The deployment of thousands of foreign troops last year has helped significantly stem the jihadist violence that has rocked northern Mozambique for over four years, a global think tank said Thursday. More than 3,100 military troops from Rwanda and several southern African countries moved into Mozambique’s troubled Cabo Delgado province in July last year. “In a short period, the soldiers have dismantled all the insurgents’ major bases and seized important territory they once held,” the International Crisis Group said in a report on Thursday.
In December, President Filipe Nyusi reported that the gas-rich region had suffered fewer attacks since the international deployment. Some 3,700 people have been killed since the unrest began. Rwanda initially sent in 1,000 soldiers in July, but has not updated the number of troops it currently has in the country. Southern African countries under the auspices of the SADC bloc went in a few weeks later. The European Union and the United States have also been training the under-equipped Mozambican defence forces. The Rwandan forces have secured the Afungi peninsula — the nerve centre of a multibillion-dollar gas project.
They also dislodged the militants and retook control of the key port of Mocimboa da Praia, where the insurgency first struck in 2017. The SADC troops are operating mainly in central Cabo Delgado and near the provincial capital Pemba, as well near the border with Tanzania. But the Crisis Group warned that military might alone is unlikely to get rid of a rebellion that has grown out of “grievances felt deeply by large sections” of the youth in the predominantly Muslim region in Mozambique’s most impoverished province. It suggested that Nyusi’s administration opens “dialogue with political elites who have influence in Cabo Delgado” to find ways to persuade the insurgents to surrender. If not, the violence could remain a source of regional insecurity, it warned.
“The insurgency is far from extinguished,” it said, adding that “many fighters have simply blended into the civilian population, waiting for the right time to remobilise”. Pockets of militants have been staging attacks in parts of Cabo Delgado and in neighbouring Niassa province. “The insurgency could thus easily rebound if foreign forces suddenly draw down,” it said. The Crisis Group urged the African Union to help finance the deployments and “to block financial and material aid to the insurgency from nearby ISIS cells” in East Africa.
