Mauritania's Foreign Policy: the Search for Protection

Abstract

Of the 21 members of the Arab League, the Islamic Republic of Mauritania has received perhaps the least attention, ranking far behind other North African states, much less those closer to the Arab—Israeli fault-line or the recent Gulf conflict. Mauritania's desperate economic condition (a G.N.P. per capita of only $446 in 1984) has been occasionally publicised, as well as advancing desertification (reaching even into the centre of the capital, Nouakchott), and the tensions between the ruling Beydane (‘white’) Arabs, supported by their cultural/political allies, and the black African tribes concentrated in the Senegal River valley that erupted into violence in April 1989, and which led to a near-war between Senegal and Mauritania.