Historical Dictionary of Mauritania by Anthony G. Pazzanita

Author:Anthony G. Pazzanita
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
Published: 2008-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

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KAÉDI. One of Mauritania’s largest population centers and the capital of the administrative région of Gorgol, Kaédi is located on the north bank of the Senegal River and is linked to the rest of the country by a basic but improving system of roads. The city’s population increased substantially in the 1980s: in 1988, a census showed 30,515 residents, up from about 20,000 a decade before. By the year 2000, the population had grown again, but more modestly this time: a total of 34,227 residents were counted in that year. It was in Kaédi that Mauritania’s first president, Mokhtar Ould Daddah, consolidated his hold on the country, at a meeting of his ruling political party held in January 1964 (see KAÉDI, CONFERENCE OF). The city is also home to a large, centuries-old library of Islamic scholarly books and manuscripts and has historically been an active center for commerce owing to its proximity to Senegal. Both agriculture and livestock herding are quite common in the area, and the Mauritanian government, as far back as the 1960s, devoted considerable resources to promoting both farming and animal husbandry, setting up large-scale farms (500 hectares and larger) to take advantage of the region’s fertility, also opening a veterinary school in the city in 1968.

The same proximity to Senegal that makes Kaédi such an active and relatively prosperous commercial center also renders it hostage, to one degree or another, not only to relations with Senegal in general but to Mauritania’s own interethnic/interracial situation. There were serious instances of civil unrest in Kaédi after the 6 December 1987 executions of three Halpulaar officers in the country’s armed forces, who had been convicted of complicity in a coup attempt a fortnight earlier, protests that could possibly have been instigated by the primary black Mauritanian opposition group, the Forces de Libération Africaine de Mauritanie (FLAM). Kaédi was also very tense during the Senegal–Mauritania crisis, which began in April 1989 and severely interrupted trade and the free movement of people between the city and the surrounding area. The city was considered by many observers to be under martial law for all intents and purposes for much of that period. Tensions did not begin to ease appreciably until about 1991.

KAÉDI, CONFERENCE OF (28–29 January 1964). A key event in postindependence Mauritania’s political evolution, the Kaédi Conference was held at the instigation of the country’s first president, Mokhtar Ould Daddah, and was announced at a seemingly routine meeting of the Bureau Politique National (BPN), the top governing body of the ruling Parti du Peuple Mauritanien (PPM). But not all of the party’s members could (or would) attend, and when all the BPN members who had elected to come were seated, the area was reportedly cordoned off by units of the Mauritanian armed forces. President Ould Daddah then took it upon himself to deliver a lengthy speech, denouncing the PPM’s “inertia” and “indiscipline” in carrying out his policies and demanding better communication between the party and ordinary Mauritanians. Ould Daddah then turned his attention to the Assemblée Nationale, the PPM-dominated national legislature.

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