1989 events in Mauritania and Senegal

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The 1989 events were a series of ethnic and political disturbances in Mauritania and Senegal.

In April 1989, a long-standing dispute over the location of the common border in relation to the dividing Senegal river escalated into ethnic violence, which quickly drew both governments into the fray.

Mauritania's south is heavily populated by the black African Fula/Toucouleur, Wolof, Soninké and Bambara peoples, while the northern Moorish (Arabo-Berber) population has long dominated politics, from pre-colonial slave-taking (with some vestiges of slavery remaining today) to political Arabization and racial discrimination post-independence. In 1989, a border conflict with Wolof-dominated Senegal caused ethnic tension to boil over, and in the violence that followed, tens of thousands of black Mauritanian southerners fled or were expelled towards Senegal and Mali, and a number of brutal killings were reported. [1] Senegal reciprocated by chasing Moorish citizens from the country, and sacking and burning Moorish shops and homes. Tens or hundreds were killed on both sides. Mauritanian refugees would slowly trickle back into the country during the following years, but some 20-30,000 remain in Senegalese refugee camps today, and this is were the armed black nationalist Mauritanian movement FLAM is based.

These expulsions marked a brutal climax in Mauritania's complicated and sometimes violent historical relations between Moors and southerners, and with ethnic tension remaining an important factor in the country today, the 1989 events is a constant point of reference in the country's political discourse.