Daddah, Moktar Ould

▪ 2004

      Mauritanian politician (b. Dec. 25, 1924, Boutilimit, French West Africa—d. Oct. 15, 2003, Paris, France), as Mauritania's first postindependence president (1961–78), secured international recognition and respect for the new country while he reconciled the varied interests of Mauritania's widely dispersed, partly nomadic, and religiously diverse Arab and black African populations. Daddah trained as a lawyer in France and was elected (1957) to the territorial assembly as a member of the moderate Progressive Mauritanian Union. He became president of the Executive Council in 1958, was named prime minister in 1959, and won the first presidential election in August 1961, nine months after Mauritania gained independence. Daddah led an authoritarian one-party administration, but he was regarded as an honest and relatively enlightened leader and was reelected twice (1971, 1975). An agreement with Morocco in 1975 to divide former Spanish Sahara (Western Sahara), however, led to an expensive war in the region, and in July 1978 Daddah was overthrown in a military coup. He lived in exile in France until he was allowed to return home quietly in 2001.

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▪ president of Mauritania

born December 25, 1924, Boutilimit, Mauritania, French West Africa

died October 14, 2003, Paris, France

      statesman who was independent Mauritania's first president (1961–78). He was noted for his progress in unifying his ethnically mixed, dispersed, and partly nomadic people under his authoritarian but enlightened rule.

      Of aristocratic background, Moktar Ould Daddah was the first Mauritanian to graduate from a university and to become a lawyer. When he returned from Paris in the mid-1950s, he joined the more moderate of two rival parties, the Progressive Mauritanian Union, and in 1957 was elected to the territorial assembly. By 1958 he was president of the Executive Council and the natural choice for prime minister in 1959 and president in 1961 after Mauritania attained independence. Meanwhile, in 1958 he had established a new unity party, the Mauritanian Regrouping Party, which in 1960 incorporated the chief remaining opposition party.

      Moktar Ould Daddah's first aim was national unity, a delicate problem in a country divided between a minority agricultural south and a largely nomadic Moorish centre and north. At first he tried to balance regional notables and impatient young modernizers in a basically parliamentary regime, but in 1964 he shifted to an authoritarian one-party system (Mauritanian People's Party, of which he was secretary-general). In July 1978 dissatisfaction with the costly attempt by Mauritania to annex part of former Spanish Sahara resulted in his ouster by a military coup d'état led by Lieutenant Colonel Mustafa Ould Salek.

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