Anarchy and slavery in Africa

Gary Brecher:

Mauritania is one of those chunks of worthless African real estate that are paradise for flies and scorpions -- not so great for us mammals. One of those places that are the permanent skulking-grounds of tribes that were kicked out of someplace better.

When the Berbers were pushed out of the good land in the more fertile valleys of Morocco, some fled south into the desert. When black African tribes got shoved away from the wetlands by the Senegal river, they fled north onto the sands.

And that's the Mauritanian population today: "Moors" from the North and "black Africans" from the South in about equal numbers, hating each other, wishing they were somewhere else. Just to make it more confusing, there are "white" Moors and "black" Moors. The black Moors used to be kept as slaves by the whites, but that only makes them even snobbier about their Moorishness. They have a real Moor-ier than thou attitude and go around sneering at the black non-Moors. Snobby slaves -- there's a lot of that going around.

Nobody lives in Mauritania by choice, unless you count scorpions--which is why there were only 1.5 million people in this 1 million square km country (three times the size of Arizona) at independence in 1960.

That population has doubled now to 3 million people, in spite of the fact that 90% of the arable land has turned into desert. Not to mention the fact that all those busy Taiwanese fishing trawlers have scooped up every last sand eel from Mauritanian waters. Like that old America song says, the ocean is a desert too -- at least in Mauritania.

It's a typical African pattern: the less livable the place is, the faster people breed. Which reminds me, I've got a question for you Russians: Russia has about the lowest birthrate in the world, and everybody says it's because life is so hard there. So how do you explain places like Mauritania, where life is much worse and the birthrate is zooming?

There's another pattern in Mauritania that's typical of Africa: the countryside has emptied and the cities are overflowing with surplus people. Nobody lives the old nomad life here any more. All the kids hang around the cities practicing their dance moves and watching old kung fu movies. They're one of the key ingredients for your classic African coups: lots of what Ali G. would call da Yout', scuffing around bored just waiting for a couple of jeeps to roar by waving a revolutionary flag. A little action! Sure beats watching the termite mounds grow.

For some reason, it cheers me up thinking about places like Mauritania. Maybe because Mauritania is what Fresno will look like a hundred years from now. I'll be safely dead -- the good side of being fat with kidney problems -- but all the jocks who messed with me in high school, well, those poor healthy suckers will have to watch the long slide down, watch your grandkids become the goatherds of the 22nd century. I can see it now, tribes of sunburnt feral Anglos wandering around the ruins of Fresno landmarks like Wild Water Adventures, begging Soylent Green packets from the Chinese do-gooders. They'll try hard not to pity you, try to be "understanding" when they visit your campground in the ruins of the giant waterslide park, but they'll hold their hi-tech handkerchiefs to their noses -- there's nothing like the smell of goats in close quarters. They'll barely be able to keep from puking while they listen to your stories about how Fresno used to be a big deal, all lit up, swimming pools everywhere.

Mauritania is full of stories like that, about its glorious past. This was the home base of the Almoravids, the Taliban of the 11th century. Real fun-loving fundamentalist Muslims, the kind who go crazy at the thought that somebody might be playing music, drawing pictures, drinking wine or otherwise offending Allah. Allah's a funny guy: he's down with all kinds of rough stuff -- torture, slavery -- but he can't stand music.

Like the Taliban, the Almoravids came out of nowhere (the Mauritanian desert) and won it all: they rampaged against backsliders from Ghana to Morocco and even stomped the uppity Christians in Spain. When they were through, no Spaniard could ever make music again -- which explains the Iglesias family, father and son.

Of course, slavery's outlawed in Mauritania. In fact, according to one account I read, "Slavery has been outlawed several times." I guess you just can't outlaw slavery too often. It makes the Westerners happy, and of course it never trickles down to the actual slaves.

You might as well try to bring back the 55mph limit on I-5. Slaves are just about the only natural resource this landscape produces; outlaw them and the Mauritanian economy would grind to a halt.

The real point of outlawing slavery early and often is that it keeps the Western aid flowing. Those guilt-ridden rich countries give every man, woman and child in Mauritania about $170 per year. Not that it actually reaches those poor peasants. It stays in the pockets of the airport managers and government ministers, where it belongs.

So Mauritania is a perfect little laboratory of the hell that is Africa.

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