There was a coup in Mauritania last week. Lead by General Abdelaziz, the military seized power and arrested the only democratic president the country has had in over 40 years, Sidi Mohamed Ould Cheikh Abdallahi.

Most Americans have never heard of this country situated on the west coast of Africa, between Morocco and Senegal. But I had spent several weeks there in April, and I learned through conversations with the people, that sometimes coups are not as bad as the press reports- especially in Africa.
An editorial in African  news site, This Day, wrote: “This is indeed one coup too many.  There is no justification for it and the wrong signal it sends is condemnable. Mauritania has had a history of military putsches, the news of which was received in bad taste by the rest of the world.”

Reuters reported that the U.S. threatened to cut aide to the country if they didn’t reinstate Abdallahi: “The August 6 coup provoked virtually unanimous condemnation from the United Nations, the European Union and other quarters. The African Union suspended the Islamic republic and the United States and France quickly suspended non-humanitarian aid.”

While the press presented this is as a terrible development, most of the people I spoke with said the president was ineffective and corruption and payoffs were boundless. The rumors had long simmered that the military would take over.

In late December, four French tourists were murdered outside of the capital; the international press called it a terrorist attack.

While I was there, the police killed three of the men in a shootout somewhere near the capital, Nouakchott.  I was on the other side of town and missed the “excitement. ”

The word on the street that day was that the killers were bandits, not terrorists. More likely, by calling them terrorists, the government could ask for more military aid from the United States. The United States presence in Mauritania, an Islamic republic, involves giving millions of dollars to the military to fight the big T…terrorism-as well as over two hundred peace corp volunteers (the eyes and ears of the Americans) doing penance in remote villages all over the country. A contingent of American Marines was seen in one of the towns on the border with Morocco. Are American taxpayers even aware this is how their money is being spent?

The government of President Abdullahi was extremely corrupt: officials drove around in new SUVs, and built themselves mansions in the city with money skimmed from the millions of dollars foreign governments and corporations had paid to develop and export Mauritania’s natural resources. This so-called democratic government was selling fishing rights to China, Russia and the European Union, receiving $700 million dollars for a six-year lease. Chinese, Russian and European vessels, using trawling and dredging machines, were decimating the fish population and leaving little for the Mauritanian fishermen; the government, typical in Africa,  was enriching itself at the expense of its people.

Mauritania has a very rough coast and most of their fisherman used old wooden fishing boats. Since foreign boats have taken so many of the fish from the deep waters far off the coast, the Mauritanians have to risk their lives to venture further out to find fish. Some have told stories of fisherman drowning in rough seas or being run over by the large foreign vessels.

The women in most coastal African countries are also dependent on the fishing industry. Many women (with too many children) have been abandoned by their men, and support themselves and their children by selling fish they buy from the fisherman. So while the foreign fishing fleets and the Mauritanian officials make millions, the average citizen loses his or her livelihood, but lives in squalor, without running water or toilets. These photos in the slideshow below were taken when I was on my trip in May in Mauritania and Ghana.

Tags: coup, fisherman, ghana, Lois Pierris, Mauritania