Embassy of Mauritania

HISTORY

Mauritania is a country in Western Africa that stretches along the Atlantic coast into the Sahara desert. For centuries, the Sahara has served as an avenue for migration and conquest between northern and sub-Saharan Africa. Mauritania has assimilated many waves of these migrants and conquerors. The rise of the Arabicized Berber dynasties of the Almoravids and the Almohads led to invasions and eventual colonization of Spain and clashes with the Ghana empire in the south.

Arkeijit Mosque

Tichitt "The Old City"

The Islamization of Mauritania was a gradual process that spanned a period of 500 years. Beginning slowly with contacts with Berber and Arab merchants engaged in caravan trade and increasing with the Almoravid conquests, Islamization eventually took firm hold with the arrival of the Yemeni Arabs in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and was not completed until three or four centuries later.

From the fifteenth to the nineteenth century, Europeans competed for the Mauritanian gum Arabic trade. The French were present in the Senegal River and the Mauritanian coast in the 1800s but a French protectorate was not established until 1903. French penetration into Mauritania continued slowly. Mauritania became a French colony in 1920. Colonial administrators relied extensively on Islamic religious leaders and the traditional warrior groups to maintain their rule and carry out their policies. The French policy of assimilation and direct rule was not applied with great vigor in Mauritania and, as a result, the traditional social structure was left largely intact through the colonial period. Very little economic development occurred under French rule. In 1946, Mauritania became a territory of French West Africa.

Chinguitty

Ouadane

Guelb Richat

Mauritania gained its independence in 1960, and Moktar Ould Daddah was elected the country's first president in 1961. Morocco claimed that Mauritania was historically Moroccan territory and did not recognize its independence until 1970. When Spain give up its colonial administration of Western Sahara, Morocco and Mauritania took over its administration with Morocco claiming the northern part and Mauritania the southern part. But Algeria and an organization of people from the Western Sahara, known as the Polisario Front, opposed these claims. Fighting broke out. a military coup overthrew Moktar Ould Daddah in july 1978. In 1979, Mauritania gave up its claim to the territory.

Maaouya Ould Sid'Ahmed Taya came to power in 1984 as President of the Military National Salvation Council. He was elected President in 1992, in 1997 and again in November 2003 amid large contestation and a after a bloody coup attempt in june. On august 2005, he was overthrown after a Military Council for Justice and Democracy(CMJD) seize power. The CMJD set up a transitional agenda for new democratic institutions in 19 months. This Transitional program includes a referendum on the constitution in June 2006, local government and parliamentarian elections in November, senatorial elections in January 2007 and presidential elections in March, but on August 3, 2005, President Taya was deposed in a bloodless coup. Military commanders, led by Colonel Ely Ould Mohammed Vall seized power while President Taya was attending the funeral of Saudi Arabia's King Fahd. Colonel Vall established the ruling Military Council for Justice and Democracy to run the country. The council dissolved the Parliament and appointed a transitional government.
Mauritania held series of elections that began in November 2006 with a parliamentary vote and culminated March 25, 2007 with the second round of the presidential election. Mr. Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdellahi was elected President, with 53 percent of the vote, and his opponent, Ahmed Ould Daddah, has conceded defeat and pledged to form a responsible opposition. By all accounts, the elections were orderly, free and fair, and the results have reflected the will of the Mauritanian people.