Mauritania, which is the size of France and Spain combined, is a desert country – more than 70 per cent of its land surface is designated as such. Sand dunes can be found towards the centre of its large, sprawling capital, Nouakchott. Sand seas besiege it. But a fierce, desert-forged sense of independence and self-reliance is still strong in the veins of the majority of its 3.8 million inhabitants – so strong, indeed, that it is not uncommon in the capital to come across absurd three-vehicle gridlocks, where each driver is so insistent on not giving away that they inch closer and closer until they can no longer move at all.
This same sense of opportunism and inertia has been the hallmark of Mauritanian politics since the country gained independence from its French colonial masters in 1960. The majority of the inhabitants are Moors, a humorous and vibrant people of Berber, Arab and Bantu descent, split strictly along caste and clan lines. They have been no slower to exploit any strategic advantages that come the country’s way than they would have missed an opportunity to extract worth from a caravan in the desert just a few short generations ago.
