IRIN Focus on renewed tension with Mauritania

[This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations] A decision by Mauritania's authorities to order Senegalese nationals to leave the country within a fortnight has highlighted the delicate nature of relations between the two nations just a decade after they almost went to war. It also served to expose, once again, the vulnerability of migrants and minorities to the vagaries of the uneasy relationship between the two countries. Officials in Dakar told IRIN on Thursday that Senegal has kicked into operation plans for the repatriation of its nationals from Mauritania. "We are forming a team to go to Mauritania, possibly today, to find out how many need evacuating," an official charged with repatriating Senegalese in distress said. Senegal will use air and other means to repatriate its nationals, Souleyman Thiam, who heads the Foreign Ministry's Office of Senegalese Overseas, added. A welcoming committee has been established to ease the burden on the returnees who will be given financial assistance to settle. "However, given the large number we will need international aid," Thiam said. Between 60,000 and 100,000 Senegalese lived in Mauritania before police there ordered them on Monday to leave within 14 days. By Wednesday evening, some 2,500 Mauritania-based Senegalese living near the River Senegal had fled across the border river to the town of Rosso Senegal, the privately owned 'Sud Quotidien' newspaper in Dakar reported on Thursday. "Customs formalities on the two sides were waived to allow people with lots of luggage to return to their families in peace," the newspaper said. Mauritanians in Senegal left in droves last week after their government instructed them to return home and ordered the Senegalese out, ostensibly in order to avert a repeat of the 1989 bloodletting between the two peoples. That year hundreds of Senegalese and Mauritanians died in pogroms in each country, sparked by a minor incident on an island on the Senegal river between Mauritanian herders and Senegalese farmers. That conflict also took a toll on some black nationals of Mauritania, whose people are divided between white Moors, black Moors and other blacks who share the same mother tongues with ethnic groups on the Senegalese side of the border. In 1989, many non-Moorish blacks were rounded up and expelled to Senegal, in some cases after their Mauritanian identity papers were destroyed by the Mauritanian authorities. Human rights sources in Nouakchott told IRIN there was no sign of a recurrence of the 1989 violence. The source said some Mauritanians were taking Senegalese into their homes to protect them just in case they were targeted. The latest tension between the two countries followed the announcement by Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade of plans to revive a vast project to use the Senegal River to irrigate farmland, which Mauritania complained would severly deprive it of water. Mauritanian Government Spokesman Rachid Ould Saleh told reporters in Nouakchott on Wednesday that the project had ''devastated the efforts of Mauritanian peasants whose land has now dried up because the new authorities in Dakar illegally diverted the water", PANA reported. However, Senegalese Foreign Minister Cheikh Tidiane Gadio told reporters in Dakar on Tuesday that his country would not begin pumping water from the river without first informing Mauritania and Mali, PANA said. The three countries belong to the Organisation de Mise en Valeur du Fleuve Senegal (OMV), whose aims include the harmonious use of the river's waters. OMV chair Mali has called for a summit of its members. "I think the presidents will meet, certainly in the next few days, to discuss the crisis in a brotherly manner to arrive at the solutions needed," Modibo Keita, the secretary-general of the Malian presidency, said on Wednesday in Nouakchott.