Mauritania Bolsters Border Security Amid Polisario Tensions with Morocco

This decision follows several events. The Polisario militias had blocked the El Guerguerat crossing between Morocco and Mauritania for three weeks. This blockade had been detrimental to the Mauritanian economy.

Faced with the actions of the separatist movement in the buffer zone of Guergarate in the Moroccan Sahara, King Mohammed VI had ordered a military operation. Since November, civilian and commercial traffic has been restored. The Royal Armed Forces (FAR) had deployed a security cordon to secure the flow of goods and people. Morocco has since extended its security wall to the Mauritanian border, definitively blocking the way for the Polisario.

Fearing that any future attempt to disrupt the free movement of commercial and civilian traffic by the separatist movement would lead to an incursion from the Mauritanian border, Mauritania intends to strengthen the personnel of its army in the north. In a communiqué following the Council of Ministers of January 6, 2021, the adoption of a draft decree establishing a sensitive defense zone was announced.

"This draft sets the coordinates of the land reference points marking the boundaries of this zone, located in the uninhabited to sparsely inhabited North, which could constitute transit points for terrorists, drug traffickers and organized crime gangs," the same source said. According to observers, the real reasons for this project are explained by the fact that Mauritania is seeking to avoid at all costs the impact that any resurgence of tensions between Morocco and the Polisario would produce.