Mauritanian Conspiracy ?  

I haven't seen much detailed commentary on the background to the Mauritanian coup, but the "Wayne Madsen Report" (which I haven't encountered before and looks like it's a bit out on the fringes) has this to say:

August 4, 2005 -- Ever since the Pentagon increased its covert northern African operations -- through programs known as the Pan Sahel Initiative and its replacement Trans-Saharan Counter-Terrorism Initiative (TSCTI) -- Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has used his virtual parallel intelligence and paramiltary force, known variably as the Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group (P2OG), Task Force 121, and Titrant Ranger, to engage in congressionally-unsupervised operations in the Saharan region. This past June, US Special Forces took part in Flintlock 05 exercises with the same Mauritanian officers who were involved in the recent coup against President Maaouya Ould Sid'Ahmed Taya while he was at King Fahd's funeral in Saudi Arabia. Other Mauritanian coup leaders were trained at U.S. European Command (EUCOM) facilities in Stuttgart, Germany. U.S. troops and their Mauritanian counterparts used the strategic Atar airport, in Mouakchott (not to be confused with the capital Nouakchott), as a staging post for joint operations. Atar airport is near the southeast part of Western Sahara in the middle of Mauritania.

No doubt we'll continue to see more of this sort of thing throughout the oil producing regions of the world as the US and China manouevre to control the remaining oil supplies. Its unclear exactly what sin the previous president (himself a successful coup plotter in the past) had committed, but presumably he was either looking at renegotiating the rules under which foreign energy companies operated or wasn't being hard enough on local Islamists for Rummy's liking.

While I normally prefer to be on the high moral ground on these issues, as I've got money in all 3 Australian oil companies operating in the country it does bring a new perspective to this issue that I can avoid when it comes to Iraq (though obviously the Iraq situation is far worse), in that I'd rather not lose my investment due to the Mauritanians nationalising their oil.

I imagine the virtuous course of action is to avoid investing in companies that have any interests in third world countries that may not be entirely fair to the locals - unfortunately this would narrow down the available field of companies to a very small set, given that all the the organisations with substantial local interests also operate offshore - especially with the news that Santos has also joined the fray of Australian companies venturing into unstable regions with an announcement of a new venture in Kyrgyzstan.

Further along in the same report from Wayne Madsen, there is a section that looks a lot like a north African rerun of "Operation Gladio" in Western Europe, this time aimed at rolling back an Islamic takeover rather than a communist one.

Intelligence sources have also reported that "retired" U.S. military officers with virtually unlimited budgets have recruited Mauritanian, Ivorian, Malian, and other West African college students in the United States and groomed them as future civilian leaders who would pledge allegiance to the United States. Most of the targeted students come from elite families and certain tribes (for example, the Fulani) in the West African nations. The U.S. has set up secret camps in Mali (near Gao, Bamako, and Timbuktu) and Senegal (near Dakar) to train rebel groups that would be poised to take over any Sahelian country where Islamists gain or threaten to gain power.

On the subject of Gladio, I saw it noted this week that it's the 25th anniversary of the Bologna train bombing, which is an unsavoury reminder of where these things can end up.

A lot of commentary on Gladio also mentions creepy neocon Michael Ledeen, who has a new piece of propaganda ("Time to take down the terror masters in Tehran.") out this week at the National Review (which may be the only type of commentary they publish, come to think of it) on the subject of Iran. The media noise about the threat of terrorism has been very loud since the London bombings with some sort of warning about the terrorist threat at the top of the news here every day lately. Given that the talks about Iran's nuclear program have finally failed, I guess we need to start worrying about a strike on or invasion of Iran again - I wonder if Scott Ritter or Seymour Hersh will have anything out in the coming weeks ?