Tales from the coffers: characteristic behavior

Al-Akhbar reports on Mohamed Ould Bouamatou’s efforts, dating back as far as 2008, to use his bank (the General Bank of Mauritania) to bankrupt Mauritania’s national gas company (SOMEGAZ) through exorbitant rates, which the Mauritanian courts have called usery. It is written that Bouamatou’s bank raised interest rates to 40%, hoping to put the state company to the wall, to the benefit of his own BSA-Gaz. The report is complete with relevant court documents and charts. Bouamatou used similar methods to bankrupt AirMauritanie, before launching his own Mauritania Airways (in conjunction with Tunisair, which has a majority stake, while Bouamatou has 39%). Additional tales from Mauritania and the pillaging of its institutions will follow.

“The State is an ostrich”

Gulagh seg Tizi Ouzou

Armi d Akdadu

Ur hekim-en ddeggi aken ellan.

Anerez wala aneknu

Axir da3wessu Anda

tsqwiden chifan.

Del gherva tura deg qeru

Guglagh r ne nfu

Waa laquba gger ilfan.²

– Si Mohand

El Watan ran an article on the “culture of rioting,” that has become common place in Algeria. Its emphasis is primarily urban: over the last ten years, riots have taken place in all the major areas, especially the medium and small sized ones, almost always involving young men broken into factions or pushing back against the police or gendarmes. El Watan lists the riots over “bread, football, gas, and electricity” caused by “social injustice, corruption, hogra, nepotism, cronyism, non-management [not mismanagement, "la non-gestion"] and non-governance,” pointing to “inter-neighborhood violence in Bab el-Oued, inter-communal clashes in Berriane and Illizi and tribal conflicts in Djefla, Laghouat and Bejaia.” Venturing to explain this violence it quotes anotherAlgerian social scientist who connects it to “the failure of State patronage,” a lack of fair distribution of the benefits of clienteleism, and “the political crisis, which refuses the institutionalization of social conflict, the autonomous expression of claims and the political representation of society” forcing those excluded from and faceless within the system to violence.

A decade of national reconciliation has produced a society where young men riot by night and by day plot escape routs out of Algeria, via suicide or sea; where callus leadership, best described as geriatric and indifferent, guards its own position before that of the youth at large whose aimlessness and despair is attributed not to the failures of the leadership class but to their lack of patriotism and nationalist fervor for a State that meet their every request with a shrug and every demand with a baton. This was Algeria in 1989, and it is Algeria in 2009. Full of fortitude is the Algerian who can bring himself to utter a word like “progress.”

Algerian Islamists in the Era of Reconciliation

Recently, the Economist ran two articles on Arab politics, one focusing on the Muslim Brotherhood and the other focusing on Arab oppositions in general. In both cases, the Maghreb is poorly addressed, referenced only in passing in the first one (while curiously leaving out the two Maghrebine that have active branches of the Brotherhood, Algeria and Mauritania) and somewhat more extensively in the second, though still inadequately.

The first article focuses on the Egyptian and Jordanian Brotherhoods. The Egyptians are “determined to crush,” the Brotherhood, and its large membership is divided along generational and ideological lines. In Jordan’s case, moderate Brothers have been allowed to sit in parliament, though the government has dealt them several serious blows following the invasion of Iraq, and has seen changes in leadership, specifically the rise of a Palestinian chief. In Syria, the party has allied with the government, praising its patronage of Hamas (the Palestinian Brotherhood) and resistance against Israel. “Such shifts of convenience have sometimes damaged the Brotherhood’s reputation. But its decline in some countries is owing instead to a failure to fulfil its promises to bring about change.” It describes the North African Brotherhoods (mentioning only Tunisia and Libya) as “banned and persecuted.” This ignores, as said above, the Algerian Brotherhood — the Movement for a Society of Peace (aka HAMAS, or MSP), and the breakaway parties en-Nahdah and el-Islah — as well as the Mauritanian one, Tawassoul. In both of these cases, the party operates openly, in Algeria serving as the third leg of the tripartite governing alliance, and in Mauritania as an active part of the opposition, though it has recently changed its positing in part (more on that later).

If the notion of a Brotherhood engaged in peaceful collaboration with a secular government for progressive aims sounds too good to be true, it is. The Algerian case is an alternative scenario borne of Algeria’s troubled recent history, but the motives behind it — the preservation of the elite and breaking the popular will to rebel — remain the same. Here, the intention is to address the Brotherhood in the context of Algeria’s decade of “peace and national reconciliation“. The Mauritanian branch will be addressed in a later post.

Women in Algerian politics: some numbers

Speaking of North African women in politics, here are some tables and spreadsheets on women in Algerian politics, focusing primarily at the national level, looking at the two houses of parliament — the National People’s Assembly (APN, lower house) and the Council of the Nation (the upper house/senate).

These are still works in progress and no where close to being finished, but should become more interesting with the addition of historical data for the APN, and one would suppose the Council of the Nation, though it is relatively young and female participation there is rather especially low (hardly four senators are women). Also interesting will be more information about female representatives’ home constituencies (who their voters were, what turnout was like, etc.), and, of course, data on female participation in municipal and lower level elections. None of this is to place excessive emphasis on elections that, in most of the country, have strikingly low turn out and a body that has close to no real power.

Some critical work has been done on women’s participation in Algerian politics and society (especially in English by Lezrag), and it will be interesting to see in what ways Algerian women compare and contrast to their Moroccan counterparts. Louisa Hanoune’s second place finish in last April’s election and the promotion of Fatma-Zohra Ardjoun to the rank of General made headlines last summer have been held up as examples of women’s progress in Algeria. But on the ground much work remains needs to be done, and the numbers of women participating in politics might suggest that these two women are exceptions rather than exemplars of the rule. Still, in the comparative perspective, Algeria lags behind other Arab and African countries in women’s membership in parliament, even though women act as heads of multiple parties.

New ARB artys on Tunisia and Morocco

The most recent edition of the Arab Reform Bulletin features pieces on the Tunisian elections, slated for 25 October and women’s participation in Moroccan politics. Both articles are informative and provide valuable perspectives on the region’s politics, especially given the paucity of publishing on Tunisia as of late (though if you search the MPR archives, you can find some brief and useful postings by Alle). Read! Contemplate! Discuss!

False capture of AQIM forces in Mauritania

The men the Mauritanian security forces captured on the norther border with Mali were not connected to AQIM, as the Mauritanians claimed, according to the Malian government. Taqadoumy writes:

The truck belongs to the merchant Mauritania Sidi Mohamed Ould Taleb, from Timbuktu. He was carrying children from the there, through Mauritania to Gao. The three miners still held in custody with the other, are Nave, Hachem and Abdessalam. Their uncle, Mmamtou Ould Henu, half-brother in the maternal line of the owner, was driving; Ely Ould Nejmou is also traveling as an apprentice mechanic. When the [truck's] failure became clear, the four people used their satellite phone to inform the father who was waiting in Mali. This comes as reinforcements, and two other relatives, and Najem Mowleu Ould Oumar Ould Mody, who is both deaf and mute, nicknamed Lebkem, aged 15. When the group reached the victims and is working around the truck, the patrol operates the Mauritanian army and the inquiry.

It continues: “the men had nothing to do with AQIM other than that they practiced the Muslim religion and were of Arabo-Berber appearance, which do not yet constitute a crime in the Islamic Republic of Mauritania.” More on this and other efforts and happenings in the Mauritanian military soon.

Mauritania: “Business as usual,” the business of failure

“It’s a new hour in our history,” Chavez said today. “We have many great leaders, many of them here today.”

“Chavez, Qaddafi Seek Africa-South America NATO, Bank,” Bloomberg, 27 September, 2009.

Yesterday, the Venezuelan president hosted a pow-wow of African and Latin American leaders, dressing themselves in the language of South-South cooperation, Third Worldism and all the rest of what today’s dictators and despots use to form perversions of what were once “progressive” ideologies. Mauritania was in attendance, its delegation said to include among others Sid Ahmed Ould Taya, the former president that sitting Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz deposed in 2005 — a mistake on the part of the Venezuelans, showing the depth of their solidarity with Mauritania and Mauritania’s own marginality even among the most pointlessly rebellious of marginal states. Mauritania’s participation in the summit, which Ould Abdel Aziz’s government hoped to hold up a success, came after Venezuela’s Chavez announced plans to build an oil refinery in Mauritania. Things are not quite so sunny, though.

Bouteflika at the United Nations

Bouteflika at the United Nations, as President of the General Assembly, and as President of Algeria.

Qadhafi at the UN: the face of everyone’s misdeeds

Muammar al-Qadhafi is most diplomatically called problematic. In his grand exposition of his foreign policy, the Stream of Consciousness Policy, he succeeded, as his diplomatic corps and conduct has before, the Brother Leader ably turned the world away from pressing issues facing the developing world. Rambling on about a host of issues, some more relevant in 1969 others more relevant today, he offered the world community perhaps the greatest fit of foolishness yet seen on the world stage. And he, together with the Western and African leaders who coddle him, has done more damage to the cause of the disenfranchised than any other man this year. It makes one consider that it may be true that “to do and suffer evil is the universal human condition.”

What the NYT’s piece on the new cybercrime law says about Algeria, and its opposition

Undone from his cold dead hands?

The New York Times has an interesting article on a proposed law in Algeria that would allow for tighter surveillance of internet users suspected of using the net to support terrorism or otherwise subversive criminal activity. Obviously, this has caused anxiety among politically minded Algerian bloggers. The article is disappointing in that it does not mention that the proposal is more than a year old (if not older). The proposed law would create an “internet police force charged with investigating online criminal and terrorist activities”. This is only partially correct, in that it proposes creating and solidifying the cybercrime “cells” and task-forces within the already existing police and security forces apparatus.

The article overestimates the perceived threat of bloggers and online mobilization on the government’s part. Like the Algerian political class and opposition at large, internet based opposition is as weak. This is a key element of Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s Algeria: a weary political class, fragmented opposition and a strong state that tolerates a modicum of Islamist agitation and lets the discontent rumble in the streets like a low din, knowing well that to put down young men’s riots would only make more of them angry. It is a system that serves to perpetuate only itself so long as as much is possible, but devoid of any of the naitonalist zeal of previous eras. It is an imitation of Boumediene’s style of rule, minus any of his convictions or folkloric representative or revolutionary legitimacy.

Facing the Nation: “Discours à la Nation de Ould Abdel Aziz à l’occasion de la fin du Ramadan”

Here is the text of a fictitious “speech,” written by an anonymous Mauritanian and attributed to President General Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, and circulating widely across the Mauritanian internet scene via emails, Facebook, and other media. It lays out especially what many Mauritanians, including many of those who voted for Ould Abdel Aziz, are thinking amidst the rough times of their country and their present’s recent conduct. It does so by stating what has happened since his rise to power. A translation of parts of it is forthcoming.

Sahara Media on a sad Ramadan

Last week, Sahara Media published a piece summarizing the misery that has befallen Mauritanians on their first Ramadan under president Gen. Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz (it is their second under him, the first having been under his junta). It uses hard hitting personal accounts and quotes everyday people. That Sahara Media published this piece is meaningful: the website is known for being less radically critical than other, more directly opinionated sites such as Taqadoumy (or even the Islamist oriented al-Akhbar). For them to have published such a dreary piece about Mauritania’s state of affairs indicates that the new government (which was formed in direct defiance of calls for a unity government after the acrimonious election in July) is doing rather poorly, even from a middle of the road position, within the Mauritanian political spectrum. A slum dewller is quoted as saying “as for us poor people, the crisis has not affected us, because we had no electricity or running water to begin with,” highlighting the problems facing Mauritania’s capital. The article concludes by describing the city as being “in need of urgent medication as a result of a suffering heart and arteries, lacking infrastructural architecture necessary for a city that hosts close to one million people, with hundreds of thousands more candidates with every sunrise.”

Mauritania: When the going gets tough, get going on holiday

It is a woebegone Ramadhan in Mauritania. Scandals, power outages, flood and neglect abound. While the freshly elected president, General Mohamed Abdel Aziz, sits air conditioned and on vacation in Spain (after reveling round Qadhafi’s bonfire), while Nouakchott is without power, the national radio broadcaster does not service the country’s vast interior, Mauritania’s third city, Rosso, is submerged by flooding along with large parts of the shanties around the capital, Nouakchott. One person has died in Rosso. Residents of the capital complain of the putrid smell of rotting food, standing and dirty water filling streets without sewers. Internet access is limited. PM Moulay Ould Mohamed Laghdaf made a surprise visit to the power station at Arafat, where the troubles related to the Nouakchott outages originated, as traders reported major losses. Ahmed Ould Daddah, a prominent opposition leader, has also used the opportunity to show his solidarity with flood victims. As a result of the horrendous floods, the government announced that it plans to “embark on a plan to study providing Mauritanian cities with a sanitation network to prevent urban flooding from rain water.” A miserable Mauritanian described her city as having returned to the Stone Age.

And if it sounds as if things could not get any worse, a man was killed by a camel south-east of the capital. The man was whipped to the ground, and trampled to death. He was sixty. His name was Mohamed Abdallahi Ould Mohamed Vall.

Some Algeria stuff

Lousia Hanoune offered her opinions on illegal immigration and Hugo Chavez at a talk to her party’s summer school (see below) yesterday, saying that “urgent action” from the authorities to stop the flood of harragas going off to sea or being arrested on their way. She also praised Hugo Chavez, in the wake of his recent visit to Algeria, saying that his 2005 visit helped in pushing through changes to the hydrocarbons law. She called the Venezualan president’s visit “a positive sign in terms of encouraging the Algerian government to take economic decisions and encourage the disposal of foreign diktats and halting negotiations towards WTO accession.” Hanoune’s “opposition” since April has been in the form of, as La Tribune puts it, “applauding recent government actions,” and then stating depressing facts about the country’s economic conditions. This has become so much the case even the official El Moudjahid was so moved by her remarks on the recent supplementary budget law that it felt it necessary to publish an entire article on her, quoting her, in effect thanking her, for supporting the government’s undertaking. Indeed, El Moudjahid’s favorite bits from Hanoune’s recent comments were her description of the law as “a large, bold victory for the national economy” and that she “questioned the reactions of some” to the new law, e.g. other quarters of the opposition and business classes. Clever, Hanoune makes certain never, ever to say that “there is no poverty in Algeria,” as some evidently confused ministers have.

L’Expresion has a summary of the meeting places and agendas for the major parties’ summer school sessions, meetings, conferences and training sessions for the party cadres and faithful. Interestingly, it is reported the PM Ahmed Ouyahia’s RND has had three regional conferences (in Constantine, Blida and Oran), but its Southern (e.g. Saharan) conference was postponed for after Ramadhan, due to the excessive heat. The FLN completed its summer program on 14 July at Tipaza, looking towards the 9th Congress in early 2010 and policies related to agriculture and broadcasting. Hanoune’s PT began their summer school this week, due to logistical complications as a result of the PanAfrican festival. El Islah held its party sessions in June and early August, commemorating the 20 August, 1955 Skikda killings with lectures as well as meetings to commemorate the Congress of the Soummam, at Ifri. Moussa Touati’s FNA was too strapped for cash to hold national conferences, and instead held various local meetings across the country, emphasizing committee structuring and training. The FNA’s scheduling was also hampered because of the PanAf festival. The FNA, despite its mediocre showings at the polls, and undistinguished ideology, “is part of a simple movement, but is becoming a political party, thematically and structurally,” its moustached leader declared. The ever stumbling AHD 54 of Fawzi Rebiane held its sessions in July, and resolved that its energy would best be spend on proposing solutions for transport related troubles and increasing contact between party activists and citizens. MDS held its meetings in early August, bringing in new recruits from the universities. The article describes RA and en-Nahdah as “in hibernation,” due to the heat, perhaps by metaphor referring to their internal intrigues and incompetence.

To speak of the Chavez visit, it resulted in renewal of the 2006 memoranda of understanding between the two countries, an invitation from Chavez to Bouteflika to the Afro-Latin America Summit and quite a lot of bluster about South-South cooperation, solidarity and the Third Worldist rhetoric Bouteflika is so well known for. Bouteflika hosted an Iftar in Chavez’s honor at El Mouradia Palace. The significance of the visit ending up being that Chavez perhaps now knows more about Ramadhan than he did before.

Meanwhile the Interior Ministry continues to work at re-drawing the administrative map of the Southern daïras (sub-wilaya administrative districts), with the intention of re-organizing them based on population in order to “bring the government closer to the people”. The re-division of daïras is the result of demands at the local level, where people often feel isolated from the structures and services of the state, and security concerns related to banditry and AQIM in the more remote and poorly serviced areas.

Robert Irwin’s “Dangerous Knowledge”

Robert Irwin’s Dangerous Knowledge: Orientalism and its Discontents (Overlook, 2006) is a spirited refutation of the late Edward Said’s magnum opus Orientalism. The book chronicles the history of Oriental studies in the West, arguing that practitioners of this trade were not mere agents of imperialism or a demonizing conspiracy, but rather scholars who labored over their studies in good faith. He holds no punches when it comes to tearing down the “Orientalists” Said presents as representative of western scholarship of the Near and Middle East, particularly de Gobineau and Renan. He argues that Said is unlikely to have even read the work of “genuine” Orientalists, instead picking out patently racist and un-scholarly writers from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, along with various other figures irrelevant to Orientalist work. Here he has a point, as Said’s book indeed over emphasizes popular and obscure literature over actual scholarship. Irwin is at his strongest in elaborating on German, Russian and other non-Anglo-French scholarship that was prolific and influential in the field, though almost wholly ignored by Said.

Irwin’s work additionally serves as a biographical survey, a sort of historical dictionary of Orientalists from the European Middle Ages through to the present. In cataloging the personal histories, eccentricities and politics (or non-politics) of various European and Americans scholars, Irwin seeks to rebut Said’s claim that Orientalist scholarship (“old-fashioned,” as he calls it) is the result of the imperialist enterprise, complicit in and reliant on European power and domination of non-western societies. The characters Irwin pulls out are diverse and fascinating and some more a part of the colonial project than others. But that Orientalism’s roots do lay solely in colonizing activity, but rather in an assortment of religious causes (missionary and the desire to better understand the philology of the Bible, in the case of many Germans), intense personal interest, and so on is manifestly clear from Irwin’s narrative, especially in that his history of the subject extends quite far back (to the late Middle Ages). He is quick to call the work of de Gobineau, Renan, Lemmens racist, anti-Islamic and pseudo-scholarship — as he should be — and to emphasize that Said’s lasting influence has been to conflate these figures with well meaning and hard working scholars whose interest in their subject was no born out of a desire simply to make devils out of Muslims and Arabs or justify their oppression through myths of western supremacy. He succeeds in arguing that the image Said paints of the Orientalist tradition is flawed and inaccurate. Overall, the book does what it intends to do and does so with a clear statement of purpose and mission. Three cheers for clarity.

When it comes to modern Orientalism, Irwin’s tale is more troublesome.

Worth reading

Here are some stories on the region worth checking out:

• “As Algeria grows more Islamic, nightlife suffers,” 8 August, 2009. The premise of the article is somewhat wrongheaded, as its title suggests. Algeria has been Islamic for some time. That its nightlife is struggling is only slightly newsworthy but does show, as the author intends, that “reconciliation” has meant acquiescing to demands of popular Islamist (not “Islamic”) sentiments.
• “France’s Algerian shadow,” Aljazeera English, Veterans, August, 2009. An interesting segment on the memory of the Algerian War of Independence and its post-war maltreatment of Muslim harkis (Algerians who fought for the French; who were relentlessly driven from their homes, hacked up, or forced into dreary exile in France, or quiet shame within Algeria; the term is taken to mean “traitor,” the opposite of a patriot, the moral antithesis of the moudjahid or chahid). The program is interesting, interviewing harkis, Algerians, French vets and the like. French and Algerian viewers may take issue with its framing.
• “Qadhafi’s Time in the Limelight: Impact on U.S. Interests,” Dana Moss (WINEP), 28 August, 2009. Interesting summation of Qadhafi’s 40th anniversary, his upcoming visit to the United Nations (and his desire to pitch a tent in New Jersey), the release of Meghrahi, and so on and so forth. According to Moss, the Brother Leader heads “an opportunistic regime,” that “may no longer be an enemy, but it is a very unreliable friend.” She notes that the US has little to offer Qadhafi, though he may embarrass his hosts with typically ridiculous speech-making, or work contra US efforts in Africa should he feel that American engagement does not sufficiently match his liking.
• “Libya Marks 40-Years of Qaddafi,” Aljazeera English, 1 September, 2009. Describes the ghoulish glitz and kitch of Qadhafi’s anniversary celebrations, asking few tough questions, quoting planners who compare the endeavor in relation to an “Olympic opening ceremony” and outsiders who remark on how little Libya’s massive oil wealth has benefited its puny population of but 6 million. An homage to misrule.
• “Gaddafi coup celebrations expose Moroccan land dispute,” Jerusalem Post, 2 September, 2009. The Moroccan delegation stormed away from Qadhafi’s party because Mohamed Abdelaziz, president of the Saharawi SADR, was present. A set from Morocco’s security forces was to participate in the processions, but apparently no more. This mini-row is a wonderful illustration of the whole escapade’s stupendous stupidity. The celebration was also attended by Mauritania’s Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, his first foreign trip since the elections.
• “Moines de Tibéhirine : « une affaire franco-française », selon Ouyahia,” TSA, 2 September, 2o09. I received an email asking why I was not writing more about the controversy around the killing of the monks at Tiberhirine. The reason is that it is of great real consequence in the region. It holds significance in Franco-Algerian relations, and represents an effort from the French end to influence things on the Algerian side, but has more meaning for the French than the Algerians. Algerians very much see it as an attempt to undermine Ahmed Ouyahia, whom the French are said to dislike and who is thought to be a likely follow up to Bouteflika.
• “Larbi Belkheir hospitalisé à l’hôpital du Val-de-Grâce en France,” TSA, 2 September, 2009. Larbi Belkheir, once a major player in the generals’ regime during the 1990’s, before being shipped off to obscurity as Ambassador to Morocco, has suffered from complications from lung cancer for some time. This week he was sent of to the Val-de Grâce military hospital in Paris, after returning to Algiers earlier. Since his return to Algeria in 2008, his responsibilities were taken up by Boumediene Guenadi, the Deputy Ambassador. He has been dropped in a recent shuffle of Algerian diplomatic postings and the post in Rabat has yet to be filled.
  
• “La France et les USA rapatrient les familles des employés du pétrole,” Taqadoumy, 2 September, 2009. US and France bring home the families employees of oil companies in Mali and Niger. The State Department Reavel Warnings and Travel Alterts for Mali, and Mauritania have been updated with greater urgency. Numerous American aid and development projects (including the Peace Corps) are being scaled back or brought home from the Sahel, a reaction to increasing AQIM activity.
• Going back a few months, the Algerian-American community in Washington, D.C.  has been grumpy since the new Algerian Ambassador, Abdallah Baali, failed to put on 5 July (Independence Day) celebrations for the Algerian community in the area, as per tradition. Local Algerians complain that while the embassy put on 4 July celebrations to mark American independence, it failed to mark its own national holiday, and that the two events could have been merged, if finances, time or whatever other possibilities were the concern. At the same time some feel disconnected from the new Ambassador, whose “style” they see as being rather different from the more personalized one of his predecessor. At the same time, personal feuds splintered celebrations elsewhere on the east coast, where multiple celebrations went on in the same city (in more than one city). In some places, communities economized and celebrated American and Algerian independence on one day, simultaneously. It said the embassy has taken note of the Washington Algerians’ concerns.
  

More meaningful blogging will soon commence.

Brainstorming the Geopolitics of AQIM’s Moorish Appeal

Some short weeks ago, the Wall Street Journal filed a report regarding the spread of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). The report was timely, coming on the heels of Mauritania’s first suicide bombing and an uptick in the group’s attacks in Algeria and its activities elsewhere. The report noted that its newest recruits were coming especially from the peoples of northern Mali and Mauritania, people linked by their Arabic dialect (Hassaniya) and kinship. The report notes that AQIM is attempting to recruit both “the young Muslims of the region — white ones and black ones,” but seems to indicate that it is having greater success with the “white” Muslims from the Mauritanian Arabophone majority and the Arab minorities in Mali and Niger. See here for alle’s criticism and commentary on the WSJ piece.

While AQIM was founded on the infrastructure of the GSPC, an Algerian rebel group whose leadership hailed almost entirely from the northern, sedentary and urban metropole, its metamorphosis in the Sahara has meant that its most recent classes of foot-soldiers have been local to that region, thus complicating things not only for those interested in combating it, but also for its leadership. The situation raises important questions as to the extent and meaning of AQIM’s appeal to young Arabs in the Sahel, mostly of bidhani (lit. “white”; more eloquently called “Moorish” in English) stock. Before this can be addressed it must be said that while, like many nomadic and semi-nomadic populations (including their non-Arab Tuareg neighbors), the Arab bidhan have a traditional social division between “warrior” and “zawiyya,” or religious tribes, with the former traditionally responsible for the protection of the latter. While this means that there is a martial tradition among the tribes in the region, it does not mean that their traditional Islamic canon, based on the Maliki madhhab is at all proximate to the variety of Salafist-ideology carried by AQIM. While there is a history of the bidhan practicing martial jihad against other local Muslims and non-Muslims (mostly to the immediate south), the local mentality discourages violence against Muslim leaders and views outside ideologies and Arabs with, if not suspicion, then certainly with a grain of salt (or, perhaps more fittingly, “sand”). The tendency away from violence against Muslim rule (one might call it fitnaphobia) is stronger among Moors than Tuaregs for a whole complex of reasons that are best explored in another instance. Furthermore, the bidhan/Moorish groups outside of Mauritania must be viewed in the context of a minority population, much like the Tuareg, who view their sedentary, southern, Francophone and black central governments (e.g. Mali and Niger) with suspicion, as antagonistic elements threatening to their way of life as pastoralists. This has been a fundamental element in the tension between the Tuaregs of Mali and Niger and their central governments since independence till the present; it has also been a bone of contention with the Moorish communities, who have often held affections or sympathies with Mauritania, the Moorish dominated state presently suffering rule-by-general and a rather active AQIM infection. Analysis of AQIM’s appeal to these populations must necessarily, then, consider the place of historically pastoralist/semi-nomadic peoples in the political economy of the Sahel, an area where settled and roaming people are both by and large Muslim.

In any case, AQIM may appeal especially to the Moors of the Sahel for the following reasons, though this is surely not an exhaustive or perfect survey. The reasons are, as anywhere, complex, but are basically logistical, situational and fiscal in nature. [ This writing does not propose to assume that the Moorish communities in the Sahel are at all predisposed toward collaboration with AQIM on a communal or tribal basis any more than others. It intends to focus specifically on one element of the problem broadly, and if it seems the emphasis is too specific on the particular issue it is not to discount other important questions or challenges. ] Readers ought to keep in mind the dutiful and wonderfully useful analyses of AQIM’s appeal in the region here and here.

On Obama’s Ramadan message

President Obama’s Ramadan message was, as his remarks to the Muslim world often are, at best well choreographed and well composed and at worst thoroughly disingenuous and problematic. As a part of the White House’s outreach to the Muslim world, it not only cross referenced the Cairo speech, and the president’s commitment to “a new beginning between America and Muslims around the world”. While there is little to argue with in the core of that message, that relationships should be based on common interests and respect, the Obama administration has yet to put anything on display beyond respect for rulers in the Muslim world. After critical examination (and much of the reporting on it has been distinctly uncritical), the Ramadan message Mr. Obama delivers is hardly about Ramadan. Like other public diplomacy efforts by the Obama administration, the Ramadan message is one of studied and dutiful vagueness.

He begins by stating that he extends well wishes on “on behalf of the American people, including Muslims in all fifty states”. So far so good. From here, the president speaks essentially to foreign Muslims, not American Muslims. He speaks of philanthropic activities in the United States, highlighting those of American Muslim organizations as well, noting that all religions encourage charitable giving. He then informs viewers of America’s effort to “engage Muslims and Muslim-majority nations on the basis of mutual interests and mutual respect,” recalling the thrust of his Ankara and Cairo speeches.

A Man’s World? Mauritanian Islamists and female service

The Mauritanian government made history by appointing a woman, Naha Mint Hamdi Ould Mouknass, to the post of Foreign Minister. Ms. Bint Ould Mouknass is the first woman to hold the post in any Arabic-speaking country; she is joined by five other female appointees in General Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz’s government.

Her background is straightforward enough. The eldest daughter a wealthy northern businessman-cum-Foreign Minister, from the Elguera’a tribe, she served as an MP from Nouadhibou on the Foreign Relations Commission. In the earlier part of the decade she was an advisor to Ould Taya. Circa 2000, she has been head of the Union pour la Démocratie et le Progrès (UDP), supporting Sidi Ould Sheikh Abdellahi in 2007 but following with the exodus of ex-supporters in June 2008, helping to accelerate the downfall of his government. THe UDP supported Gen. Ould Abdel Aziz in the most recent polls and her appointment can be seen as at least partially the result of this track record.

Her appointment is at once clever and utilitarian: Bint Mouknass’s appointment, like that of her predecessor, is an attempt to appeal to outside audiences with a fresh and “soft” face. The General is also offering spoils to his supporters (more on this later). It also puts a wedge between the new government and the Islamist movement, whose policy it co-opted prior to (and during, mind you) the presidential election (e.g., Israel), it is thought to be politically beneficial to act contra the movement’s ideology, thereby clearly distinguishing himself from it, especially in light of his efforts to “fight terrorism,” though this was surely thought up well before last week’s suicide bombing (and likely without their possibility in mind).

Some will have none of it. The imam of Nouakchott’s number two mosque denounced her appointment by means of scripture and hadith. Imam Ahmedou Ould Habiboullah Ould Lemrabott described a woman’s proper place is “in the house, in service of her husband and family”. He spent fifty minutes on this, according to al-Akhbar. Taqadoumy also writes that Lemrabott quoted verses stating that women should not travel without their spouses or close male relatives, an invocation which would make Ms. Ould Moukness’s job rather difficult at even a theoretical level: She is after all, not married. (Taqadoumy also has the editorial from La Tribune’s sharp editorial on the matter.)

What should be said is that Mauritanian Salafists — and it is safe to call Imam Lemrabott a Salafist — are none too pleased with the high relatively high ratio of women in the new government and are making a point of it. There is nuance, though. Abdellahi Ould Boyé, a more seasoned sheikh, president of the World Muslim Congress and former minister under Mokhtar Ould Daddah now living in Saudi Arabia, told ech-Chaab (a government paper) that appointing women to high posts in order to “appeal to others” or for any other reason beyond their personal qualifications is “hypocrisy” and in violation of the shari’ah. (“تعيين المرأة في بعض المناصب محاباة للغير وليس على أساس الكفاءة قد يكون نوعاً من الرياء في الديمقراطية”). Here Lemrabott’s criticism is not so conditional; He is opposed to women in office as a matter of principle. Note, though, that Lemrabott supported Ould Abdel Aziz after the coup and during the recent elections, imploring “Muslims” to vote for him. Lemrabott’s support for Ould Abdel Aziz is not peculiar; Islamists in Mauritania historically supported whomever was in control; It was only until the waning days of the Ould Taya regime that they found themselves in the “opposition” having till then been eager court theologians.

This view is quite controversial in Mauritania, where women have seats reserved in parliament and women are traditionally strong figures in society, often carrying on with greater social freedoms than their northern and eastern Arab sisters. Tawassoul (the Mauritanian Muslim Brotherhood) has little to say, and one might assume their agreement as a result (despite the prominence of women in their campaign advertisements). It further represents a rejection of all six female ministers on the part of what might be called “movement Islamists” (as opposed to political or government Islamists (e.g. Tawassoul), to borrow framing from the American context), to set themselves apart from Gen. Ould Abdel Aziz’s government on less moveable theological grounds than was the case with their anti-Israel positioning.

Post-bombing thoughts

With respect to General Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz’s recent appeals to Western governments regarding fighting terrorism in Mauritania, the following should be recognized; all while noting American efforts at military cooperation with Libya, Ould Abdel Aziz’s meetings with the Iranian Foreign Minister and the region’s indigenous power relationships. It must be said, though, most Mauritanians are more concerned with the make up of the new government than anything else.