Mauritania’s National Security Conundrum and the Rapprochement with Israel

Introduction

Mauritania is one of Africa’s poorest countries with numerous domestic problems such as desertification, ethnic and religious tension. A minority of white Arabs (beydanes) many of whom identified with fiery nationalist movements such as pan-Arabism, Nasserism and Ba’thism were the country’s elite since its independence from France in 1960 and they ruled over a majority of blacks (haratines) thereby causing endemic tension that increased over the years.¹ After independence President Mukhtar Ould Daddah maintained the ties with France, opposed Morocco’s claim to his territory and fought to end Algeria’s support for the nationalists in Western Sahara which he regarded as his territory. When Daddah started building his country in the early 1960s Israel already establish relations with more than a dozen countries, with the exception of Mauritania and Somalia. Despite the absence of diplomatic relations between Israel and Mauritania there were low-level contacts between them. The Mauritanian government did not remain oblivious to what Israel could offer, especially when it resented the Arab states for supporting Morocco’s claim to its territory. Mauritania’s resentment lasted until 1970 when Morocco gave up its claim.

Faced with the need to minimize French influence in his country Daddah adopted an aggressive policy aimed at courting the Arabs with a view to obtain access to cheap oil. In 1973, Mauritania was admitted as member of the Arab League. Daddah’s political acumen earned his country handsome dividends when Arab countries such as Algeria, Libya, Saudi Arabia and the small states of the Persian Gulf embarked on a stiff completion to invest in Mauritania’s development projects.² However, his relations with the North African states suffered a serious setback after he signed the Madrid Tripartite Agreement of November 14, 1975 which granted him a third of Western Sahara. Instead of recognizing his sovereignty, Algeria violated the agreement by supporting the Polisario Front.³ His appeal to Morocco’s aid was rejected and he had to rely on French intervention to maintain his rights. In July 1978, Daddah was overthrown and the rise of Sidi Ould Cheikh Haidallah brought a peace treaty with the Polisario in August 1979 and the ties with Algeria were restored. And when Mauritania gave up its claim to its part of Western Sahara the ties with Morocco improved.⁴

Haidallah who became president in January 1980, began cultivating relations with Iraq and Libya, Algeria and Tunisia but he failed to promote better relations with Morocco and in December 1984 he was replaced by Mu’awiya Ould Sid’Ahmed Tayā after another coup. Tayā began by restoring diplomatic relations with Morocco, intensifying the cooperation with France and establishing contacts with Libya. By 1988, he strengthened his ties with Iraq and in 1989 he joined the Union of the Arab Maghreb (UAM) with Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia. However, the fact that he kept changing his attitude to toward Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait on August 2, 1990 caused tension in his relations with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf countries. Given their country’s fragile existence Mauritania’s leaders found it necessary to frequently change the pattern of their alliances.⁵

By the end of the 1990s, the Mauritanian regime embarked on another phase of its foreign policy whose trajectory had circumstances no less revolutionary than the previous ones. Throughout the entire period between 1960 and the mid-1990s Mauritania’s foreign policy encompassed its ties with France, the surrounding neighbors in the Sahel and the Arab countries in the east. The pragmatic approach which Mauritania’s leaders adopted left room for considerable maneuvering, which did not entirely exclude ties with Israel. Although Israel had taken the initiative to reach Mauritania these contacts were never seriously discussed by the leaders of these countries until the early 1990s.

This essay concentrates on the evolution of Israeli-Mauritanian relations, which began in 1995 and ended on March 21, 2010. It argues that (a). Mauritania’s initiative to start a dialogue with Israel emanated primarily from its predicament as a poverty-stricken country and ethnically...