Ciaran’s Peculier [sic] Blog

Events in Mauritania have obviously had a contagious impact in west Africa. The BBC has reported that the government of Guinea-Bissau has foiled a coup attempt that was planned for Thursday. It was to be launched by the head of the country’s navy, Rear-Admiral Bubo Na Tchuto. It came to light when the power-hungry sailor  ’phoned around his colleagues looking for support. Not only did the head of the army politely refuse but he then shopped him to President Vieira, who promptly arrested him.

The country has been going through a lot of political instability lately. The parliament has been dissolved and a new prime minister appointed. Not dissimilar to events in Mauritania. These events have no doubt been watched with interest by the drug lords who use Guinea-Bissau as a staging-post for cargoes from South America to Europe. There is no evidence that they were behind the coup attempt, but the nation’s tiny navy is at the forefront of Guinea-Bissau’s attempts to bloc drug shipments. Another take on the events is that admiral Na Tchuto got get up with a lack of support in the navy’s efforts from the government.

Today’s edition of Le Figaro (August 7th( carries an interview with Alan Antil of the French Institute of International Relations (IFRI). Antil is a specialist on Mauritanian affairs and his comments provide some excellent insights into the background of the coup d’etat. It is entitled “La democratisation de la Mauritanie entre parentheses”.

The coup was launched by the Presidential guard, who arrested the president at his home and lead him to an unidentified location. The prime minister was arrested at around the same time at his office and brought to a nearby barracks where he is being held. The soldiers’ actions were prompted by the sacking earlier in the morning by the president of the head of the presidential guard, General Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, and the chief-of-staff of the defence forces, Ould Cheikh Mohamed Ahmed. Their dismissals were announced on national radio in the morning. Within hours the president had been taken into custody. National radio has been shut down and soldiers are apparently patrolling in front of the building. The earlier presidential decree has been quashed and a new council of state has been formed headed by General Abdel-Aziz.

According to Le Figaro, this is not General Abdel-Aziz’s first coup. He participated in the revolt of August 3rd 2005 which toppled long-time strongman Maaouyz Ould Sidi Ben Ahmed Taya and formed a part of the transition council which led the county between that coup and the holding of elections early in 2007. A parliamentarian has stated that the coup enjoyed the support of the majority of Mauritanians, and that the ousted government was an authoritarian regime which had marginalised the people.

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.

Most people would agreed that President Robert Mugabe should be an international pariah. He has cynically impoverished a once rich nation while enriching himself and his cronies. He is no delusional madman, but a shrewd, dare I say Machiavellian operator, and he would not be able to do anything without well-placed friends.

The extent to which this pariah has been able to act with impunity in the face of international sanctionbs and condemnation comes in a report carried in this fortnight’s edition of Africa Confidential. An “Arms and the Men”  details investigations into payments in excess of £25m by British Arms company BAE to a British Virgin Islands’ registered company Kayswell Services, whose majority shareholder is arms-dealer John Bredenkamp. Bredenkamp is a major supplier of the Zimbabwean Defence forces and friend of Robert Mugabe. He is also known to be particularly close to Emmerson Mnangagwa, one of Mugabe’s most hard-line supporters.

Mugabe’s campaign against the country’s white farmers has often been marked by blood-curdling racism. The farmers have been portrayed as a greedy and selfish white minority lliving in the lap of luxury, who as a legacy of colonialism have nothing to contribute to modern Zimbabwe. But the reality is that many of the white farmers were not fantastically rich (or any form of rich). Their farms were often owned by banks and finance companies while they were dependant on the vicissitudes of global commodity prices. But Mugabe and his circle seem to have no difficulties hob-nobbing with mega-rich white businessmen such as Bredenkamp and Nicholas Van Hoogstraten. The reason for this apparent contradicition is that both groups have something to offer Mugabe & co that they crave. The white farmers had land, which could be handed out to ZANU-PF loyalists so as to bolster political control. The white businessmen have money – and lots of it, and you can be that it’s in dollars and pound sterling, not the fantastically denominated Zimbabwean dollar.

Without doubt Africa is the world’s poorest continent, in terms of money. Yet it has great riches, especially mineral, but the continent and its people have never been able to benefit from this. At first colonial exploiters stole from Africa, but then when Africa’s nations became independent, the larceny continued. A very small elite, usually closely related (often literally) with the countries’ rulers benefitted massively, salting their misgotten gains in bank accounts in Switzerland and New York. Their people meanwhile languished in extreme poverty, facing chronic malnutrition and disease, in societies denied even basic infrastructure. The result has been that those countries which have not been “blessed” with mineral resources, whileremaining very poor, have nevertheless seen economic and social improvements far in excess of those “enjoyed” by nations which, because of their mineral and hydrocarbons, should be rich, but aren’t. This wicked irony has been christened resource curse.

Some leading mining companies have started to counter resource curse, and are committing time and more importantly money into attempts to spread the benefits of natural resources among larger sections of the population. Unfortunately a fairly new player has joined the ranks of exploiters: the government of the People’s Republic of China and its parastatal procurement agencies. The unprecedented growth in the Chinese economy depends on huge resources of raw materials and fuels which cannot be supplied from domestic sources. As a victim of nearly two centuries of colonial exploitation one would expect mainland China to the threats posed to countries in the Third World to short-term exploitation, without giving anything tangible to these nations and their infrastructures. Nothing could be further from the truth. Deals are often reached in secret with governments, whose people can only watch with anger and dismay as the huge figures spoken of are ciphoned off and disappear into a small handful of well-placed pockets. Recently an agreement was reached between China and the land-locked nation of Niger worth $5bn for the exploration and exploitation of the nation’s oil reserves. This agreement was reached behind closed doors, and nobody knows its details or where and how the money is to be spent. The country’s people will however continue to suffer hardships such as drought, decimation of crops by locusts: all of which are being worsened by global warming.

The People’s Republic of China is now a major member of the club of neo-colonialists or “neo-cols”.