WHILE ATTENTION WAS focused on the other side of the earth, a band of soldiers in Mauritania led by General Mohamed Ould Abdelaziz overthrew the government of Sidi Ould Cheik Abdallahi in a bloodless coup during the first week of August. The president, his family, and entourage are detained and unharmed, despite calls for their release by the African Union, the United States, and the governments of the continent’s major powers, Nigeria and South Africa.

There have been peaceful demonstrations in support of both sides of a political drama that superficially appears to be a fight for power among leaders of the country’s Moorish tribes who have run Mauritania since it gained independence from France in 1960. Apart from the brief detention of a photojournalist during one of these demonstrations, there has been no particular effort by the soldiers to suppress information on the events, even if General Ould Abdelaziz and his comrades-in-arms are characteristically quiet regarding motives and intentions. However, they have stated they will do what they did when they overthrew the government of Maaouiya Ould Taya in 2005 in a similarly bloodless coup. They ruled themselves ineligible to run in promised elections, which took place in early 2007. They retained key security posts, from which the deposed president reportedly tried to remove them last June.