The Age of Frustration By Abbass braham*

"The country is going to the dogs". One should bear in mind Shaw's famous words in thinking about the current situation in Mauritania. A spate of anger is swaying the country in response to the government's performance, or lack of performance, as some would suggest, during the last ten months. There is nothing more disappointing than being disappointed by the one you believed in most. More disappointing still is that nothing is being done to soothe your disappointment. Under the incumbent Mauritanian government one is rightly disillusioned. It has now become fashionable to associate Ould Cheikh Abdellahi and his staff with bad omens. The well-circulated logic that everyone literally eats up is to link "the interminable" disasters, natural or man-made, that come to pass the country with the President's ill omen.

The President and his prime minister are an epiphenomenon of tragedy. Not far from this, I have newly met some who could not find any logical explanation for the dog days that the country witnessed in last February aside from using a reference to the ominous Ould Cheikh Abdellahi and his right hand man, the prime minister. In this metaphysical, blurred analysis, the prime minister does not seem innocent. Many indeed are the fingers pointed at him in this respect. The writer of a recently published article on Cridem.org found marvelously unimaginable connections between him and every piece of disaster that befallen this poor country since the minister joined the administration. The writer goes too far in tracing the ill fate of Ould Taya back to his connection with the evil-boding minister. Moving on to the real stuff, these metaphysical views do not seem entirely metaphysical. A huge box of misfortune has been exploded in the area since the accession of these two persons to power.

Only days after their official taking of the helm a catastrophic crisis of energy engulfed the cities. The vast majority of Nouakchott and Nouadibou denizens had to relinquish their rights of weekly bath (they have relinquished the daily one since immemorial time: since the arrival of their ancestors to this land). In those barren days, some had to invent the since then well-endorsed habit of "moving to bath": the going to the downtown and rich areas, where water still running to have a shower. Others were bound to recognize water bottles as house members; taps were speechless all around. Others had to make acquaintance with water barrels brought on the assiduous, but still slow, donkeys. Once again in this country, time was reversed and ran backwards. The wholesale message of the story was that some began to seriously understand the old mantra: "water is the most precious essence on earth". If not precious, then perhaps expensive? Evil always comes flowingly. The lack of electricity turned the greater parts of Nouakchott city into a ghost city, as if bombarded by the ferocious U.S. Air Force. Citizens had to grope in the night to reach their destination. The commerce of lamps and candles thrived once again.

As in Poe's The Raven, when these citizens stretched their heads forward hoping for the government help "darkness there and nothing more". Welcome to the Dark Age. As if in a legendary struggle against a devil of water, all the water that lacked in the cities gathered and flooded the southern villages of Tintine and its environs, turning the summer holiday into a real hell. The government reassured itself by showing up belatedly. But the real bad luck is not in what the government did not do. Rather it is in what it did do. The neoliberal orientation of the President and his prime minister brought about a rigid policy of deregulation. Under the auspices of both men, the state showed little interest in social protection. The prices of primary resources have risen to unprecedented levels.

A famine looms in the horizon. Everywhere in the country people thronged angrily, wreaking havoc on the government agencies and symbols. The spontaneous small revolution was also spontaneously called "The Revolution of the Hungry". At last the government launched an "urgent program" that was later discovered not to be so urgent when it came to consequences. However, the "revolutionaries" calmed down and surrendered to their frustration. Nothing could placate the bad omen of the new rulers. As soon as hunger became less talked about a wave of terrorism threatened the country. Nihilist religious propaganda invaded the mosques and the media far and wide. Foreigners and army units were targeted. Others were menaced; extremism felt cherished. In these circumstances crime flourished: serial killers enjoyed free land to play their football.

Every now and then innocent people lost their lives for trivial reasons. Hush - suddenly the prime minister appeared in a heroic look, announcing a security plan that would surely end the days of fear. Hurrah. The plan was in a while revealed to be the patrolling of smiling security squads on the main streets of Nouakchott. No one talked about the inner lanes, where the real danger takes place and criminals still play undisturbed. The best way to maintain one's frustration is to think about the corruption file under the fresh rule. While the country won the 64th rank in Transparency's 2006 report on corruption it was regressed back to the 128th grade under the guidance of the President and the Minister. Officials kept on feathering their nests from the public wealth in addition to the luxury of going out scot-free. In the face of such excess, the annoying state controller, who used to scandalize corruption, found himself out of a job. The old guys came back to the yard: rent seeking, nepotism, surveillance abuse were not uncommon in the last ten months."And the rest is silence" in the parlance of Hamlet. Can Mauritanians stand another five years of dissatisfaction? Oh, please God!

*Professor and NGP deputy editor.