Al Qaeda and the U.S. agree on... Mauritania

By Olivier Guitta

While Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb made good on its promise to attack Mauritania, killing yesterday 12 soldiers in an ambush, I looked for the Middle East Times at how the West's assessment of the situation on the ground is seriously flawed. In fact, both Al Qaeda and the U.S. are vocally opposed to the new regime that emerged after the August 6 coup.
For an extensive coverage of Al Qaeda in Mauritania, please view The Croissant (available to subscribers only for a small fee).

For the details, please read my entire piece here.

Here is an excerpt:
Al-Qaida and the United States are not usually on the same side of an issue. One exception though: Mauritania. After the bloodless military coup of Aug. 6 in this North African country, both al-Qaida and the U.S. were quick to denounce very vocally the new regime.

While it is true that this coup puts a stop to the recent democratization process, it would have been wise for the West to read between the lines and assess that one of the major reasons for this event was to stop the Islamists.

Mauritania has a history of coups: The country has had 31 coup attempts since 1978; some were successful. Sheikh Sidi Ould Abdallahi, the president that was unseated, was the first democratically elected leader of Mauritania in 2007. He was a civilian and a democrat but had been contested within his own majority and the country had witnessed a major political crisis in the three months preceding the coup.

Abdallahi made mistakes that made him unpopular with the population and the very powerful military. He opened up the prisons, freeing at the same time dangerous Islamists. According to a Mauritanian intellectual: "This was a mistake because, in a country with an oriental mentality where the despotic [need] remains very strong, this democratic concession was seen as a sign of weakness." Thus the Islamists have been all the more active for the past two years. Furthermore, the president made several gestures to please the Islamists, such as re-establishing the Muslim week-end (Friday and Saturday), building a mosque in the presidential palace, allowing the creation of an Islamist political party that legitimized Islamists.

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