by Michelle Raji

“Our action can only affect sensitized slaves because without awareness you can do nothing.”

The poignant intimations of Boubacar Messaoud, leader of the Mauritania-based anti-slavery NGO, SOS Esclave, echo the words of prominent abolitionist and former slave Harriet Tubman, “I could have freed more, if they knew they were slaves.” Boubacar Messaoud was born in 1945, the son of an illiterate slave family in southern Mauritania. Growing up, Boubacar did not know that he and his family were enslaved. Although the master had granted his family some degree of freedom—an occurrence common with Mauritanian descent-based slavery, he and his family worked the man’s field. The master refused to allow him to receive an education. Only after an employee saw Boubacar crying on the schoolhouse steps was he allowed to attend. Fortunate enough to receive schooling and after being teased by his light-skinned classmates, Boubacar was enlightened to the reality of his condition. He went on to secondary school, then university, and helped pioneer what could be called the Mauritanian abolitionist movement.

Though remarkable, Boubacar’s story is not wholly unique. In Mauritania, slavery is an entrenched phenomenon—a cultural, socioeconomic, quasi-religious institution—that exists both as a caste and as an occupation for black Moors. For many, the status of slave is as inescapable as the color of one’s skin, a social stigma that follows from birth to death, from bondage to freedom, from generation to generation. Mauritanian slaves cannot own property, keep a last name, or enjoy legal custody of their children. 

Mauritania is a sparsely populated country located in the western Sahara Desert—one of a handful of lower Saharan countries where dark skin Arabs, light skin Arabs, and Africans coexist. As with Sudan in the east, Mauritania is located on the line between the Arab Maghreb region and black sub-Saharan Africa. The country is about seventy percent Moor (for all intents and purposes, this word will be used to describe Hassaniya-speaking people who identify with Arab culture), with the largely enslaved black Moorish, or Haratine, comprising forty percent of the population, the white Arab-descended Moorish, or Beydhan, comprising thirty percent of the population, and the native Africans—including Pulaar, Wolof, and Soninke ethnic groups—comprising another thirty percent of the country’s population. Human rights organizations estimate about ten to twenty percent of the country’s three million people—the highest proportion in the modern world—to be enslaved across the spectrum, the vast majority of the enslaved being Haratine.

Experts have described the crisis in Mauritania as “slavery’s last stronghold,” and “a place stuck in time.” Slavery in Mauritania is different from other more prevalent, modern forms of slavery, such as sex slavery, human trafficking, and indentured servitude. Slavery in Mauritania is by descent; that is passed down through generations. Slavery is also deeply entwined in the fundamentalist interpretations of the Muslim faith. Masters often use antiquated rhetoric of the Quran and related religious texts to justify enslavement. Owning slaves is seen as a status of wealth and selling slaves is considered a dishonor—a sign of “falling on hard times;” the better you treat your slaves, evidently the more well off you are.

Slavery is deeply rooted in the nomadic society where most slaves do not know they are slaves, or exist in an intermediary status similar to old world serfdom or sharecropping with strong ties to their white masters. Nevertheless the legacy of slavery still exists.

After a drastic drought in the 1970s, many masters lost their slaves, which led to a mass exodus of Haratine to the cities. However, leaving masters does not mean losing status as Haratine. Haratine often face discrimination and lack of access to education and thus higher level jobs. Not to mention, slaves are still legally bound to their masters. Often when a slave dies, the master will come to the city to collect his or her belongings. These circumstances force many slaves to accept the relationship of authority and servitude, unwilling to leave the paternalistic framework. It is all they know.

Haratine are not in chains or beaten publicly. In fact, they can live alone and independently, but are still intrinsically linked to the master’s family. In the words of Boubacar, “their past, present, and future are linked to the master.” This kind of deeply established structure leads to an internalized inferiority—a resignation to one’s fate. Boubacar elaborates: “the multigenerational slave . . . he is a slave even in his own head.” He continues, “he is totally submissive . . . ready to sacrifice himself, even, for his master.” Boubacar recounts the story of a brother who, after escaping slavery, returned to free his sister who, stating that her mistress was sick and needed to be taken care of, refused to be rescued.

Women and children are particularly at risk. Women are less likely to leave their slave families for many reasons: fear of retribution, small children, ignorance of the outside world, and commitment to masters. To make matters worse, their work is harder and longer. According to Boubacar, women are often the first to wake in the morning and the last to go to bed. Not to mention women and children are constantly under threat of sexual violence. In fact, in the Arab slave trade, women were more valued than men, apparently for sexual service in addition to lengthy domestic service. For instance, in 2010, Moulkheir Mint Yarba escaped slavery. Her former master raped and beat her, killing the baby he fathered.  The master proceeded to rape the other daughter he fathered, Selek’ha. Moulkheir and her daughter, in the end, escaping the household through SOS Esclave, but their former master was never charged nor brought to justice. Interestingly, this tragedy occurred after an initial escape from her family’s lifelong masters. Moulkheir was tricked into returning to slavery after being given to a Beydhan man who falsely promised to pay her for her work. These circumstances reveal the immense difficulty of escaping slavery.

Slavery in Mauritania is more a system of slave caste. Despite freedom, the stigma of slavery subsists in the form of economic and political subjugation. Slavery in Mauritania is also an extension of endemic racial hierarchy. This is evidenced by the expulsion of black Africans to Senegal in 1989. “I was kicked out of my own country as if I were a rank intruder,” said a Mauritanian Army veteran who lost everything he owned, including his citizenship, when he was deported from Mauritania for the color of his skin. Some people call Mauritania’s actions in history a systematic insurrection: “People who are used to treating you like a slave can never treat you as an equal,” said a young refugee. A former senior civil servant also said, “The Moors have had a consistent strategy since independence of making Mauritania an entirely Arab country.” He continued: “They have invented false coups to kill off our army officers. They manage the Civil Service admission process to keep us out, and play at openness by appointing a black figurehead here and there.” His words are evocative. Although the majority of the country is indeed of sub-Saharan African descent, white Moors control the vast majority of the government. This kind of racial Moorish division happens to a greater extent in other markedly multiracial countries in Africa, most notably in Mali, Chad, and Niger, as well as in Sudan, where the racial strife escalated to such extent that it led to civil war and division into two countries.

A History of Servitude

Slavery in Mauritania is truly of the old world variety—“the dream of the southern plantation owner,” Boubacar aptly notes. It is chattel-based, inherited slavery and has persisted for hundreds of years, predating the transatlantic slave trade. The area that is now Mauritania was once roamed by native Africans.  Modern day white Moors are the descendants of the first Sanhaja Berbers and then later the Beni Ḥassān Arab tribes who emigrated to northwest Africa and present-day Western Sahara and Mauritania during the Middle Ages. Many descendants of the Beni Ḥassān tribes & Sanhaja Berbers today still live by the supremacist ideology of their ancestors. This ideology has led to oppression of darker skinned groups in Mauritania. While the western world was abolishing slavery, old world slavery endured in Mauritania over generations. The geography of Mauritania lends itself to this kind of stratification. It is sparsely populated, at approximately ten people per square mile. Fifty percent of the population is illiterate and lives in poverty—a dire situation amplified by the arbitrary lines drawn at independence tying many unfriendly ethnic groups together as well as by the indifference on the part of the French colonialists to force Arabs to give up their slaves.

Under French imperialism, the slave trade was outlawed in 1908. But after independence—without the moralizing hand at their back—in 1960, a provision outlawing slavery was not included in the new Mauritanian constitution. It was not until 1981, because of immense political pressure that slavery was officially, and ineffectively, re-abolished.

The story of the modern day Mauritanian antislavery movement has oscillated between progress and stagnancy, closely tied to the whims of the ruling elite as well as to the economic well being of the country. Like many other countries in West Africa, Mauritania suffered a series of coups and military takeovers, with limited democracy, after independence from France in 1960. Mauritania was ruled by strongman Mokar Ould Dadda in the 1960s and 1970s immediately following French rule. After a coup d’état in the late 1970s, it was ruled by the military until 1991. In 1992 multi-party rule was introduced, which led to various shifts of government and coup d’états and a brief democratic respite with the free election in 2007. However, the democratically elected leader was toppled in a coup d’état in 2008 with dictator Mohamed Ould Abdel Asiz reinstated to power. With the sparse population and ethnic strife, the various shifts led to a political and economic vacuum that incubated al Qaeda and other fundamentalist terrorist groups, offshore oil exploitation, as well as foreign control of fishing in the west—not to mention the persistence of slavery in nomadic communities.

The Courageous Minority

In the 1990s, Moussaud met an unlikely ally in the son of slave owners, Abdel Nasser Ould Ethmane. Growing up, Abdel didn’t feel guilty. Slavery to him was really natural and normal. “One must really have in mind that when one is born into a certain environment, it is considered the right one — just and fair.” Abdel began to question his beliefs while being educated in Nouakchott where he began to read about the French Revolution. Through French philosophy and his own introspection, he realized that slavery was a terrible thing, which led him to join Messaoud  to create SOS Esclave. Other antislavery organizations in Mauritania include Al’Hor الحر (translated as “the free”), founded in 1974 started by the popular Messaoud Boulkheir—one of the first Haratine politicians in the country—and In’itaq إنعتاق (translated as “emancipation”) as well as new groups such as the Initiative for the Resurgence of the Abolitionist Movement in Mauritania (the IRA). All groups exist to serve freed slaves, enlighten those who are enslaved, and advocate widespread implementation of the slavery ban. Groups like this have been widely persecuted in Mauritania. Boubacar Messaoud himself has been imprisoned on several occasions—all for denouncing slavery, and the only party advocating for Haratines, Action for Change, was banned in 2002.

Despite these obstacles, activists have made some strides. The first Haratine and female candidates ran for office in 2003. Following the first ever democratic elections in March 2007, a new law criminalizing slavery was unanimously adopted by the Mauritanian Parliament in August 2007. The new law makes the practice of slavery punishable by up to ten years in prison and states that anyone supporting or “promoting” slavery could be imprisoned for two years. Additionally, these organizations on their own have helped free and support hundreds of slaves, working to integrate them into the outside world and become economically independent.

Political instability however has jeopardized recent advances towards the eradication of slavery. The practice still remains pervasive, with an estimated half million Mauritanians enslaved, about twenty percent of the population. Only one slave owner has been prosecuted. Not only that, but the election of Mohamed Ould Abdel Asiz led to a government less receptive to addressing the issue of slavery. As the 2012 CNN documentary about slavery in Mauritania in revealed,1 the government has heavily hindered coverage of slavery; and, since the coup d’état, human rights defenders have also faced renewed violence. In 2011, four activists, all members of the IRA were sentenced to six months of imprisonment for protesting the enslavement of a ten year old girl. In April last year, Boubacar Messaoud was beaten with batons by police at a peaceful demonstration and hospitalized.

The government has been hesitant in implementing the law, or even recognizing the existence of slavery in the country at all, but there has been some progress in the past year. In 2013, the government admitted tentatively that slavery was still an issue, creating a new agency to wipe out the “vestiges of slavery” here. The director of the new government agency—called The National Solidarity Agency for the Fight Against the Vestiges of Slavery, for Integration, and for the Fight Against Poverty—says that have been no instances of the practice since he started work in April. It begs the question: is the government really committed to ending the practice? “Vestiges, they are talking about ‘vestiges,’ when people are still in chains,” said Balla Touré, a member of the Initiative for the Resurgence of Abolitionism, another abolitionist group in Mauritania.

Activists are arrested for fighting the practice because the government denies it exists. This can be explained in two ways: the government, by extension the Beydhan ruling class, cares little to change the system; and slavery is far too embedded in rural society to be simply “abolished.”

Some progress has been made, but numbers are the same. Because of its depth, it is difficult to act on this vastly underreported with a sense of urgency. Not a lot is known about the legitimate measures taken by the government. The western media covering Mauritania have mainly looked at it as under the lens of shocking human interest stories, entertaining to the West, with little call to action. Thus the situation is stagnant with no major litigation against slave-owners, political instability, and large apathy on the part of the ruling class. To this day, more activists have been prosecuted than slave-owners. The cycle continues.

Thoughts of a Future

It is clear the situation in Mauritania is unique. It differs from other forms of slavery and is similar to the slavery that existed in the antebellum South—where masters raped slaves, children became slaves, and where slaves adopted the culture, language, and religion of masters. Inferiority was embedded in the psych of African-Americans; the same way inferiority was embedded in Haratine. As with the United States, an emancipation proclamation—which for all intents and purposes is generally what the 2007 law effected to be—will not be enough. This slavery has lasted for millennia, twice the length as in the United States. With such an ingrained institution, freeing slaves is impossible without total government commitment and cooperation.

Mauritanian groups have suggested reforms such as targeted affirmative action, anti-discrimination legislation, and economic reparations. They have also called for a clear campaign to strengthen and broaden the 2007 law, to promote antislavery NGOS to elevated status. They have also called for raising awareness of slavery to slaves and non-slaves alike. Education and awareness is key to keeping slave families who have been excluded for generations out of poverty and enslavement. Most importantly, there must be international pressure on the Mauritanian government for all this. Mauritania has no incentive to take care of this issue without the shame of the international community. The international community cannot take the Mauritanian government at face value when they assert that they are committed to the eradication of slavery when they deny its existence, imprison those who speak out, and limit its coverage. Ultimately, the Haratine will not free themselves. This is not Sudan or Mali. As enlightened, modern societies who enjoy freedom, we cannot leave these people behind.

“Men are born and remain free and equal in rights.” Those are the words that changed everything for the young and ignorant Abdel Nasser. Today, revelations like this cannot come as haltingly. Unfortunately, for now, it is only Boubacar and his contemporary abolitionists who have taken up the torch. To those still enslaved, Boubacar offers one last message of hope, “people often say: you can’t be better than your father, which is not true. One can be better than one’s father. Or your father can be a slave, but you don’t have to be. You can search for something else. You can find complete human dignity.”

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