Moustapha Toure | Forces de Libération Africaines de Mauritanie (FLAM)
It is a great honor and pleasure for the Forces de Libération Africaines de Mauritanie (FLAM) to be part of, and to contribute to, this pan-African, anti-imperialist, internationalist conference in Dakar, co-organized by the World Anti-imperialist Platform, the Dynamique Unitaire Panafricaine de France and the Comité National de Préparation du Sénégal.
On this occasion, the African Liberation Forces of Mauritania would like to present their organization, their struggle and their noble objectives. We will also give our point of view on the question of imperialism. To do this, we need to go back to our origins. Indeed, FLAM is the heir to a group of Mauritanian intellectuals and executives (19 in number) who, in February 1966, published a document entitled “the manifesto of the 19”. This manifesto followed a measure making the teaching of Arabic compulsory at secondary school level in Mauritania. The drafters of this manifesto had perceived, very early on, that the introduction of this reform was only the beginning of a step-by-step Arabization that would lead to the complete Arabization of the country’s education and administration. The determined rejection of this reform led to a strike at the high school in the capital Nouakchott. The strike was declared indefinite by its initiators and spread to other schools in the country. In addition to what was perceived as discrimination in education, the country’s black population (Peule, Sonninke, Olof and Bambara) still suffers from discrimination in employment and administrative appointments. The events of 1966 seriously shook the regime of Mokhtar Ould Daddah, as the country experienced the start of a civil war that the late President Ould Daddah was only able to avert by carrying out arrests and imposing sanctions, the bulk of whose victims belonged to Mauritania’s black community. This stifled the fundamental demands of the blacks, whose only fault was to have refused a reform aimed at nothing less than assimilation into the Arab-Berber way of life and way of thinking. It’s important to emphasize that the call by black Mauritanians for socio-political equality has never overshadowed demands for identity in Mauritania. These crystallized around the language issue in 1966 under the regime of Mauritania’s first president, Moktar Ould Daddah, and again in 1979 under the military regime. A 2003 UNESCO study, examining educational reforms in Mauritania from 1959 onwards during the colonial period, and extending this examination to the post-colonial period, mentioned that: “the logic of the 1979 reform was a logical outcome of educational policy since independence, i.e. arabization…”. Mauritania has been independent since November 28, 1960. It must be recognized, then, that the creation in 1979 of an institute for national languages, with a view to experimenting with and officially teaching them, was nothing more than a delaying tactic, a trompe-l’oeil. As a result, the institute soon closed its doors, sacrificing four years of teaching at primary school level. Yet a UNESCO technical evaluation had judged the teaching of national languages (Pulaar, Soninke, Olof) in Mauritania to be highly satisfactory, and therefore a success. Today, the Mauritanian parliament has passed a law on the officialization and teaching of the country’s recognized national languages. In this respect, if the Mauritanian government refuses, in this new school year, to begin (after this parliamentary vote) the systematic teaching of national languages which have shown their aptitude and capacity to support teaching, what this government is really doing is playing diversionary games, by stalling. In fact, UNESCO’s evaluation of the 1979 law reforming education in Mauritania is unambiguous: it is neither more nor less than the complete Arabization of the country. In this respect, the bilingualism advocated is merely a façade.
The Arabization carried out by successive Mauritanian governments has always been accompanied, on the one hand, by a progressive rapprochement with the populations of the Arab world and their civilization, and, on the other, by a distancing from the continent’s sub-Saharan black African populations and their cultures. Mauritania’s exclusive desire to anchor itself in the Arab world betrays its original vocation: to be the link between black and white Africa. Events such as Mauritania’s premature withdrawal from the Organisation Commune Africaine et Malgache (OCAM) in 1965, its entry into the Arab League in 1973, its integration into the Union du Maghreb Arabe in February 1989, and its withdrawal from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) in 1999 all bear witness to this betrayal. It should be noted in passing that the fact that almost all Mauritanians belong to the Muslim religion has not been a unifying factor in preventing the ethno-racial drift Mauritania is experiencing.
It was against this backdrop of the forced Arabization of black Mauritanians and its corollary, the refusal to recognize their equality as citizens, that the Forces de Libération Africaines de Mauritanie (FLAM) was born on March 14, 1983. Four organizations came together to form the FLAM: the Union Démocratique Mauritanienne (UDM), the Organisation pour la Défense des Négro-africains de Mauritanie (ODINAM), the Mouvement Populaire des Africains de Mauritanie (MPAM) and the Mouvement des Élèves et Étudiants Noirs (MEEN). Also in the spirit of the 1966 Manifesto of the 19, Flam published “Le Manifeste du négro-mauritanien opprimé” in June 1986. This was a radioscopy of the socio-economic, political and cultural situation of black people in Mauritania, denouncing the policy of racial discrimination to which they were subjected as a result of Arabization. On September 4, 1986, the security forces of the Mauritanian apartheid regime carried out a series of arrests, including a few members of Flam, who were in fact the first to be targeted. They were secretly detained in the Walata prison (a former fort) for almost four years, before being released. However, some of them succumbed to torture and inhuman and degrading treatment. This rejection of state racism led to an abortive coup attempt on October 22, 1987.
It was led by young black officers. They were accused, among other things, of collusion with the FLAM, although no proof was provided. Three of these young black officers were executed on December 3, 1987, following an obscure trial in which the right to a defense was not really guaranteed; and yet this attempted coup d’état, which was only just executed, did not claim a single victim. Mauritanian apartheid, or the Beydanne (Arab-Berber) system, is increasingly showing its true face. Beydanne literally means “white”, and is the term by which the Arab-Berbers of Mauritania designate themselves.
The failure to adequately address the legitimate claims of black Mauritanians led to the crisis of 1989. It followed a banal conflict on the border between Senegal and Mauritania, between herders and farmers. This small incident led to violence against nationals of both countries, particularly in the two capitals, Dakar and Nouakchott. War was avoided by the repatriation of citizens of both states. The Mauritanian government was to use these events as a pretext to carry out ethnic cleansing of the black Mauritanian population. It will perpetrate massive and serious human rights violations against black Mauritanian citizens. These violations were denounced by human rights NGOs, regional organizations (African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, etc.) and international organizations, notably the United Nations. Between 1989 and 1991, the black population of Mauritania was the victim of : mass deportations to Senegal and Mali, where Mauritanian refugees remain to this day; arrests and summary executions of its military component, 571 of whom lost their lives while in secret detention, and thousands of whom were arbitrarily detained in prisons, tortured, then released and subsequently expelled from the army; the enforced disappearance of many civilians, as evidenced by the discovery of mass graves in the south of the country; land expropriations in the river valley; theft of property and thousands of cattle. In this respect, the regime of Colonel Sid’Ahmed ould Taya, who was primarily responsible for this chaotic situation, had the parliament of the time pass an amnesty law in 1993, which to this day protects all those involved in these crimes against humanity from prosecution. These crimes have no statute of limitations under international law. To return to the FLAM, while some of our members continue to fight in Mauritania, the bulk of the organization’s elite are fighting in the diaspora. Flam remains committed to its struggle. Our political movement has national ambitions for the whole of Mauritania, which is why it has set itself the following objectives since its creation in 1983: the abolition of slavery, the guarantee of equal citizenship and equal protection under the law for all the country’s components, namely the black Mauritanians (Bambaras, Peules, Haratines, Soninke, Beydanne and Olofs). It should be stressed that not all black people in Mauritania are slaves, but all slaves are black. The majority of these slaves are black women of Arab-Berber culture, known as “Haratines”. Haratines can be either slaves or freedmen. This social group is part of the Arab-Berber community. Increasingly, however, voices are being raised in Haratine circles demanding recognition of their status as a group distinct from that of their Arab-Berber masters or former masters. Slavery in Mauritania was abolished in 1905 under French colonial rule. This followed the abolition of slavery in France for the second time in 1848. As a reminder, the first abolition in France dates back to 1794. The abolition of slavery during the colonial period in Mauritania did not put an end to the phenomenon. Independent Mauritania abolished slavery for the first time in 1981. Despite the abolition of this horror and its criminalization by law in 2007, the phenomenon of slavery still persists in Mauritania. A court has been set up to judge cases of slavery, but it has to be said that victims’ complaints are rarely successful. In addition to slavery, all Mauritanian ethnic groups have a caste system, and endogamy is practiced. Mauritanian society is hierarchical and fragmented.
In order to achieve their objectives, the African Liberation Forces of Mauritania call for unity and peace, and advocate respect for all the country’s cultural identities. It is clear from the above that, in the face-off between blacks and Arab-Berbers in Mauritania, there is not only the problem of slavery, but also that of the production and affirmation of a national cultural identity that a dominant Arab-Berber fringe holding political and economic power is trying to impose on the black ethnic groups that make up Mauritania, by associating the construction of a common national identity with the necessary hegemony of the Arabic language. The ideologists of the Beydan community claim to follow the pan-Arab ideologies of Baathism and Nasserism. Nasserism, based on the thinking of the late Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser, influenced the Arab world in the 1950s-1960s-1970s. It advocated military coups against dictatorships in the Arab world, as a step towards the unity of Arab peoples, within the framework of socialism. As for Baathist ideology, it advocated Arab resurrection in terms of national revolution. This resurrection is all the more justified in that Arab culture is considered to be primordial in relation to other human cultures. While the use of these two ideologies makes sense in terms of the emancipation of Arab peoples from colonialism, neo-colonialism and imperialism, in the Mauritanian context they are instruments of domination at the service of the Mauritanian apartheid system. Arab-Berber domination in Mauritania has a genesis. It is historically rooted in the colonial era. French colonization in Africa used what the colonial governor William Ponty called “the politics of race”. The aim was to play on the hostility between ethnic groups, in order to neutralize each other, in application of the old maxim “divide and rule”. In the colonial context of Mauritania, France favored Arab-Berber domination to the detriment of the black ethnic groups.
At this point, we’d like to emphasize that there is one issue that the FLAM feels very strongly about: the land question. In their 1986 manifesto, the FLAM criticized the confiscation of the fertile land of the blacks of the Senegal River valley by the beydanes (Arab-Berbers). The latter are developing this land for agribusiness with the help of projects, loans and other aid granted by the World Bank and the IMF. These Breton Woods financial institutions are the very embodiment of evil capitalism, particularly in Africa. By advocating the liberalism of the international market, their aim is to open up economic spaces, by any means necessary, to the most powerful countries and firms. As financial institutions, they are responsible for managing and exploiting, on a global scale, highly indebted countries that have lost all economic sovereignty. These countries are subject to an economy based on slave-trading and rents, preventing any possibility of industrialization and development. Multinationals monopolize the international raw materials markets. This market-driven globalization is polarizing, impoverishing, unemployment-generating and resource-predatory… Lenin was quite right to say that “imperialism is the supreme stage of capitalism”.
Moreover, by defining themselves as African forces, the Flam clearly demonstrate their African identity. However, by claiming to be politically left-wing, by opting for this ideological trend, Flam necessarily draws on universal and humanist values. Our active participation in the Dynamique Unitaire Panafricaine and the World Anti-imperialist Platform is proof of our humanist commitment to fighting imperialism.
In the pan-Africanist struggle we are waging, it is fitting to pay tribute to our predecessors who were at the origin of the birth of Pan-Africanism. These include, among others, the Afro-descendants of the diaspora, monuments of the calibre of William Dubois, Marcus Garvey, Georges Padmore…. Not to be forgotten in these tributes is Ghana’s Nkwame Nkrumah, who brought Pan-Africanism back to Africa on his return from America. Nkrumah’s consciencism, inspired by Marx’s historical materialism, promoted an anti-imperialist revolution. A historical materialism that Amilcar Cabral (in Guinea-Bissau) and Julius Nyerere (in Tanzania) were to make use of. We also pay tribute to the protagonists of the negritude movement, Aimé Césaire, Léon Gontran Damas and Léopold Sedar Senghor, distinguishing between the latter as a man of culture and as a politician. Negritude was a nationalist movement that denounced the erroneous political, economic and cultural pretensions of colonization, with the aim of valorizing Africa through cultural production. This required a return to the roots. Cheikh Anta Diop, who was a pharaoh of knowledge, once said: “A people that has lost its memory has become a fragile people”. So let us remember our martyrs, cowardly murdered by imperialism, colonialism and neo-colonialism, to name but a few: Patrice Émérite Lumumba of the Congolese national movement; Ruben UM Nyobe of the Union des populations du Congo; Sylvanus Olympio of the Togolese Unity Committee. Closer to home, our tributes also go to the leaders of the political transitions in Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso. General Abdourahmane Thiani, General Assimi Goita and Captain Ibrahim Traoré, respectively. These three African leaders, worthy heirs to Djibo Bakary, Modibo Keita and Thomas Sankara, have come together in a confederation known as the “Alliance of Sahel States” (AES). Today, with their people as a bulwark and with Russian military cooperation, they are waging a courageous and relentless struggle against rebels and religious extremists who are partially and illegally occupying their territory, threatening its integrity. These extremists are proxies manipulated by outside forces intent on destabilizing the African continent. We praise the independent and sovereignist spirit of the AES leaders, in that they have rejected the colonial and neo-colonial military agreements signed with the former French colonizer. A few months ago, Niger put an end to the presence of US military bases on its territory. Since we’re on Senegalese soil, we wouldn’t be forgiven if we didn’t spare a pious thought for all those Senegalese heroes and heroines who tirelessly served pan-Africanism and fought against colonialism, neo-colonialism and imperialism. We’d like to take this opportunity to remember Oumar Blondin Diop, a brilliant young student, for whom value did not wait for the number of years. He fought epic battles against imperialism and its henchmen, at the cost of his own life. We’re almost at the end of our remarks, and we’re left with one question. If it is true that Africa must unite (an invitation from one of the most illustrious founding fathers of pan-Africanism, Nkwame Nkrumah), it will not escape us that this desire for unity faces many obstacles in this disensual Africa. So, shouldn’t we start by instituting and multiplying new solidarities at grassroots level, in a spirit of openness? Solidarity whose main aim is to mobilize the world against imperialism, one of the main sources of war and conflict in the world, and of the division of humanity. Isn’t this the kind of solidarity we’re practising right now, as part of the link-up between the Dynamique Unitaire Panafricaine and the World Anti-imperialist Platform?
We welcome the arrival in power of the new Senegalese authorities, namely their Excellencies President Bassirou Diomaye Faye and his Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko. Their determination to bring about what they call a “systemic break” is unquestionably a reflection of their sovereignist spirit. Sovereignty is at the heart of every convinced pan-Africanist’s approach. For this essential reason, we sincerely wish Pastef (Patriotes africains du Sénégal pour le travail, l’éthique et la fraternité) the best of luck in their quest for a parliamentary majority in the next Senegalese presidential elections in November 2024. Pastef is a party that advocates change and progress, and is resolutely focused on the future. This is why the Senegalese people, and in particular their youth, voted overwhelmingly for Pastef in the last presidential elections. This victory has raised the hopes of pan-Africanists, who have always supported Senegal’s new leaders, President Diomaye Faye and Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko, in difficult times. In his inaugural speech, President Diomaye Faye called for the construction of a “sovereign, just and prosperous Senegal in a progressing Africa”.
By way of conclusion, allow us to wish a happy outcome to all the peoples of the world who are fighting against the shameless exploitation of the working masses, against colonialism, neo-colonialism and imperialism. Long live sovereignty, friendship and cooperation between peoples.