Military Takes over Mauritania

The armed forces of the northwest African nation of Mauritania have arrested the legally elected president and prime minister. Earlier today, President Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi dismissed several senior army officers, including the head of the presidential guard, General Mohamed Ould Abdelaziz. The general didn’t like the idea of losing his job, so he took over the country. And now, he gets to steal the country’s new-found oil wealth. This movie is a re-run.

Culture Minister Abdellahi Salem Ould El-Mouallah read out a statement on television on behalf of the coup leaders. “The State Council, headed by Gen Mohamed Ould Abdelaziz, declares that the decree by which the former president had dismissed the chief of staff of the national army, the chief of the special presidential staff, the chief of the national gendarmes and the chief of the national guards, is annulled legally and practically.” Practically, yes – legally, no.

The president’s daughter, Amal Mint Cheikh Abdallahi, said soldiers seized her father at his house at 0920 local time and GMT. She called a French radio station to alert the world. "The president has just been arrested - five minutes ago - by members of the presidential security battalion, on the orders of General Abdelaziz,” she told Radio France International. “They came here to find him. They arrested him here and took him to the battalion base. It's a textbook coup d’etat.”

CNN says “The country's latest political crisis began in May after Abdallahi appointed 12 ministers, some accused of corruption and all of whom had held prominent posts in the government of former President Maaouya Sid'Ahmed Ould Taya, who was ousted in the 2005 coup. In June, lawmakers introduced a no-confidence vote against the president and called for his resignation, but Abdallahi survived.”

So, now the army is going to clean up the country and run things properly -- and pigs will fly. In every country where the military takes over, economic and social disaster follows. If the general and his lackeys are real patriots, they’ll rapidly return to barracks. And if there are any real patriots in the Mauritanian military, they’ll free the properly elected president, arrest those involved in the coup and possibly try them before putting them in front of a firing squad. The odds are, though, that General Abdelaziz’s Swiss bank account is about to grow at an astonishing rate while Mauritania declines.

© Copyright 2008 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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