One evening in December 2011, five armed men arrived in a vehicle, fired at the Mauritanian gendarmerie post at Adel Begrou, and kidnapped a gendarme before escaping across the nearby border into Mali.
It was the last attack attributed to jihadists in Mauritania, more than 13 years ago.
But over that time, jihadist attacks have increasingly plagued the Sahel region from Mali to Lake Chad, making Mauritania stand out as a beacon of stability.
The vast desert country shares 2,200 kilometres (1,370 miles) of often porous and ill-defined borders with Mali, which is in the grips of a jihadist insurgency.
From 2005 to 2011, the Islamic Republic of Mauritania was targeted by jihadist groups linked to Al-Qaeda, with attacks on military personnel, foreign embassies, and the killing and kidnapping of Westerners.
In response, Mauritania implemented a comprehensive strategy, beginning in 2008, to strengthen its security apparatus.
It created Special Intervention Groups (GSI), highly mobile military units capable of operating in the desert, supported by light aircraft.
This “flexible and movable model” was devised by the Mauritanians, said Hassan Kone, a former army colonel and researcher at the Institute for Security Studies (ISS), a think tank that focuses on peace and security issues in Africa.
Camel patrols
“The key question for them was how to move in a desert environment,” said Mohamed Fall Ould Bah, of the Centre for Studies and Research on the Western Sahara (CEROS).
The iconic meharists — desert patrol officers on camels — are tasked with gathering intelligence in the desert region in the east of the country and maintaining a state presence among nomadic populations.
“Mauritania has maintained an effective human intelligence network, particularly notable in the eastern border region known as the Hodh Ech Chargui,” the US Department of State said in its 2023 terrorism report.
As part of its security strategy, checkpoints are scattered across the country.
The northeastern region of Mauritania, which is mostly uninhabited, has been a restricted military zone since 2008, to help surveillance and prevent it from becoming a safe haven for jihadists.
Counter-narrative
Mauritania has also engaged in a theological debate to stop its citizens from becoming radicalised. In the 2000s, Al-Qaeda counted Mauritanians among its ranks.
Following a government-led dialogue in 2010, dozens of radical Islamists in detention signed a “renouncement of violence”.
“In an ideological battle, you have to produce a counter-narrative,” said Amadou Sall, a researcher at the Mauritania Perspectives think tank.
“There must be an alternative discourse to the jihadist interpretation. Mauritania mobilised the national clergy to provide doctrinal responses to all the points jihadists rely on.”
“The state organised a fairly complex system” of “ideology control” preached in the mosques, Ould Bah added.
Al-Qaeda ‘pact’?
Even so, several experts have discussed the possible existence of a non-aggression pact between Mauritania and Al-Qaeda.
Mauritanian authorities have always firmly denied the existence of such an agreement.
Yet “everyone agrees there is a pact. That’s a widely accepted thing”, said Michael Shurkin, a former CIA agent turned Director of Global Programs at the 14 North Strategies risk advisory.
“The way it seems to work, is that if JNIM people cross the border with their weapons… they are not allowed, and the Mauritanians would stop them,” Shurkin said.
“But if there are individuals crossing, I get the impression that the Mauritanians aren’t going to ask too many questions,” he added.
“But they watch. They’re very careful about watching who crosses the border.”
According to Amadou Sall, the situation in eastern Mauritania is not the same as in the rest of the Sahel, where jihadist groups thrive on recruited populations’ sense of marginalisation.
“The jihadist offer (in Mauritania) is not attractive compared to a state that drills wells, cares for livestock, organises seasonal migration (of livestock),” he said.
Still, travel to the entire eastern part of Mauritania remains “formally discouraged” by many countries.
On the Malian side of the border, jihadist groups are still highly active, particularly in the southwestern Kayes region, where violent attacks increased sevenfold between 2021 and 2024, according to the Timbuktu Institute.
