Ciaran’s Peculier [sic] Blog

Mauritania’s bloodless coup has taken a lot of people by surprise, not least President Cheikh Abdellahi and Prime Minister Ould Ahmed Waghf who were picked up within hours of the coup being started.

It seems to have been motivated by the president’s dismissal of senior army officers, and so it would appear at this stage not to have been politically or ideologically motivated. So it’s unclear what (if anyything) the coup signals for Mauritania’s internal or external policies.

Mauritania seemed to be on the rough track to a democratic future after years of autocratic military rule. However, democratic government has not really improved the lot of Mauritanians. Instead a handful of politicians, supposedly representing different shades of opinion( but no doubt only representing their own lust for gain) have squabbled endlessly. In answer to the question “What does regime change mean for the rank and file of Mauritania’s citizens?” we are sadly compelled to reply – nothing.

Mauritania is a vast country, though thinly populated. It is however terribly poor, a situation that exploitation of oil reserves will no doubt do nothing to alleviate. Like many nations in the Third World the country has recently been rocked by riots over the rising price of food staples. So maybe this coup will be significant; it will mark a response (though an ineffective one) to the spiralling cost of food which affects the world’s poorest citizens. The fact that it represents the replacement of a democratically-elected government by a military regime may also point towards the beginning of the end of Africa’s not-very-happy flirtation with western democracy.