocked by a violent attempted coup against the long-serving president, Maaouiya OuId Sid' Ahmed Taya; the peaceful overthrow of OuId Taya by his own military establishment two years later; an interim army regime that delivered on its promise to bring at least a measure of civilian democracy (from February 2007 to August 2008); followed once more by a military coup against the head of state. Then, in contentious circumstances, the leader of the 2008 coup, General Mohamed OuId Abdelaziz, was elected president in 2009. Foster's work is one of the very few books on Mauritania in English, and reflects extensive research and fieldwork. After a general introduction to the history and the divided social character of the country, the author begins his treatment by describing the parlous state of affairs by 2003 under President OuId Taya, whose rule had become increasingly iron-fisted, corrupt, and impervious to change. This formerly apolitical and honest officer had transformed himself into a stubborn remnant of the mass repression of the late 1980s, and distributed economic favors to his tribal kinsmen to an extent never before seen. It came as little surprise, then, that on June 8-9, 2003, a small group of disaffected army officers attempted- and very nearly succeeded- to unseat OuId Taya and possibly install of government of mixed Islamist-Arab Nationalist proclivities. In the early hours of the uprising, there was an astonishingly (or not) minimal response from most military and paramilitary units around Nouakchott, forcing OuId Taya to personally lead a counterattack with the help of the Presidential Security Battalion (known by its French acronym as BASEP), saving his regime in the nick of time. The unpopularity of his rale now abundantly demonstrated, President OuId Taya had a clear opportunity to change his stripes, but he did not. On the contrary, he clung ever more fiercely to the levers of power, holding what amounted to show trials of alleged coup plotters and other dissidents, continuing his corrupt ways, holding blatantly rigged elections later in 2003, and sending his army on what amounted to a wild goose chase across Mauritania, Mali, and Niger to pursue the guerrillas of AI-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), which had attacked a Mauritanian garrison in June 2005. This was the last straw for the army, and OuId Taya was bloodlessly overthrown in August 3, 2005, when he was out of the country. A transitional military junta was put into place, promising genuine democracy. In a country in which, as Foster persuasively argues, there is no dominant ideology either in the army or the population at large and in which there was absolutely no tradition of real pluralism, it might have been extremely difficult for any transitional regime, no matter how well intentioned, to bring about this sort of change. Did the Military Committee for Justice and Democracy (CMJD) succeed? Noel Foster argues they mostly did not. He builds a strong case. In the first place, the coup was solely an old guard affair originated and carried out at the highest levels of the officer corps. …
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