Military Committee for National Salvation
The Military Committee for National Salvation was a military government of Mauritania that took power in 1979. It was installed by Mohamed Khouna Ould Haidalla, Ahmed Ould Bouceif and fellow officers, in an internal regime/military coup d'état on April 6, 1979, removing Colonel Mustapha Ould Salek of the Military Committee for National Recovery from effective power. He was replaced by Mohamed Mahmoud Ould Louly in May 1979; Haidallah would later emerge as the main military strongman, and go on to assume full powers, only to be deposed by Maaouya Ould Sid'Ahmed Taya in the 1984 coup d'état. The CMSN remained as an institution until 1992, when Taya introduced a multi-party system following the 1991 constitutional referendum – he himself lost power only in the 2005 coup d'état.
The main achievement of the CMSN was to make peace with the Western Saharan Polisario Front, which had been fighting Mauritania since the government of President Moktar Ould Daddah entered the Western Sahara War in 1975. The CMSN opted for complete withdrawal from the conflict, evacuating southern Río de Oro and recognizing the Polisario as the representative of the Sahrawi people; this led to a crisis in relations with Morocco, which had similarly annexed the northern two-thirds of the country, and was also facing Sahrawi resistance.
