Mauritanian Minister of Defense, retired Lieutenant General Hanna Ould Sidi, held a meeting with a military delegation from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) visiting Nouakchott, headed by Major General Massimo Spadavecchia, Deputy Director of the Cooperation and Security Division of the NATO International Military Staff.
According to what the Mauritanian Ministry of Defense announced, in a statement published by the Mauritanian army on its website, on Wednesday, the meeting discussed the existing cooperation relations between the two sides and ways to strengthen and develop them, especially in the field of defense.
The NATO delegation also held a meeting later with the Secretary-General of the Ministry of Defense, Colonel Ishaq Abdullah Mahmoud Ibrahim, to discuss enhancing cooperation between the two parties, in the presence of other Mauritanian military leaders.
The Ministry of Defense did not reveal technical details or specific new agreements as a result of the two meetings held on Tuesday, only referring to the discussion of “existing cooperation relations” and “ways to strengthen and develop them,” which reflects the periodic nature of such visits that focus on following up on existing cooperation programs between the two parties.
The relationship between Nouakchott and NATO dates back to 1995, when Mauritania joined the “Mediterranean Dialogue” launched by the alliance with the aim of enhancing security and stability in the Mediterranean region.
In recent years, the alliance announced that Mauritania is a “strategic partner” in the Sahel region and West Africa, coinciding with the decline in security cooperation between it and other Sahel countries, after Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger turned their backs on traditional Western partners and turned towards Moscow.
This transformation has made Mauritania, which has been relatively successful in containing terrorist threats since 2011, the main, or almost the only, partner of NATO in the Sahel region.
At the Madrid Summit in 2022, NATO leaders approved a package to build Mauritania’s defense and security capabilities, at its request, divided into several axes: developing special operations forces, maritime security, intelligence, a program to convert retired military personnel to civilian professions, managing stocks of small and light weapons, and military education.
This package was translated into concrete measures, which included the delivery of equipment to special operations forces in late 2024, joint naval exercises, and support for defense education programs, as well as a pilot program to transform about 120 retired military personnel into agricultural and craft professions during 2025 and 2026, according to data published by the alliance.
The relationship gained additional momentum this year when President Mohamed Ould Sheikh Ghazouani visited NATO headquarters in Brussels on March 25, and met with Secretary-General Mark Rutte and the Atlantic Council, in his first visit to NATO headquarters since January 2021.
The visit culminated in the approval of a “dedicated individual partnership program,” which the alliance described as opening a “new phase” in cooperation between the two parties. Last April, Mauritania also received the Commander of the NATO Defense College, and regular high-level meetings continued, including the visit of the Special Representative for the Southern Neighborhood, Javier Colomina, early last year.
The strengthening of this cooperation comes at a time when Mauritania’s fears are mounting about the repercussions of the security deterioration in neighboring Mali on its eastern border strip, which extends for more than 2,000 kilometers across almost desert terrain devoid of population, which makes monitoring it by traditional means an extremely difficult task.
The “Support for Islam and Muslims” group, which is linked to Al-Qaeda, expanded its activity over the past year in areas close to the Mauritanian border, after it carried out seven simultaneous attacks in July 2025 on towns in the region located close to Senegal and Mauritania.
Analysts believe that this border fragility opens the door for armed groups to exploit the security vacuum and the social and economic gaps of the residents of the border areas, whether to recruit new elements or to build smuggling networks that finance their activities, which makes strengthening military cooperation with partners such as NATO, especially in the areas of intelligence and border security, an increasing priority for Mauritania in the face of a threat that is rapidly moving west towards its borders.
It is noted that Mauritania has recently become heavily dependent on NATO countries, especially in the field of equipment, drones, defense and security technology, to confront the dangers of armed groups and smuggling networks in the region.
But this does not negate its pursuit of balance in its relations, as the visit of the NATO delegation comes only two weeks after the Mauritanian Minister of Defense participated in the “China-Africa Peace and Security Forum” in Beijing, and held discussions with his Chinese counterpart, Admiral Dong Jun, which observers see as an indication of the policy of diversifying defense partnerships.
Analysts believe that, through this diversification, Mauritania seeks to build modern military capabilities without fully engaging in political obligations imposed by full membership in any particular axis, taking advantage of its position as a relative “island of stability” in a turbulent region, which at the same time hosts refugees from Mali and faces cross-border threats that include terrorism, smuggling, and irregular migration.
