Despite the president's attempts to placate the population, sympathetic youth gathered at the airport to greet Mr Dahoud's remains when they returned from Morocco, where he had died in hospital, and several single-issue protests have taken place over the past months. Complaints over water shortages in the eastern province of Hodh ech Chargui on February 18th, for example, escalated into open conflict between local tribesmen and the police-and later the military. Fighting erupted after the prefect apparently insulted protestors, and the military had to be called into the town of Vassala to control protestors after they set fire to the town hall. Local media reported that several protestors had been beaten and arrested.

Unions have also become agitated in the past quarter. On February 13th the country's main unions-the Confédération nationale des travailleurs de Mauritanie, the Confédération générale des travailleurs de Mauritanie and the Confederation libre des travailleurs de Mauritanie--demonstrated in Nouakchott, Nouadhibou, Zouérate, Aleg and elsewhere to demand dialogue with the government over better working conditions. In mid-March healthcare workers threatened to strike on April 7th unless the government increased their pay and provided better equipment. The union demonstrations passed off peacefully, a sign that the government views the unions as an organised force that it must treat carefully. In a further sign of the fragility of domestic political stability, a regional Islamist terrorist group, al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), claimed responsibility for a failed attempt to assassinate the president in early February, during which over a dozen soldiers were injured.