Mauritania is located in West Africa and shares its frontiers with Senegal, Mali, Algeria, and Western Sahara. Its population of under 2.3 million inhabitants is an ethnic mosaic because of the country's situation between North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa. The Maur (Arab-Berber or "Moorish") community and the black African communities (Haalpulaaren, Soninke, and Wolof) were gathered together by the French colonial administration. There is a controversy as to which group is dominant, and there is no data available after the 1958 census which estimated that black Africans represent only 20 percent. The demographic weight of this latter community is now stronger, and the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency estimated that 30 percent of the population is Maur, 30 percent black African, and 40 percent mixed black-Maur.

Moktar Ould Daddah (1924–2003), a Maur, led the country to independence November 28, 1960. He founded a dominant single party, the Parti du Peuple Mauritanien, in 1964 and was overthrown by a...