Archive: mauritania

3rd November 2009
By: Brian Whitaker
The UN's special rapporteur on modern forms of slavery, Gulnara Shahinian, is due to complete a two-week fact-finding visit to Mauritania with a press conference today. Despite legislation against it, light-skinned Arab Muslims (bidanes) continue to own black-skinned haratines, though estimates of… Read more
10th August 2009
By: Brian Whitaker
A young man blew himself up in Nouakchott, the Mauritanian capital, on Saturday evening. Nobody else was killed. It was the country’s first suicide bombing. Some reports suggest the intended target may have been the French embassy and point a finger at Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). Though… Read more
19th July 2009
By: Brian Whitaker
Mauritania is one of those out-of-the-way off-the-radar Arab countries that rarely get much attention. I must admit I have never been there myself, though I have flown over it a couple of times – which in the circumstances probably makes me something of an expert. Anyway, Mauritanians were voting… Read more