In December, four French tourists picnicking on the side of the road some 160 miles east of the capital were accosted by gunmen demanding money, then murdered. Two children were among the dead. A stone memorial to the tourists was smashed soon after it was put up.
Ordinary Crime or Al-Qaeda Terrorism?
The American government was quick to point to both attacks as proof that al-Qaeda's Maghreb branch, known as al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, is on the rise in Mauritania. Is it? The Americans have a vested interest in heightening anxieties in Mauritania.
The country is an ally in the Bush administration's "war on terror," and the administration needs recurrent justification for the $500 million its spending on its Trans-Sahara Counter Terrorism Initiative. Mauritania is part of that initiative.
"The Myth of al-Qaeda"
But despite the fact that one of the suspects held (and released) in the killing of the French tourists is believed to have once trained in an al-Qaeda camp in Algeria, it's difficult to make the case that Mauritania is a new front in Bush's war. The attack on the tourists could have been just a robbery. The attack on the Israeli embassy could have been rank anti-Semitism.
Before those cases and the mysterious killing of three Mauritanian soldiers in February, the last burst of violence in the country goes back almost three years, when 15 Mauritanian soldiers were killed and 39 wounded in an attack in the northeast of the country.
"The myth of al-Qaeda is important because it is used to justify western security and immigration policy in the region," Jeremy Keenan, an expert at Bristol University in Britain, tells Reuters. "The point is, myths can become real things."
Saudi Seeds of Islamism
The more tangible currents in Mauritania are rising all over the capital's skyline: minarets. By one local anthropologist's estimate, the number of mosques has gone from 58 in 1989 to more than 900 today.
Saudi money seeding its version of Wahhabi Islam and the sweep of Islamic fundamentalism are reaching as far west as Mauritania, the westernmost Arab nation. Women who don't wear the hijab are frowned upon. Fewer restaurants are serving alcohol. The "Miss Mauritania" beauty contest was canceled in 2006 to placate Islamic clerics, who consider the contest an offense to Sharia law.
Mauritania's Population: Young, Poor, and Rootless
Half the population is younger than 17, half, according to the World Bank, is jobless. As young men move to the cities, their tribal bonds broken, they look for new anchors. Lacking jobs, they're turning to Islam--or, according to more alarmist analysts, to al-Qaeda's recruiters.
Mauritania is one of those countries to which the world pays little attention. Its geographic location makes it difficult to imagine as part of the Middle East, let alone the Arab world. Yet it's part of both politically and culturally. And chances are that it'll be increasingly heard from in the years ahead.