Saharan Frontiers: Space and Mobility in Northwest Africa

8. Ethnicity and Interdependence: Moors and Haalpulaaren in the Senegal Valley

ETHNICITY AND INTERDEPENDENCE Moors and Haalpulaaren in the Senegal Valley Olivier Leservoisier The history of the relationship between Moorish and Haalpulaar1 societies has mainly been described in terms of their opposition, understood especially through their competition over the control of resources in the Senegal valley. Adopting a different perspective, the aim of this chapter is to underline the numerous relations that link these societies by emphasizing their interdependence, which has often been neglected by researchers. Indeed, apart from the observations made by Paul Marty (1921), Shaykh Muusa Kamara (1998), O. Kané (1974), and I. Sal (1978), historical commentary has tended to focus on conflicts rather than alliances , thus perpetuating, at times unintentionally, the image of two antagonistic blocs composed, on the one hand, of Moors (bīdān),2 who are Arabo-Berbers of a pastoral nomadic tradition, and, on the other hand, black African minorities (Haalpulaaren, Soninké, and Wolof), who are mainly agriculturalists living along the Senegal River. This dualistic approach has become even more popular since the mid1980s , in the wake of ecological and political upheavals in the Senegal valley, where most of Mauritania’s agricultural and pastoral potential is concentrated.3 Since the 1970s, severe drought, the development of irrigation through the construction of dams along the Senegal River,4 and the promulgation of new land laws have increased the pressure on the land, leading to numerous conflicts often fought along “ethnic” lines. Many such ethnic struggles were caused by land redistribution policies applied by the Mauritanian government, which is mainly controlled by the Moorish majority and which favored Moorish property developers, and by land laws that systematically ignored the rights of people who lived on one side of the river but who lived off land on the other side. Such issues further played an important role in the outbreak of hostilities between Mauritania and Senegal in 1989, which led to the emigration and eviction of Ethnicity and Interdependence 147 several thousand people from both sides of the river (in particular Mauritanian Haalpulaar), while the border between the countries remained closed for three years (Leservoisier 1994).5 They also contributed to the aggravation of struggles over Mauritanian national identity,6 by favoring the development of an ethnic and racial rhetoric perpetuating the notion of a formal opposition between Moorish and black “worlds.” In addition to land conflicts in the Senegal valley, the issue of slavery tends to reinforce this image of social antagonism.7 It is striking that international organizations and the media, as well as researchers, tend to approach this issue primarily with reference to Moorish society, thereby unwittingly reinforcing simplistic explanations of slavery as primarily the result of a presumed racial opposition between “Arabs” and “blacks.” But forms of slavery have been equally present within the black African societies of the Senegal valley, and throughout the continent more generally (Meillassoux 1975; Miers and Kopytoff 1977; Lovejoy 2000 [1983]). It is also worth remembering that these populations, who themselves have at times been victims of slave raids, also actively participated in Map 8.1. The Moorish emirates and the Futa Toro (18th–19th century). P. Lecrosse 1992 148 Olivier Leservoisier the trans-Saharan slave trade by supplying Moors with slaves (Curtin 1975; J. L. A. Webb 1995). Far from wanting to minimize the opposition between Moorish and Haalpulaar society, however, my intention here is to provide an alternative to interpretations that reduce all their relations to conflict without acknowledging their inherent interdependence. Through historical study of a particular region—Gorgol, on the border with Senegal in south-central Mauritania—from the eighteenth century to the present, this chapter describes the various interactions that were or still are possible on the local level between groups that, on the national level, are theoretically opposed to one another. In order to do so, it is first of all necessary to discuss the notion of “territories ” (leydi) in the valley. Such territories were once inherently political, and hence scattered and dispersed, so that historically the Senegal River appears as the center of one connected space, open to various populations, rather than as the current sharp dividing line between only two “national” states. Between Right Bank and Left:The Political Construction of Haalpulaaren Territories (Leydi) Far from being natural, the boundaries between leydi in the Senegal valley are the result of a turbulent history marked by shifting political alliances and oppositions, by a series of conquests and migrations, and...