Mauritanian President "Accidentally" Shot

In strange news from the weekend, the President of Mauritania, Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, was "accidentally" shot. News sources disagree on the exact cause of the shooting, as initial ones said an unknown gunman shot him, but later ones seem to say that the president was shot by an army soldier at a checkpoint, having failed to slow down at the checkpoint while at the wheel of his own vehicle (darn African presidents don't think the rules apply to them...).

Mauritanian President Abdel Aziz

The country has been on high alert since the coup in neighboring Mali last March. Mauritania is also rather coup-prone, having experienced military coups in 1978, 1984, 2005, and 2008. West Africa is known for a sort of "domino-effect" of coups, with Ghana and Nigeria having "copy-cat" coups after each other multiple times since independence. So Mauritania has reason to be a bit worried.

Mauritania! Mali is the one to the right/down a little.

President Abdel Aziz is a western ally against the Al-Qaeda-backed Tuareg rebels in the north of Mali, having launched airstrikes against them in 2010 and 2011. I'm sure that the US is watching this rather closely.

On the bright side, Abdel Aziz was taken to France to recuperate. Something about ex-colonial powers and using their healthcare. If only the French had made Mauritania's healthcare anywhere near as good as theirs!

Random Kate Thoughts: Mauritania is a mostly desert country, with most of its 3.5 million population living near the coast. A dear former student of mine was from Mauritania, and he told me all kinds of crazy things about the country. For one, it still has slavery. Yes, you thought that ended in the 1800s, but you were wrong. My student had never been in a shopping mall until he came to South Africa at the age of 19, so Mauritania isn't particularly developed either. It's also a severely racist society, where black people can't rise above a certain level in society, for instance all pilots in Mauritania are Arabs, not black people. So it makes sense that the president is Arab, though he too came to power in a military coup in 2008. That said, an enemy of Al-Qaeda is someone we'd probably like to stay around, so it's a good thing that he's recovering in Paris. Not gonna lie, I'm a little jealous. Paris is awesome.