Greater Mauritania - Background

Background

The term was first used by Mauritania's first president, Mokhtar Ould Daddah, as he began claiming the territory then known as Spanish Sahara even before Mauritanian independence in 1960. In 1957, Ould Daddah stated

"I therefore call on our brothers in the Spanish Sahara to dream of this economic and spiritual Greater Mauritania of which we cannot speak at present. I address to them and I ask you to repeat to them a message of friendship, a call for concord between all the Moors of the Atlantic, in Azawad and from the Draa to the borders of Senegal."

The basis for his claim was the close ethnic and cultural ties between the Mauritanian Moors and the Sahrawis of Spanish Sahara, in effect forming two subsets of the same tribal Arabo-Berber population. Both areas had been part of the premodern Bilad Chinguetti (Arabic: بلاد شنقيط Bilād Šinqīṭ‎), the Land of Chinguetti, a religious center in contemporary Mauritania.

The claim to the Spanish Sahara was again popularized by the regime in the early 1970s, as Spain prepared to depart the colony. Mauritania then feared Moroccan expansion towards its border, against the background of competing claims for a "Greater Morocco" that had previously included not only Spanish Sahara, but also Mauritania in its entirety. (Morocco had refused to recognize Mauritania from independence in 1960, although relations were established in 1969.)

C. R. Pennell writes,

"The Mauritanian President, Mokhtar Ould Dada, talked about a 'Greater Mauritania', a supposed common culture shared by Arabic-speaking tribes between the Senegal river and the Dràa valley. The idea helped build unity at home, and to hold back Moroccan expansionism."

Say Thompson and Adloff,

"From the outset of his political career, Daddah voiced an irredentist policy with regard to the Western Sahara, with striking perseverance but also without flamboyance, with less than wholehearted backing by his people, and with smaller means at his disposal than those of Morocco. Realism having always characterised Daddah's appraisal of Mauritania's status, he progressively reduced his territorial demands from those of an area larger than the entire Spanish Sahara to what he called Western Tiris, or Tiris El Gharbia."

Mauritanian claims to the territory were thus used to stave off the perceived threat of Moroccan expansionism, and to entice Spain into dividing the territory between Morocco and Mauritania in the Madrid Accords. This, however, did not take into account an Advisory Opinion by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) that had decided in late 1975 that the people of Western Sahara had a right to self-determination, to be exercised freely in the form of a choice between integration with one or both of Mauritania and Morocco, or setting up an independent state. The Mauritanian portion of the territory, corresponding to the southern half of Río de Oro, or one-third of the entire territory, was renamed Tiris al-Gharbiyya.