Mauritania is a beacon of stability in the coup-prone Sahel

Mohamed Ould Ghazouani seems an unlikely stalwart of stability. President of Mauritania since 2019, the former general has participated in no less than two of the six coups that shook the country in the first five decades after its independence from France in 1960. In the first putsch he helped boot out Maaouya Ould Sid’Ahmed Taya, who had ruthlessly repressed people for two decades after himself seizing power in a coup. In the second, he helped topple the country’s first democratically elected president and replaced him with his old friend, Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, who then went on to win two terms as president.