Mauritania has shown diplomatic foresight in refusing to follow the axes of anti-Moroccan escalation and regional supremacy that Algeria has tried to revive in recent months.

A series of presidential and general elections have been held in recent weeks. Those that have drawn, to varying degrees, the attention of observers took place in Africa (South Africa, Senegal, and Mauritania), Europe (France and the United Kingdom), and Asia (Iran). The outcomes of some of these elections will certainly impact the internal political chessboard more than the diplomatic chessboard. Most, on the contrary, will have some influence on immediate diplomatic behavior, but without going so far as to carry out a radical overhaul of foreign policy.

In this article, I will refer to the elections that took place or will take place in Africa. In Morocco’s neighborhood, two elections particularly attracted my attention: the Senegalese and Mauritanian presidential elections. To me, the upcoming presidential elections in Algeria and Tunisia do not deserve any particular coverage because the dice are cast. And unless there is a last-minute turnaround, the status quo will prevail.

Why are the presidential elections in Senegal and Mauritania politically, diplomatically, and geopolitically interesting to assess? Both elections were motivated by the need for stability and maintaining the status quo. Since I have also written an analysis of the broader domestic and geopolitical implications of the Senegalese presidential election, I will not dwell on it here.I will therefore focus on the results of the Mauritanian presidential elections. Why are the presidential elections in Mauritania not like previous experiences that the country has witnessed?

For the first time, Mauritanian decision-makers have resisted various external pressures and internal manipulations. This is a novelty in the sense that the system has worked by keeping the players involved in the game without forcing them to lose hope of making their case.

First of all, those who hold a grudge against President Mohamed Ould Ghazouani are blaming him for having sidelined them or for having betrayed his predecessor, Mohamed Ould Abdelaziz. Secondly, those who have always fed on intranational contradictions (a single system but with free electrons) are used to playing on several strings, at least one of which is pulled by foreign players.

Secondly, the troublemakers who play on tribal contradictions, whose ramifications plunge into neighboring countries, have been beaten by the awareness of a large part of the Mauritanian political class. This awareness consists of the need not to make the country a foreign policy issue for neighbors and some international powers, mainly the former colonial power.

It is in this spirit that we must understand the erosion of the policy of granting Mauritanian nationality to elements of the Polisario and to the Algerian Saharawis. This is a card that Algeria and the separatist Polisario movement have for three decades in order to control the internal political chessboard in Mauritania.

From security fears to state-building

Thirdly, instead of using tribal ramifications in neighboring countries as a weapon of obstruction, current Mauritanian decision-makers seem to want to turn them into a unifying fabric to overcome intra-national contradictions and, therefore, to have a say in regional diplomatic chess boards. 

Fourthly, the time when Nouakchott was infiltrated by elements of the Polisario who, in cahoots with Mohamed Khouna Ould Haidalla’s government, managed to dictate their law in Nouakchott is long gone. For the record, under intense pressure from both Algeria and the Polisario, Ould Haidalla withdrew from the Sahara dispute in 1979.

I remember the year 1983 when, as a young researcher, I stayed in Nouakchott to do research for  a postgraduate thesis on relations between Morocco and Senegal. Throughout my stay, I was spied on by two individuals in a white car who followed me wherever I went.

I had fruitful meetings with officials, academics, and brotherhood leaders who advised me not to pay attention to such silly behavior. This was at the time when Mauritania, like Tunisia, Mali, and Niger before it, had succumbed to Algerian pressure to recognize the borders inherited from French colonization.

Fifthly, Mauritania has shown diplomatic foresight by refusing to follow the policy axes of anti-Moroccan escalation and regional supremacy that Algeria has been trying to revive in recent months with the help of Tunisia and Libya. Mauritania thus confirmed its diplomatic personality and nerves. The objective is to focus on the internal chessboard, meet the challenges of development, and give hope to populations who are beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel thanks to new discoveries in natural gas and other valuable natural resources.

Morocco understood very early that, in the renewed regional geopolitical equation, Mauritania was an essential actor. Instead of choosing confrontation in the wake of Nouakchott’s recognition of Polisario’s self-proclaimed “Sahrawi Republic” in 1983, Rabat preferred to extend its hand and work to consolidate bilateral cooperation.

The Moroccan-Mauritanian Cooperation Agency, created in the late 1970s, was the milestone on which relations between the two countries were built. Taking the name of the Moroccan Agency for International Cooperation (MACI) since 1986, this structure achieves spectacular performances regardless of the financial and economic hurdles.

The results of cooperation have been very positive, particularly in the field of professional training and higher education. In recent years, Morocco has become a study destination for students from 47 African countries, 85% of whom are MACI scholarship holders. As the Moroccan agency. continues to extend its scope of cooperation in several areas to the entire African continent, Mauritania notably is the top-beneficiary country of MACI grants.

Tunisia (Tunisian Agency for Technical Cooperation, 1972), Egypt (Egyptian Agency for Partnership for Development, 2014), and Algeria (Algerian Agency for International Cooperation, 2020) follow the same logic, but they have to date achieved mixed or unsatisfying results.

While Morocco has long favored the win-win approach, the others have either had a mercantile approach or succumbed to the temptation to obtain immediate diplomatic dividends. Libya under Gaddafi had chosen a different approach to direct support that proved to be a bitter failure.

From Morocco’s perspective, it is time for Mauritania to get rid of its lingering fear of Morocco’s supposed irredentism. If the past four decades of the Sahar dispute, coupled with the past two decades of Morocco’s resurgent pan-African leadership and regional primacy have indicated anything, it is that Morocco has no plans of laying claim to Mauritanian territory. 

In fact, Morocco has never been an advocate of sterile irredentism. Rabat is aware that the phobia that the Mauritanians feel has been exploited by Algeria, Spain, and France to push Mauritania to be a party in the claim of the so-called Spanish Sahara since 1969, the date Morocco recognized the independence of Mauritania.

Morocco is also aware that Algeria and France abandoned President Ould Daddah when he refused to give up the commitment he made to King Hassan II to coordinate their efforts to recover the Sahara. In his memoirs published in 2003, Ould Daddah could not have been clearer as he provided valuable insights into this episode of diplomatic transactions that preceded the signing of the 1975 tripartite agreement.Finally, Morocco is aware that the tribal dimension that Algeria and certain foreign intelligence branches have often nurtured is rather a factor of rapprochement between Morocco and Mauritania. Most of the tribes that have settled in the Sahara and Mauritania come from Morocco, as some Sahrawi and Mauritanian scholars or chibouks have recently revealed.

This is not to mention Tindouf, where the tribes, especially Rguibat, maintain close links with all the major tribes of the region, especially Moroccans. This was the challenge that Algeria’s President Boumediene had tried to take up with the complicity of Spain by the end of the 1960s. It consisted of bringing together the Sahrawi tribes ahead of a projected referendum on autonomy Spain had planned for 1974. Once autonomy was achieved, Algeria would rely on investment in return to gain access to the Atlantic.

However, it should be noted that the tribal dimension in the region of Tindouf and Bashar had not had a real impact insofar as the Eastern Sahara was, until 1954, part of Morocco. It was annexed by France and given to Algeria in 1962 in return for an agreement on nuclear tests and the exclusive exploitation of raw materials discovered in the region. Nuclear tests continued until at least 1967, while Algeria prided itself on being the champion of the Third World fight for freedom.

The time has come for Mauritania to meet its destiny and play its role as an important actor alongside other regional state actors. The uncomfortable position that it has often found difficult to bear within the Arab Maghreb Union and ECOWAS is no longer justified.

Balanced diplomatic behavior

Not only has Mauritania proven that it can easily navigate the waves of regional geopolitics, but it has also marked the various processes of inclusion and exclusion with its life-saving balancing act.

In this regard, Mauritanian decision-makers should recall the tenacity and art with which President Mokhtar Oul Daddah (1960–1978) was able to save his country from the threat of separatism based on tribalism and clannism. The parenthesis of President Mohamed Khouna Ould Haidallah (1980–1984), the procrastination of Maaouiya Ould Sid’Ahmed Taya (1984–2005), or the ill-balanced subtleties of Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz (2009–2019) have been of no use to a country that has the means to grow by drawing on its strength of resistance to various assaults on its sovereignty.

Decision-making centers in Mauritania are aware that the country’s future is linked to the intelligent management of the privileged position it enjoys as a link between North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa. But the double mandatory passage is between Morocco and Senegal. This doesn’t mean creating a geopolitical axis that is harmful to other Maghreb and sub-Saharan partners, but rather carefully developing the outline of a process of gradual regional integration.

This gradual integration must take place outside the traditional structures such as ECOWAS (or even MAU), which have proven their limits because they were built on balances of power and the hegemonic temptations of certain member countries have weakened.

Gradual integration means that the formation of groupings in a hurry cannot be a factor in inclusion either. The constitution of the Sahel Federation a few days ago falls into this category. The young leaders of Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger certainly have several arrows in their quiver, but they need the support of the populations and the resolution of endemic conflicts between their countries. Like other countries in the region, these three countries are threatened by terrorism and religious extremism that foreign interests ignite from time to time.

Yet some share the view that such a regional federation is beneficial ahead of the implementation of the Atlantic initiative proposed by Morocco. For the record, these countries, in addition to Chad, have shown their interest in this project. They participated in all the ministerial meetings that followed its inception.

This gradual integration will not be easy. There are risks of insecurity and destabilization in the Sahel region. Organized crime networks will not let this happen, especially since disorder is their main stock in trade. They will continue to play on the register of tribal alliances to exist and serve their sponsors, states, and foreign intelligence services.

In this respect, some observers have noted that during the presidential campaign, President Mohamed Ould Ghazouani insisted on the need to fight terrorism and protect the country’s borders. The president certainly intended that his country should remain immune from the strategies that some countries in the region (or their sponsors) are trying to carry out on the borders with Algeria, Mali, and Morocco.

It goes without saying that the process of gradual integration will definitely bury the fear of insecurity or the fear of regional hegemony, which modern geopolitics clearly rejects. It is comforting, in this regard, that Mauritania and Libya have nipped in the bud the project of creating a new Maghreb without Morocco.

It is equally comforting that the appointment, a few days ago, of a new secretary general of the AMU (of Tunisian nationality as provided for in the AMU’s charter) is perceived as a Tunisian response to the maximalist approach that Algeria seeks to impose on other Maghreb partners. And some would say that the Tunisian leadership is trying to dismiss the growing notion of Tunisia becoming the backyard of Algeria’s push for regional primacy. It is from this perspective that we must perceive the good insight Mauritanian decision-makers have shown lately. A few months ago, an idea was put forward to inject doubt into relations between Mauritania and Morocco. The objective was to revive the idea of the partition of the Moroccan Sahara.

It was Algerian President Abdelmajid Tebboune who first announced the colors. He said that Algeria would respect the Sahrawis’ decision to become independent or integrate with Morocco or Algeria, as long as the choice was made through a referendum. President Tebboune pretends to ignore the fact that the referendum option has been definitively buried since 2001 and 2002 (the impossibility of implementing the Baker I and II plans) and 2007 (the proposal of the Moroccan Autonomy Plan).

Then, following a sponsored campaign, a petition was signed in Paris by intellectuals, including a good number of Franco-Algerians or Polisario sympathizers. The signatories tried to convey the idea of “federation” as an option to resolve the Western Sahara conflict. This happened immediately after the United States recognized Morocco’s sovereignty over its southern provinces.

And most recently, a proposal condoned by the Algerian establishment has been making the rounds designated intellectual and media circles in Algeria and beyond. Under this proposal, the territory of the Sahara should be shared between Morocco, Mauritania, and the Polisario. Algeria, for its part, should have direct access to the Atlantic.

This idea of preserving Algeria’s access to the Atlantic proves why Algeria participated in the creation of an artificial conflict in the region in the first place. Better still, the objective remains to get rid of the Sahrawi populations of all stripes living in the Tindouf camps that Algeria had brought in or forced to settle to inflate the number of populations called to participate in the referendum. But the fact that UN resolutions since 2007 have abandoned the referendum option is forcing Algeria to rethink its approach and come up with a settlement alternative that would still ensure some strategic gains for Algiers. For now, the best alternative that Algeria has managed to produce is that these populations, the majority of whom were born on Algerian territory in Tindouf, never be allowed to request the right to become Algerian citizens. It is thus not surprising that, in recent comments, President Tebboune emphatically stated that the Saharawi populations in Tindouf will never be Algerian.

It is amusing that on social networks, there have been live broadcasts hosted by Saharawis claiming to be citizens of the Polisario’s self-proclaimed “Sahrawi Republic,” who have ceaselessly repeated that their republic does indeed exist and that it has a territory — Tindouf. They say they are convinced that Morocco has recovered its southern provinces, and they are demanding accountability from the Algerian military institution for having fooled them for a quarter of a century.

The danger lies in the fact that Algeria is seriously thinking of transforming northern Mauritania into a substitute territory for the Polisario to keep the separatist group alive and, at the same time, realize the Algerian dream of having access to the Atlantic.

However, the Atlantic is precisely the solution for Mauritania to sail with ease. Mauritania is an important player in the Atlantic initiative aimed at integrating the twenty-three African countries bordering the Atlantic. Mauritania is an essential actor in the initiative to open up the Sahel states King Mohammed VI of Morocco proposed in 2023, allowing them to have access to the Atlantic. Mauritania is among the main beneficiaries of the Nigeria-Morocco-Europe gas pipeline project. Because it needs Morocco to export and sell its natural gas to Europe.

In this regard, the port of Dakhla should not be perceived as a threat to the port of Nouadhibou or any other African port on the Atlantic. The two ports are complementary. A division of tasks is possible not only for Mauritania but for all the African countries bordering the Atlantic.

To all those who harp on the idea of splitting the Moroccan Sahara by playing on the heartstrings of Mauritanians who regret that President Mohamed Khouna Ould Haidallah gave up Teris al-Gharbiyya (Oued Eddahab) in 1979 to make their case, we can answer that mutual beneficial interdependence between Mauritania and Morocco is the answer. They have to accept that Morocco completed its territorial integrity in 1975. In this sense, President Khouna Ould Haidalla’s gesture was a providential inspiration to set the record straight.

To be more explicit, one can say that by recognizing Mauritania’s independence in 1969, Morocco turned the page on potential irredentism. Morocco does not accept that Mauritania’s stability and security are threatened. By the same token, Morocco recovered all the southern provinces and does not accept that some people dangle the idea of partition or any kind of territorial concession.

In short, Mauritania and all the African countries in the sub-region are requested to believe in their potential and behave accordingly. It is quite surprising that few observers measure the impact of the geopolitical transformations taking place in the region. They associate them with the transformations taking place in the international system in general.

In doing so, they condition the internal chessboard by the international chessboard, implying that it is the latter that is the starting point for all transformations that affect its structure. They ignore the intra-national dynamics that African societies know how to manage each time a political transition is initiated.

Why did the Senegalese and Mauritanian elections not take place with no claim recorded? Why were the results accepted despite formal protests that ended the same day they had been presented? The answer is simple: internal and foreign actors who used to sow discord have either failed to impact or had other fish to fry. In both cases, Mauritania and Senegal have shown such political maturity that other countries in the process of organizing presidential elections must meditate.