A Second Hand Conjecture

photo: Isuru Senevi | site

And so ends Mauritania’s brief experiment with constitutional democracy. The AFP has a source in the new ruling junta who says there will be new elections in two months. We shall see.

Alex Ely notes a muted response from State, and suspects that with Mauritania being such a long way from Darfur, no one will much care. Meh. I agree it won’t make the frontpages, but that’s not the reason.

Instead, I find myself again wondering if overtures to Islamic extremists have become the new gold standard for not minding so much if a military coup happens on the strategic fringe. That is, in the manner that alignment with the communist party by a government used to persuade us to attenuate our enthusiasm for the inviolablity of democracy during the Cold War. Had the Islamic radicals rather than the rightwing military seized power for instance, I suspect it’d be on the frontpage of the Washington Post and a be dealt with quite differently by the State Department. The stability of the coup, rather than hostility to it, can so quickly become the discussion if that is the new contextual dynamic.

Being a country barely outside the short-term memory of military rule, General Aziz can probably maintain stability. President Abdallahi was narrowly elected in the 2007 runoff and had grown unpopular for economic reasons. Although in a capital city of 900,000, the junta might have hoped for a larger turnout of support .

Tags: Abdallahi, AFP, Africa, Alex Ely, capital, Cold War, communism, constitutional, coup, darfur, democracy, extermists, Islamic, Mauritania, military, Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, power, State Department, support, Washington Post

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