Mauritania plugs a million migrants trying to reach the Canary Islands

Mauritania has 5,000 kilometres of border and when a cayuco leaves the north of the country for the Canary Islands, it crosses a distance similar to that which it would cross if it were going from Telde to Madrid.  

Mauritania is the West's new buffer on two routes: the Sahel and the sub-Saharan route. Lemine Katthary, president of the Atlas-Sahel Observatory, while sipping a large cup of watery coffee and swirling a spoon in a hotel in Nouakchott, maintains a prolonged silence in the video conference to deliver the first sentence of one of the leading North African experts on immigration: ‘More than a million irregular immigrants in Mauritania seek to reach Europe from our coasts via the Atlantic route’. On the legal front, Mauritania has a tough law to combat mafias and a Residence Law that means that any immigrant who does not comply with the basic rules of coexistence is banned from entering the country for ten years.

Katthary stresses that the massive arrival of migrants in Mauritania is a result of the hybrid strategy in the Sahel by organised criminal groups in Africa to launch swarms of migrants to the Canary Islands on multiple operational fronts. But Mauritania, a country that gave Rome two emperors, is struggling at sea and on land to prevent mafias from exploiting sectarian, ethnic and religious divisions and grievances among migrants by mixing trans-Saharans with sub-Saharans and people from Pakistan, Syria, Bangladesh and India.  

The mafias know that desperation is a powerful tool to carry out a hybrid campaign with significant strategic ramifications. 

For Lemine Katthary, this instrumentalisation of migration, coupled with an increasing influx of migrants through a combination of routes, can contribute to increasing pressure on and attempt to unbalance member state authorities, especially in terms of deployable resources when considering geography and available manpower.  

This leads to further complications in dealing with hybrid threats. Hostile actors employ the tactic of generating distraction within the EU, as well as fostering polarisation within societies by spreading misinformation and disinformation. This strategy is aimed at disorienting the EU and facilitating the achievement of hostile actors' objectives.

In his view, Mauritania is going through a very difficult period due to the increasing number of irregular migrants arriving from various African countries. ‘Mauritania is becoming the transit country through the Atlantic route, which is a very serious issue because it is proof of what the mafias and organised crime are capable of doing in our region, and their capacity to bring in immigrants and traffic them; as I say, it is no longer just about African immigrants, but this phenomenon is taking on new dimensions’.  

He adds that ‘this should set off all the alarm bells because we are facing a real danger that we must act quickly, combining all possible efforts to deal with this new reality before it becomes a real disaster that threatens security and coexistence in Mauritania and, of course, in European countries, mainly in Spain and, more specifically, in the Canary Islands, where the serious consequences of this problem will be felt if we do not act in time’.

The case involves 4.5 million inhabitants in a country with 1.5 million migrants stumbling around the country and a UN refugee centre on the border with 170,000 refugees from an alien problem: Mali. Mauritania, which has agreements with Senegal, Mali, Gambia and Côte d'Ivoire for the repatriation of illegal immigrants, faces a challenge that could generate risks of institutional stability due to the problems of stability in Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger and Cameroon, if it does not maintain the wisdom of knowing how to combine solutions in an efficient manner, given that ‘it is a great strain on resources’ because ‘to make it clear, it is as if 15 million immigrants were arriving illegally in Spain all at once’.

‘This is the biggest challenge Mauritania is facing, followed, of course, by the fight against other phenomena associated with illegal immigration, such as human trafficking and drug trafficking, which is a threat that is altering the lives of Mauritanians, who are witnessing the arrival of new practices and new problems for which we are not prepared; a serious example of this is the issue of drugs: Mauritanian society is not used to drug use and it is a phenomenon that is proliferating with the arrival of irregular migrants,’ says Khattary. 

80% of these migrants arrive in Mauritania with the intention of getting enough money to try and make it; we can say that, right now, more than a million irregular migrants in Mauritania are trying to reach Europe from the Mauritanian coast via the Atlantic route. This is not to say that they all make it; in most cases it takes months from the time they arrive until they have the money for the journey. ‘Unfortunately, these are people who fall into the hands of illegal immigration mafias, and our work at the Atlas-Sahel Observatory involves raising awareness among potential victims by showing the horrors of this lethal journey and the reality if they finally manage to reach Europe’, says Katthary. 

In the country for which the International Monetary Fund (IMF) forecasts growth of 15% in 2025, one of the highest in the world, the average Mauritanian citizen has also become frightened and lives in a state of constant fear and worry because they are being overtaken by the new reality they face; when the threat begins to put social values, security and principles at stake, the fear of losing their identity as a society is perhaps the most eye-opening. This is why the launch of the Atlas-Sahel Observatory, chaired by Lemine Khattary, ‘is a sign of the state of awareness and the growing interest and concern about the danger posed by illegal immigration’. 

‘This observatory works to tackle this phenomenon and we want to raise awareness among civil society, among Mauritanian citizens so that they help us to put an end to the mafias that engage in human trafficking, and among immigrants themselves so that they become aware and alert other compatriots to the big lies with which the mafias capture them in terms of opportunities and life in Europe’, says Lemine Katthary. 

Article previously published in La Gaceta de Gran Canaria