On the southern border of Europe

If I were to ask you "were is the southern border of Europe", you would probably answer somewhere around Gibraltar. You would be wrong.

The real (geopolitical) border of Europe - where European forces try to stop immigration or combat terrorism - turns out to be...the southern Sahara desert. 

Mauritania, to be exact. "Secrets of the Sahara: Mauritania´s Dark Side" tells the story. The Dutch reporter often comes across as a racist White boy asking the natives *really* silly questions ("can you keep track of time, do you know how a clock works", etc), but I think it´s obvious he´s just playing dumb in order to get access to places normally not shown to foreign correspondents. In actual fact, the "stupid" reporter is fluent in three languages (Dutch, French, English) and manages to escape his handlers in order to interview dissidents and opposition leaders! 

Mauritania comes across as the land God (or Allah) forsook. 90% is desert, there is only one railway line, and the capital Nouakchott was built by beduins forced to leave the desert after a drought. There are still dromedaries on the city streets to this very day. Otherwise, Mauritania is notorious for its human rights abuses. Slavery was abolished in 1981, Mauritania being the last nation in the world to do so. In reality, Blacks and other dark-skinned peoples are still being enslaved in the country by the Arabic-speaking "White Moors" (who are far from White by Western racial standards). 

The reporter meets Moorish families in both the desert and the capital who seem to have Black slaves. He also interviews a Black opposition leader, two freed Black slaves, and a lawyer who says that many freed slaves simply go back to their former masters, since they have nowhere else to go. Its strongly implied in the documentary that the Mauritanian government actively discourages Blacks from leaving the country for Europe. Interestingly, there are Black guest-workers in Mauritania, from Nigeria and perhaps other places. One of their churches have been attacked by Muslim thugs. (I assume the native Blacks in Mauritania are Muslims, just like the Moors.) 

At the moment, Mauritania is a democracy of sorts, perhaps explaining why this documentary could be made at all. The Western world has decided to support the Mauritanian governments and military. One reason is the war on terror. There are Islamist terrorists in at least two of Mauritania´s neighbors, Algeria and Mali. You would think the Sahara desert would stop them from entering Mauritania. You would be wrong. One military officer freely admits that the desert is like a gigantic political vacuum simply waiting to be filled by somebody, that somebody being terrorists moving freely across the poorly defended borders. 

Another reason is the migrant crisis. Still today, Spanish coast guards are aiding their Mauritanian colleagues to patrol the Mauritanian coast in case migrants from other parts of Africa try to use this particular route to reach the Canary Islands (which is Spanish territory). I assume this means there won´t be any Western pressure on Mauritania to end slavery any time soon. The problem, of course, goes even deeper: What is "slavery" anyway? Various forms of slavery also exist in the Western world, for instance sex-slavery, and very little is done to stop it here, right in our back yard...

With that little reflection, I end this review.