Mauritania’s Strategic Significance

 Some clues which might explain why Mauritania under Aziz is a strategically important “security partner”:

• Free media training by foreign “experts”; more powers for press authority; unprecedented churn in state media at all levels; funding problems for independent media.
• New legislation to gag whistleblowers and bloggers approved by Aziz, to be ratified by a government severely weakened by the opposition election boycott.
• Aziz, sanctioned by the African Union after leading the last coup, is now in charge of the African Union
• A 10,000-strong UN “peacekeeping” force plus additional police is now planned for deployment in CAR - taking control of 6,000 African Union troops, and with 2,000 French troops “allowed” to support.
• Calls from the political fringe in Libya, hastily and enthusiastically echoed by France, for border security, using troops from neighboring countries AND non-neighbor Mauritania.
• Patrol vessels and helicopters from Spain‘s gendarmerie to be deployed in Mauritania for border security against smuggling and illegal immigration, after claiming the first Spanish military arrivals a few months ago were there for a “training exercise”
• The USA, after years of maintaining a “hands-off” policy, is now engaged in joint patrols with Mauritania border security.

Filed under: Interesting, Mauritania Tagged: African Union, France, Libya, Mauritania, Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, Spain, United States

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