Brotherhood Hands: New suspicious entities of Mauritania’s Brotherhood

Doaa Emam

In an attempt to create new opportunities for the Brotherhood in Mauritania through its political arm, the National Rally for Reform and Development (Tawassoul), party leaders on Thursday, September 10, attended the opening of the Brotherhood Hands Association in a hotel in the capital Nouakchott, announcing that it seeks cultural awareness to unify the people and preserve their Islamic identity.

At the outset, the general secretary of the association, Abdullah Sarr, said that the nation needs a slogan that all those who love the Brotherhood would proclaim for cooperation to strengthen cohesion and consolidate national unity. He added that the Brotherhood Hands will include those working in the advocacy and cultural fields, as well as those interested in reform in Mauritania.

Striking Brotherhood presence

The Brotherhood’s presence at the opening was striking, which requires researching about the association, as it did not announce that it is one of the arms of the Brotherhood in Mauritania. However, it became evident that the general secretary of the association had previously headed the Brotherhood’s Hand in Hand Association, which the authorities closed down a year ago on suspicions of receiving dubious foreign funds. He is also one of the leaders of Tawassoul and a member of the party’s political bureau.

The Mauritanian government’s battle with political Islamist movements has not stopped since it began to legalize the status of the entities affiliated with the Brotherhood. The authorities said that some entities that were closed were authorized, but they were subject to follow-up by the security authorities throughout. There was an ongoing evaluation of their work, and through inspection and follow-up, it was revealed that there the association had suspicious financing and spending.

Among the most prominent measures that have contributed to the crackdown on Brotherhood activity has been the Anti-Money Laundering and Terrorism Financing Law, which the Mauritanian government approved in January 2019 after news of significant funding from pro-Brotherhood organizations in Qatar and Turkey.

The authorities discovered evidence of the money flowing to the Brotherhood party being siphoned to some of the group’s merchants in Angola, who received tens of millions of dollars as donations for the poor and needy. The Brotherhood branch in Mauritania has bodies that undertake the actual work of collecting money and facilitating the subscription of terrorist movements.

It is certain that the Mauritanian authorities have sufficient information about the sources of the group’s financing, including generous support from extremist elements in Libya, as the organization has already hosted some of these elements in Mauritania. They also revealed about coordination between the Brotherhood in Mauritania and extremist movements in other countries, including Syria, Libya, Egypt and Yemen.

Drying up the sources

Nouakchott seeks to dry up the sources of this foreign funding that the Brotherhood receives, especially that which comes in the form of zakat from some countries that financially support the organization.

Mauritanian political analyst Abdallah Mohamedou Bey said in press statements that the biggest problems facing Mauritania from the Brotherhood are the import of foreign agendas and ideas that intrude the political behavior and practices, as well as the attempt to project the situation of other societies and nations onto the country, which increases unrest, stirs up strife and violence, and proves their loyalty to the international Brotherhood, not to their country.