ABSTRACT
The Islamic Republic of Mauritania, which gained its independence from France in 1960, has been undergoing one of the most interesting processes of democratic transition in the Arab and African context. After decades of an authoritarian regime, a military coup on August 3rd 2005 brought a group of military officers led by Colonel Ely Ould Mohamed Vall to power as the Military Council for Justice and Democracy (CMJD). Despite its initial skepticism to the coup’s leaders’ pro-liberalization declarations, the international community progressively started to support the transition process on account of the rigor with which each distinctive phase, culminating with the second turn of the presidential elections in March 2007, had been carried out. This process eventually and successfully ended with Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi’s victory as the new president of the Republic. In view of this experience of a transition considered as exemplary by different observers, and almost unprecedented within the Arab and Muslim world, the present chapter will essentially focus on the transformations that have affected the Mauritanian elite throughout the process and analyze whether the existing relations were really challenged by the transition process. It will also highlight some of the problems that the government, fresh out of the ballot box, had to face, including the surprising wave of terrorist actions suffered by the country since the end of 2007, which, without any doubt, has conditioned the agenda of the international community in a country as highly satellized as Mauritania. At the end of this chapter and as an epilogue, we will try to show the instability of the political regime. In August 2008, Ould Abdelaziz led a new coup which was ratified after the holding of presidential elections on July 18th 2009, which were strongly contested by opposition forces.
