Brotherhood attempts to find a foothold in Mauritania for Doha

Asmaa al-Betakoshi

In an attempt by Qatar to restore relations with Mauritania, Doha moved a number of its followers to launch a campaign to pressure President Mohamed Ould Cheikh Ghazouani to restore diplomatic relations after having been severed since June 2017.

Mauritanian activists affiliated with the Brotherhood launched a campaign through social networking sites to restore diplomatic relations with Qatar, using the hashtag #Mauritania_Qatar.

The severance of Mauritanian-Qatari relations has put the interests of many Mauritanians at risk, the campaign said in an official statement, calling on Ghazouani to reconsider the decision.

The organizers of the campaign claimed they are not affiliated with any party or political trend and that their call for the restoration of relations with Qatar parallels another call to consolidate the existing relations with all Gulf and Arab countries. However, Mauritanian press reports see the presence of invisible hands run by the National Rally for Reform and Development (Tewassoul) party to pressure the president to respond to the call to resume relations with the Qatari regime.

The reports said that this campaign will not achieve the goal aspired to by the loyalists of the Qatari regime, given the full and initial integration of Nouakchott within the Arab coalition to fight terrorism.

Brotherhood’s political defeats

This comes in the context of the political defeats suffered by the Muslim Brotherhood in Mauritania at the local and regional levels, as the developments of the scene were reflected internally, until the Brotherhood became a vocal party and Tewassoul suffered severe blows in the recent elections. In addition to the recent events witnessed by Tewassoul, Ghazouani held a series of meetings with the Mauritanian opposition, during which he met with various political leaders, including former presidential candidate Mohamed Ould Mouloud and Rally of Democratic Forces leader Ahmed Ould Daddah, along with other political figures.

These consultations showed that Ghazouani excluded the Brotherhood and its political wing Tewassoul from his political calculations, which emerged during his meetings with a number of figures and leaders of opposition parties.

Ghazouani’s round of dialogue to normalize political life coincided with his government, led by Prime Minister Ismail Ould Sidiya, winning seats in parliament, which began its weekly activity with a statement on the government’s general policy, which great satisfied the ruling party.

According to the Free Qatar website, the failure of the Brotherhood in Mauritania has infuriated the Qatari regime, as the blueprints that Doha has drawn up over the years have gone unheeded.

Splits and divisions

According to African affairs researcher Mohamed Ezzeddine, the new conflict within the ranks of the Brotherhood is the strongest because of its geographic nature and the fueling of traditional differences between various currents within the movement competing for influence and domination.

The Brotherhood is currently living in an unprecedented state of splits and divisions, while also being ignored by the Mauritanian president, which exposes them to further collapse, Ezzeddine stated, pointing out that this is the beginning of the end of the Brotherhood-affiliated Tewassoul.

He believes that the Brotherhood’s campaign to restore relations with Qatar is only another attempt to advertize.

Ezzeddine pointed to the obvious contradiction in the group’s speech, as measures taken by Mauritania’s security services to control the movement of funds have tightened the screws on Qatar’s movements and prevented the arrival of money sent to Brotherhood leaders there, which rebounded against Tewassoul’s movements and led to the party’s political failure.

The Brotherhood in Mauritania is also going through internal crises that make it unable to appear on the political scene. The current crisis within the Brotherhood reflects the continuing lack of confidence between the leading levels of the organization, which is reflected in the group’s successive splits.