A Nation Plundered by a Few… and Mourned by the Many
By: Mohamed Abdel Rahman AbdallahJournalist
In every corner of this land, there is a muffled cry, a hidden tear, and silent groans that no one seems to hear.
Meanwhile, a privileged few live in their ivory towers, monopolizing wealth, hoarding power, and acting as if the country were a private inheritance—divided among influential families and passed down from generation to generation.
It is the bitter reality of a nation plundered by a minority and mourned by the majority—where justice is absent, human dignity is degraded, and dreams are killed before they are even born.
Organized Looting Without Shame
Corruption in Mauritania is no longer an exception—it has become the rule that governs both political and economic life.
Resources are granted by top-down decisions. Contracts are signed in the dark. Jobs are handed out based on loyalty and kinship.
While a narrow elite enjoys power and privileges, the majority of citizens endure a harsh and unjust reality:
Crippling cost of living
A collapsed education system
Nonexistent healthcare
Rampant unemployment choking the youth
The wealth of the nation is plundered while the people are left stranded, chasing illusions, numbed by hollow seasonal promises that never materialize.
A State Run Like a Private Estate
Political affiliation, tribal ties, and personal loyalty—not national loyalty—have become the unspoken conditions for claiming rights.
State institutions are run on favoritism and appeasement rather than competence or citizenship.
As a result, the state has been emptied of its meaning. Power has been privatized, becoming a tool to entrench soft despotism.
This is a state that serves those who hold power and wealth—not those who deserve justice and opportunity.
The Majority Weeps in Silence
In remote villages, marginalized neighborhoods, and crowded markets, millions of Mauritanians live lives unworthy of human dignity.
Mothers giving birth in primitive conditions
Children dropping out of school due to poverty
Youth torn between migration and despair
Employees stripped of dignity and hope
Patients treated as mere numbers in death queues
This majority—paying the price for its silence and helplessness—is not asking for the impossible. It simply wants a state that protects its people, dignity with bread, and justice that does not distinguish between a minister’s son and a poor man’s child.
The Human Cost of Looting
Looting doesn’t just steal money—it robs time, kills hope, and destroys the citizen’s connection to their homeland.
When people see hypocrisy rewarded, integrity marginalized, lies elevated, and truth crushed, the moral foundation collapses.
This breeds generations without trust, without belonging.
The powerful elite may have succeeded in monopolizing wealth, but they have failed to silence the collective pain.
What’s happening is not merely a political or financial crisis—it is a daily humanitarian tragedy.
A nation plundered by a few and mourned by the many is a nation at risk—its stability, its children’s future, and the dignity of its people all hang in the balance.
The only way forward is for the silent to rise, for those who pay the price to speak up, and for the state to be rebuilt on the foundations of justice and equality—not on the logic of spoils and favoritism.
Will a day come when the tears of the majority are dried, the hands of looters are cut off, and the homeland is reclaimed for all its children?
