Mauritania

You may have read about a coup in Mauritania yesterday. If you were anything like me - your first reaction was "where the heck is Mauritania"? I seriously doubt that I had ever heard of the country before in my life.

In an effort to erase my own ignorance on the subject and to assist in the enlightenment of others who may have been in the same boat - I have culled some of the more interesting facts about Mauritania from the CIA World Factbook:

Independent from France in 1960, Mauritania annexed the southern third of the former Spanish Sahara (now Western Sahara) in 1976, but relinquished it after three years of raids by the Polisario guerrilla front seeking independence for the territory. Opposition parties were legalized and a new constitution approved in 1991. Two multiparty presidential elections since then were widely seen as flawed, but October 2001 legislative and municipal elections were generally free and open. Mauritania remains, in reality, a one-party state. The country continues to experience ethnic tensions between its black population and the Maur (Arab-Berber) populace.

- Slightly larger than three times the size of New Mexico

- Population 3,086,859 (July 2005 est.) That's about the same as the populations of either Iowa or Mississippi.

- Religion - Muslim 100%

- Legal System - a combination of Shari'a (Islamic law) and French civil law. Or you may say the worst of both worlds.

- Economy:

Half the population still depends on agriculture and livestock for a livelihood, even though many of the nomads and subsistence farmers were forced into the cities by recurrent droughts in the 1970s and 1980s. Mauritania has extensive deposits of iron ore, which account for nearly 40% of total exports. The decline in world demand for this ore, however, has led to cutbacks in production. The nation's coastal waters are among the richest fishing areas in the world, but overexploitation by foreigners threatens this key source of revenue.

- GDP $5.5 billion (2004 Estimate) Just for the sake of comparison - consider that consumers in the US spent that much just at Best Buy - in the last three months!

- GDP per capita purchasing power parity - $1,800 (2004 est.) Yikes that's poor!