‘Orienting’ Fulani herders of Mauritania: Struggles for Identity, Political Marginalization and Mobilization Since the 1950s Islamization

Abstract

The Maghreb Review, Vol. 35, 3, 2010 © The Maghreb Review 2010 This publication is printed on longlife paper ‘ORIENTING’ FULANI HERDERS OF MAURITANIA: STRUGGLES FOR IDENTITY, POLITICAL MARGINALIZATION AND MOBILIZATION SINCE THE 1950S ISLAMIZATION BY RICCARDO CIAVOLELLA* INTRODUCTION This article offers a diachronic analysis of the political condition of pastoral Fulani (or Fulbe) with nomadic origins in Mauritania, such as the Fulaabe lineage and Fulbe jeeri and Fulbe waalo groups. Despite their relatively small demographic importance, their history reveals critical political and cultural dynamics at the core of the country’s evolution. Particularly, it highlights the limits of polarized discourses of identity between Arab/African and nomadic/sedentary categories. The issue is relevant to the political and public debate in Mauritania since the 1990s, when a handful of intellectuals lobbied for the recognition of an arab origin for Fulbe (Sall, 1999). The aim of this strategy was the acquisition of power and it raised a long debate within the Negro-Mauritanian political movement and, on the opposite side, among the supporters of the Arab identity of the country close to governing elites. ‘ORIENTING’ FULANI HERDERS OF MAURITANIA 307 But that debate focuses exclusively on the trajectory of a few individuals aiming for a political career. It neglects the history from below of all the Fulani communities of nomadic and pastoral origin. Their history inside the Mauritanian state since its colonial foundation is marked by an increased marginalization. This process of exclusion came to a climax with the ethnic persecutions of 1989. Fulani herders also occupy a difficult position in the Mauritanian political arena compared with the sedentary Negro-Mauritanian elite, which disposes of better power networks and economic assets. Stemming from an analysis of the debate about their place in the cultural and socio-political context of Mauritania, this article retraces the historical foundations of the Fulani herders’ political and social conditions. In particular, it analyses how some intellectuals tried to mobilize Fulani marginality as a strategic discourse for claiming social and political integration and also discusses the place of Fulani marginal communities in the context of highly ethnically polarized political strife. Fulbe or Haalpulaar’en: Conflicting Stories in the Margins of a Long History In Mauritania, there are some issues which constantly recur in conversations in taxis, courtyards, rural villages, taxis-brousse, political parties’ headquarters and intellectual debates. One of these is about the existence of a cultural, racial or ethnic difference between Fulbe and Haalpulaar’en. Self-defining Haalpulaar’en usually consider that both ethnic names refer to the same group, as ‘Haalpulaar’en’ literally means ‘those who speak the pulaar’ or language of the Fulbe (Wane, 1969). The shared language is then the criterion for defining a unique ethno-cultural identity. The term ‘Fulbe’ has a particular meaning only when evoking their pastoralist and nomadic ancestors before Haalpulaar’en historical sedentarization in the 16th century, or when describing the specific noble group (rimbe) of herders inside the Haalpulaar’en status hierarchy. Nevertheless, some self-defining Fulbe reject these linguistic and social criteria of ethnic unification with Haalpulaar’en. They rather define their particular identity as related to their historical or current pastoral and nomadic way of life. They claim a cultural specificity in opposition to the sedentary and farming society of the Haalpulaar’en, whom they call ‘Fuutankoobe’, or the inhabitants of the Fuuta Tooro historical region. The issue reminds us of the long anthropological debate about Fulbe identity. Colonial administrators and ethnographers, such as Delafosse and Faidherbe (Pondopoulo, 1996, 2009), usually opted for a differentiation between ‘Peuls’ (Fulbe) and ‘Toucouleurs’ (Haalpulaar’en), based on racial and cultural criteria: ‘real’ Fulbe had to be of fair complexion, representing an intermediate race between “Sub-Saharan African Negros” and “white Arabs” of the North (Boëtsch and Ferrié, 1999), and following a pastoral and nomadic way of life, like any other supposedly Hamitic ethnic group with Eastern origins. Combining cultural and racial categories, the colonial ‘anthropological reason’ 308 RICCARDO CIAVOLELLA (Amselle, 1990) draws a clear distinction between Fulani nomads and sedentary people, based on a set of opposite ethnic characteristics. This has profoundly contributed to the creation of the myth of pure nomadic and pastoral Fulani, opposed to political...