Moktar Ould Daddah

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Moktar Ould Daddah in the early 1960s

Moktar Ould Daddah ( Arabic مختار ولد داداه, DMG Muḫtār walad Dādāh ; * December 25, 1924 in Boutilimit ; † October 14, 2003 in Paris ) was President of Mauritania from 1961 to 1978 .

Early years

He came from the small town of Boutilimit in the southwestern administrative region of Trarza . His family belonged to the marabouts who form a class of Koran scholars in the traditional hierarchy of Mauritanian society and in whose families all children learn to read and write. After completing basic training in Arabic, he attended the school for chief sons and the translation school in Saint Louis for two years . He then studied law and oriental languages ​​in Paris. At the end of 1956 he established himself as a lawyer in Dakar (Senegal).

Politician

In 1957 he returned to Mauritania and played a leading role in the Union Progressiste Mauritanienne (UPM) party. This united in a conference in May 1958 in Aleg with other parties such as the Bloc Démocratique du Gorgol (BDG) and part of the Entete Mauritanienne to form the Parti du Regroupement Mauritanien (PRM). From 1957 he was a member of the Territorial Assembly, in July 1958 he became Secretary General of the PRM. In the elections of 1959 his party won all seats and he became prime minister. After the country gained independence from France on November 28, 1960, he initially remained head of government, and in August 1961 he became president.

president

Domestic politics

Moktar Ould Daddah 1977

In the 1960s, in addition to the office of president, he was temporarily foreign minister, defense minister and commander in chief of the army . At first he tried to balance rivalries between the population groups, i.e. Moors and black Africans. The country's elite, however, were largely recruited from the former group. The various existing parties were ultimately merged into a unified party , the Parti du Peuple Mauritanien (PPM), and with a new party constitution, to which he swore the participants of the Kaédi conference in a keynote speech in January 1964 , he was able to govern authoritarian from now on. The presidential elections of 1966, 1971 and 1976 he decided accordingly simply in his favor. In the 1970s he ordered extensive nationalizations .

Foreign policy

Moktar Ould Daddah's biggest problem in the early years was that neighbor Morocco claimed the entire territory of Mauritania for itself. Morocco gained support for its demands through the Casablanca Group . Daddah, on the other hand, relied on continued close cooperation with France and joined the moderate Brazzaville bloc of pro-Western countries, which made him president of the Joint Afro-Madagascar Organization (OCAM) in March 1964 and February 1965, respectively . In July 1965, however, he resigned as OCAM president in protest against the acceptance of the Congolese Chombé regime, and Mauritania left the OCAM. In 1971 he was chairman of the Organization for African Unity for one year . In 1973 he moved away from France and increasingly relied on the states of the Arab League .

In the course of time he was able to come to terms with Morocco. In 1975/1976 he agreed with Morocco's King Hassan II on the division of what was previously the Spanish Western Sahara .

Fall

Together with the poor economic situation in the wake of the drought in the Sahel zone , the Western Sahara conflict shook Daddah's government. The military situation led him to entrust the Ministry of Defense to an officer after an attack by the POLISARIO on the capital Nouakchott in 1977 , which he had previously avoided. Chief of Staff Mustafa Ould Salek deposed him on July 10, 1978. Daddah was imprisoned until August 1979 before he was released at the French request and allowed into exile the following October . After a short stay in Tunisia, he went to France. In absentia, he was sentenced to life imprisonment in November 1980 for “high treason, disregard for the Constitution and harm to the economic interests of the nation”.

Last years

In 1980 in exile he founded the rather insignificant opposition group Alliance pour une Mauritanie Démocratique . He returned to his homeland on July 17, 2001. Moktar Ould Daddah died on October 14, 2003 in Paris in the Val-de-Grâce military hospital . The Mauritanian government ordered a three-day state mourning .

Works

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Walter Reichhold: Islamic Republic of Mauritania. Kurt Schröder, Bonn 1964, p. 40f
  2. ↑ Tony Hodges: Western Sahara. The Roots of a Desert War. Lawrence Hill Company, Westport (Connecticut) 1983, p. 266
personal data
SURNAME Ould Daddah, Moktar
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Mauritanian politician, Prime Minister and President of Mauritania
DATE OF BIRTH December 25, 1924
PLACE OF BIRTH Boutilimit
DATE OF DEATH October 14, 2003
Place of death Paris