The battle is not always fought on the battlefield; sometimes a skilled negotiator achieves what armies fail to accomplish. When the word is defeated, the nation may fall without a single shot, and whoever underestimates the power of ink may find themselves cast out of history and geography.

This is what we have witnessed time and again in past Mauritanian negotiation experiences,
where agreements were signed with clauses that appeared neutral on the surface but fundamentally constrained our will.
And because we did not peer into the future back then, our cities and ports are now held hostage to that moment.

1- Foremost among these examples: the Algiers Agreement of 1979

In that document, which was supposed to be the gateway to an honorable exit from the Sahara conflict, we accepted a clause that can only be understood as an unconditional political surrender.
The exact text of Article 3 read as follows:
"The Polisario Front solemnly declares that it does not have and will not have any territorial or other claims on Mauritania."
The Front had not even raised such claims in the first place. In fact, it was as if someone invited their adversary into their home, merely to impose on them the condition not to return to it!
It is an act that embodies the utmost degree of political capitulation.

Yet the Mauritanian negotiator, instead of demanding a reciprocal concession,
chose to placate doubts with statements that failed to safeguard sovereignty,
at a moment when the military was withdrawing from Oued Ed-Dahab
and strategic calculations were exceedingly complex.
In contrast, there was no recognition from the Sahrawi side of our sovereignty over Lagouira, despite its vital proximity to the economic capital Nouadhibou, and it remains today under Mauritania's temporary sovereignty.
It would have been possible to build upon this situation to secure it internationally through an initiative calling on both parties to relinquish it in favor of Mauritania, in honor of the blood of the fallen martyrs. But the mistake was made, and it was not merely an error of judgment, but a failure to seize the moment.

2- Under a verbal understanding with Morocco regarding the withdrawal arrangements from Oued Ed-Dahab, its forces were permitted to replace our forces without compensation, recognition, or documentation, even though the Madrid Tripartite Agreement signed in 1975 remains in force to this day, with no international agreement revoking it and no Mauritanian-Moroccan agreement redefining stances.

Can Mauritania revive this legal right today?
Do we possess the negotiating courage to demand a balanced concession from both parties?
Or has negotiating cowardice become the rule rather than the exception?

For anyone who doubts the importance of resolute negotiation, one need only reflect on the famous example of the Dayton Agreement in Bosnia: the Serb side triumphed militarily, yet lost most of its territorial gains at the negotiating table, because its adversary came to the table backed by legitimacy and law, with an eye on tomorrow rather than momentary applause.

We, too, have fallen into that mistake repeatedly.

3- In the mining agreements signed with foreign corporations, we admitted after the fall of the regime in 2005 that several negotiators had taken bribes, and some were even imprisoned over those deals. How much yesterday resembles today!

On June 2, 2025, an agreement was signed with Senegal regarding irregular migration, without opening any discussion on demographic balance or the impact of this form of movement on national security,
nor even on border sovereignty.

What has yet to be said is that we are on the verge of a new loss.

However, I have decided to postpone the discussion regarding the agreement with neighboring Senegal, and I will dedicate a special live episode to it after the blessed Eid al-Adha—God willing—as part of the program "Peering into the Future," which I host weekly and will be broadcast simultaneously on the El-Tayar page, the Deyloul Center page, and my personal page.

We write neither out of gloating nor to mourn the past, but we firmly believe that the homeland is not protected by texts crafted for appeasement, but rather drafted to safeguard sovereignty. History may forgive those who strove in earnest and erred, but it shows no mercy to those who shrank back in fear and perhaps betrayed, whether consciously or unconsciously.

Eid Mubarak

Ahmed Ould Mbarek
President of the Deyloul Center for Strategic Studies