Greater Mauritania (Arabic:موريتانيا الكبرى) is a term for theMauritanianirredentist claim that generally includes theWestern Sahara and otherSahrawi-populated areas of the westernSahara Desert. The term was initially used by Mauritania's firstPresident,Mokhtar Ould Daddah, as he began claiming the territory then known asSpanish Sahara even before Mauritanianindependence in 1960.
Its main competing ideologies have beenBerberism,Sahrawi nationalism,Moroccan irredentism,Mali federationism andTuareg nationalism.
The idea evolved in the 1950s in tandem and response to the above-mentioned ideas ofGreater Morocco. Its main proponents were among thebeidane (light-skinned) community. In 1957, the future first President of Mauritania,Mokhtar Ould Daddah, stated that:
The basis for his claim was the closeethnic and cultural ties between the Mauritanians and the Sahrawis of Spanish Sahara, which in effect formed two subsets of the sametribalArab-Berber population.[2] The Greater Mauritania region is largely coterminous with theHassaniya Arabic language area and was historically part of the pre-modernBilad Chinguetti (Arabic:بلاد شنقيط,romanized: Bilād Šinqīṭ), the Land ofChinguetti, a religious center in contemporary Mauritania.[3]
InMali, thenFrench Sudan,beidane politicians formulated a "Greater Mauritania", which would include thebeidane-inhabited northwestern regions of French Sudan along with Mauritania and Western Sahara. The idea was inspired by the 11th-centuryAlmoravid dynasty, which emerged in modern-dayMauritania and later came to encompass most of north-west Africa, including the modern-day territories ofMauritania,Morocco,Western Sahara,Azawad and theIberian Peninsula. As a result of the latter, some even believed that Greater Mauritania should include Morocco and thus essentially equaled the Moroccan irredentist land claims. In any event, some of thebeidane wished for their region to be joined with Mauritania. The group was represented by theMauritanian National Renaissance Party, which was founded in August 1958 inAtar, Mauritania, with local chapters being added later on in various French Sudanese locales. It was founded by a subset of the Association of Mauritanian Youth (French:Association de la Jeunesse Mauritanienne), which held pro-Moroccan tendencies during theIfni War.[4]
Those tendencies were worrying to bothFrench authorities as well as some French Sudanese authorities. Mali's hegemonic political party, theUS-RDA, laid claims to parts of Mauritania and also agitated for the return of theCercle ofTimbedgha, which was administratively transferred over to Mauritania in 1944. The US-RDA won the support of manybeidane elites in Timbedgha for that, which angered Ould Daddah. Nonetheless, by 1959, Ould Daddah had securedone-party hegemony in Mauritania and these pro-Moroccan and pro-Malian organizations were all dissolved. Nonetheless, despite the dissolution of the Mali Federation in 1960, the Malian government continued to support Morocco's claims over Mauritania and engage in border clashes, with the Mauritanian government accusingHorma Ould Babana, who has been still exiled in Morocco, of having plotted the assassination of a nomadic administrator in theCercle ofNema, in 1961. Moreover, the Mauritanians accused Mali of supporting Ould Babana.
Nonetheless, Mali and Mauritania eventually signed a mutual border agreement in February 1963.[4]
The original "Greater Morocco" included not only Western Sahara, but also the entirety of Mauritania, which Morocco refused to recognize from its independence in 1960. C. R. Pennell writes that, in return,
Nonetheless, Thompson and Adloff write that,
The claim to theSpanish Sahara was again popularized by the regime in the early 1970s, asSpain prepared to depart thecolony. Mauritania then feared Moroccan expansion towards its border, against the background of this "Greater Morocco" claim. However, the governments of Morocco,Algeria, and Mauritania were able to find ways of working together on the issue, and even though Morocco-Mauritania relations were established earlier in 1969,[7][8] Morocco's formally relinquished its claims over Mauritania in June 1970 after signing a friendship treaty with Mauritania.[8]
Mauritanian claims to the territory were thus used to stave off the perceived threat of Moroccan expansionism and to entice Spain into dividing the territory betweenMorocco andMauritania in theMadrid Accords.[9] That, however, did not take into accountan Advisory Opinion by theInternational Court of Justice (ICJ), which had decided in late 1975 that the people of Western Sahara had aright to self-determination to be exercised freely in the form of a choice betweenintegration with one or both of Mauritania and Morocco, or setting up an independent state.[3][10]
The Mauritanian portion of the territory, corresponding to the southern half ofRío de Oro, or one third of the entire territory, was officially renamedTiris al-Gharbiyya.
The takeover was violently opposed by a pre-existing indigenous independence movement, thePolisario Front, which had gained support fromAlgeria. The ensuing war went badly for Mauritania, and Mokhtar Ould Daddah's Governmentfell in 1978.[11] The country evacuated and leftTiris al-Gharbiyya the following year (1979), renouncing all claims to any part of Western Sahara, and recognizing the Polisario Front as its people's legitimate representative. Relations withRabat deteriorated rapidly, and amid allegations of Moroccan backing for attempted coups and minor armed clashes, Mauritania drew closer to Algeria and the Polisario. The government later established formal relations with the Front'sgovernment-in-exile, theSahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, as a recognizedsovereign over the territory.[12]
The vision of Greater Mauritania holds little appeal in today's Mauritania, and it is not pursued by any major political faction.
While still recognizing theSahrawi Republic, Mauritania has largely mended relations with Morocco and now generally seeks to stay out of the Western Sahara dispute, which remains unresolved.
