Mauritania is playing a dangerous game stifling Islamic opponents by denouncing them as terrorists and risks turning what is now just a scapegoat for repression into a real threat, analysts say.
| Same old argument: doing anything about a problem is just gonna make it worse. Best to do nothing, so it gets worse at a slower pace. That's logic, by Gum! |
 Mauritanian police have arrested scores of Islamist opposition leaders and activists since last month, accusing them of colluding with the Algerian-based Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), a movement allied to al Qaeda. Authorities in the Islamic republic have said that al Qaeda is using the GSPC to recruit Mauritanian youths to fight alongside insurgents in Iraq, as well as in Afghanistan, Chechnya and the Palestinian territories. "The international community should realise that the terrorist threat barely even exists in Mauritania and that the wrong policies could help create one," International Crisis Group said in a report published late on Wednesday. It said President Maaouya Ould Sid Ahmed Taya was taking advantage of the U.S.-led fight against terrorism to justify a clampdown on opponents and to try to ingratiate his regime with Western powers, particularly the United States. In doing so he risks radicalising moderate Islamic opponents who maintain that they are pro-democratic, analysts say.
| They have yet to demonstrate that, of course. |
"The government is now in danger of creating the very phenomenon it is warning of by tarring the whole wider Islamic revival in the country with the 'terrorist' tag," Olly Owen, Africa analyst at World Market Research Centre, said in a report. Taya has angered many Arabs in a nation straddling black and Arab Africa by shifting support from former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein towards Israel and Washington. The country became only the third Arab League state to establish full diplomatic relations with Israel in 1999. Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom's brief visit to the capital Nouakchott last week sparked demonstrations in which police fired teargas at hundreds of students throwing stones and burning tyres.
| I rest my case, yer honor... |
"Although Islamism's political expression remains constricted, the number of its sympathisers is rapidly growing," Crisis Group said in its report. "Islamism has found fertile ground in urban poverty, rejection of the corrupt political class and the abortion of the democratic project," the think-tank said. It urged the government to rethink its strategy of stifling the opposition and instead address the causes of Islamist dissent -- such as widespread unemployment, high-level corruption and a wide poverty gap.
| Plus they don't chop people's hands off, or lop their heads off, and if anybody had the nerve to say a less than glowing word about The Profit (PTUI) chances are it'd be days or even weeks before he/she/it was killed... |
One local human rights group has put the number of detained Islamist opposition members at around 50, while seven young militants were charged on Monday with establishing a criminal association and could face up to 20 years in prison. Although GSPC leaders have pledged their allegiance to al Qaeda, analysts say such statements may not have any operational significance and note that the movement has been substantially weakened by the Algerian military over the past few years.
| "So just because they say they're part of al-Qaeda, that don't mean they actually are a part of it..." |
"By giving credence to the notion that Islamists are linked to armed rebels, Taya runs the risk of leading the state into an impasse, making it dangerously reliant on U.S. backing against growing domestic discontent," said Robert Malley, Director of Crisis Group's Middle East and North Africa programme. |