Mohamed Khouna Ould Haidalla

Former head of state of Mauritania from 1980 to 1984

Col. Mohamed Khouna Ould Haidallah (محمد خونا ولد هيداله Muḥammad Khouna Wald Haidallah; born 1940) was the head of state of Mauritania (Chairman of the Military Committee for National Salvation, CMSN) from 4 January 1980 to 12 December 1984. He was an unsuccessful candidate in the 2003 presidential election and the 2007 presidential election.

Born in 1940 in the Nouadhibou region (either in then Spanish Sahara or colonial Mauritania), into a family of the Sahrawi Laaroussien tribe, he passed to secondary education in Rosso near the border to French administered Senegal. He earned a baccalaureat in science in Dakar, Senegal, in 1961. After joining the Mauritanian army in 1962, he studied in French military colleges, notably Saint Cyr. After 1975, he commanded forces in the north of Mauritania and Tiris al Gharbiya (Western Sahara), in the war against Polisario Front guerrillas, notably in the Zouerate region and Bir Moghrein. On March 16, 1981, a violent coup attempt against Haidalla failed. Haidalla accused Morocco of being behind the coup, which Morocco denied, and in the next month Maaouya Ould Sid'Ahmed Taya was appointed Prime Minister. Another attempted coup was allegedly sponsored by Libya. On December 12, 1984, however, Taya ousted Haidallah in a coup while the latter was out of the country. Haidalla had been at a Franco African Summit in Burundi and learned of the coup in Brazzaville, during his return to Mauritania, from Denis Sassou Nguesso, the president of the Republic of the Congo. Haidallah returned to Mauritania anyway and was arrested at the airport in Nouakchott; he was eventually released in December 1988. Relations were completely severed between 1981 and 1985, when they were restored by Haidalla's successor. However, relations improved with POLISARIO's main regional backer, Algeria, with the Algerian government sending arms, ammunitions and supplies to bolster his regime. Haidalla's 1984 recognition of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR, the POLISARIO's government in exile) as a sovereign nation appears to have been one of the triggering causes for Maaouya Ould Sid'Ahmed Taya's coup in late 1984. as well as several failed attempts to rebuild the political system shattered by the 1978 coup—first as a multiparty system, and then, after the first coup attempt against him, as a one party state. Political opponents were treated harshly, with imprisonments and those responsible for one of the failed coups against his government were executed.

After returning to Mauritania in late 1984, Haidallah was held in administrative detention for several years by Ould Taya, during which time he fell sick. After his release, he stayed outside politics until 2003, when he returned to head the opposition. He then unsuccessfully ran for president against Taya in November, campaigning on a moderately Islamist platform, whereas Taya, who had established full diplomatic ties with Israel, was considered pro Western. Haidallah officially came in second place with about 19% of the vote, although he alleged fraud; he was arrested immediately after the election, accused of plotting a coup. Haidallah had also been briefly detained just prior to the vote. On December 28, 2003 he received a five year suspended sentence and therefore was set free, but barred from politics for five years. An appeals court confirmed this sentence in April 2004. Also in April, his supporters attempted to register a political party, the Party for Democratic Convergence. Haidalla was arrested again on November 3, 2004, accused of involvement in coup plots. The prosecutor sought a five year prison sentence, but he was acquitted on February 3, 2005, at the end of a mass trial of 195 people.

Following a military coup against Taya in August 2005, an amnesty in early September freed Haidallah from his sentences, along with more than a hundred others sentenced for political offenses. On December 27, 2006, Haidalla announced that he would be a candidate in the presidential election scheduled for March 11, 2007. However, no longer having the political base that came with being the main candidate of the opposition under Ould Taya, Haidallah was even less successful in the 2007 election, coming in tenth place and receiving 1.73% of the vote. After the election, which was won by Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi, Haidalla announced his support for Abdallahi in October 2007. However, following the coup that ousted Abdallahi in August 2008, Haidalla expressed his support for the coup in a statement on August 29, 2008, saying that it was necessary under the circumstances and urging all Mauritanians to support it. He also criticized the negative reactions of Western governments to the coup, alleging that they were interfering in Mauritanian affairs. In July 2007, Sidi Mohamed Ould Haidalla (Mohamed Khouna's son) was detained in Morocco for drug trafficking charges. In 2008 he was judged and condemned to 7 years in prison. On June 18, 2010, Haidallah wrote an open letter to the heads of state who have good relations with the king of Morocco, requesting for help to bring his son back to Mauritania or to liberate him. He denounces the conditions of imprisonment of his son, who is handicapped. On June 24, 2010, El Ghassem Ould Bellali, a Mauritanian deputy, declared that the imprisonment of Sidi Mohamed Ould Haidalla is a Moroccan "political vengeance" against Haidalla's father, for the recognition he gave to the SADR and to the right of self determination of the Sahrawi people, when he was president of Mauritania.