Jihadists linked to ISIS killed 600 people last year in Cabo Delgado, the northernmost province of Mozambique. In total, the ISIS-affiliated group claimed responsibility for twenty-six violent attacks in Mozambique last year.

The Atrocities Of The New Terror Group

The terrorist organization has beheaded, disfigured and dismembered citizens in the province, including children. Bordering Tanzania, the coastal province is made up of small villages, most of whom are populated by subsistence farmers and fishermen. Many of the villages have been burned and most have now been deserted.

Apart from its political affiliation, not much is known about the group which started in October 2017,  including its name, origins, mandate and funding. Videos posted on social media have supposedly shown the terrorist group waving the ISIS flag.

‘No Evidence … Of An Overarching Leadership’

According to Jasmine Opperman, an African expert on Islamic Theology on Counterterrorism, there are between seven and ten cells operating in Cabo Delgado. Ms Opperman claims that there is “no evidence at this point in time of an overarching ideology or an overarching leadership.”

“There are indicators of Islamic extremism involved in some of these cell structures,” she added. “We are sitting with a serious, serious, problem. The Islamic State does not need a well-run organization [operation]. They need a proxy and some of these cells are the ideal proxy.”

Further exacerbating the situation are the weak borders between SADC countries. Although the situation is not yet a “direct threat”, political and security risk analyst, Johann Smith said: “This is not a Mozambican problem, it’s a regional one.”

“After the first attack, the SADC Security Organ should have met to decide how they were going to deal with the problem. Up to now, the issue has not featured on the agenda during subsequent meetings.”

Mozambique: Our Troops Are Being Deceived

Last week, President Filipe Nyusi of Mozambique alleged that the terrorist group was disseminating “currents of disinformation” against Mozambican security forces. Speaking to the troops at a military base in Mueda, a Cabo Delgado town, Nyusi said the disinformation “shows a lack of respect for those who are sacrificing their lives in defence of the communities.”

“We are accompanying the attacks of the criminals and your [citizens’] response, because we have noted that the enemy strategy is to put us in conflict with our people.”

President Nyusi claimed that the insurgents had deceived Mozambican army and police that their terrorist attacks had been carried out by elements within the army and the police.

He said that people were “spreading messages against sovereignty, without being aware of the great sacrifices that are being made.”

Nyusi said he wants Mozambican forces to find out more about the terrorists, including their origins and their location.

‘Go Forward To Face A Common Enemy’

“This is because, in a house where we don’t know who the thief is, people begin to distrust each other,” he explained. “We want to build trust and go forward to face a common enemy.”

Despite this, the common enemy has not doused the tense relationship between the Mozambique Defence Armed Force (FADM) and Russian-backed Wagner Group fighters.

Arriving to fight the Islamic militants, the Wagner troops were ill-prepared for the conditions in Mozambique, according to Smith. He clarified that their military equipment was ineffective, and that the troops were ill-equipped to deal with the heat.

Smith: Russia Making Mozambique’s Situation Worse

The Russian troops have now withdrawn to Nacala, a city also in Northern Mozambique, to plan and retrain. Wagner’s presence, Smith added, has served to increase insurgent attacks.

“The sophistication and the brazenness of the attacks are evolving.” Smith said. “They have access to intelligence, access to knowledge on where the deployments are when they are at their most vulnerable, they have access to FADM uniforms, they have seized weapons that Wagner has given to the FADM⁠—sophisticated weapons⁠—which means their sophistication I escalating day by day.

“The brutality against the civilians is an answer I am still looking for. I am not sure what their motive behind that is, [but] it is gruesome.”

The FADM and Wagner’s failure to curb the insurgency has emboldened the terrorist groups, and they have begun to move more inland.

The Wider African Fight Against ISIS

Mozambique is not the only African nation battling the presence of ISIS-affiliated jihadists. In West Africa⁠—particularly Nigeria⁠—Boko Haram insurgents pledged allegiance to ISIS in a video released in 2015. In Somalia, Al Shabaab members fight on behalf of al Qaeda, with some members pledging allegiance to ISIS.

As it loses ground in the Middle East, ISIS is increasingly moving towards Africa, spreading to Tunisia, Niger, Burkina Faso, Cameron and now, the SADC region.

The African Union’s reaction to the threat of ISIS, including conflict, war and violence has seen no success in the continent.

“During the 50th Anniversary of the Organization of African Unity/African Union (OAU/AU) in May 2013, the AU Assembly of Heads of State and Government adopted a landmark declaration,” a press release from the AU read in 2017.

“They vowed that Africa would not bequeath the burden of conflicts to the next generation and made a commitment to end violent conflict on the continent by 2020. This was translated into the AU initiative: Silencing the Guns by 2020.”

It is now 2020, and rather than stemming the progress of ISIS in the continent, the terrorist group is spreading rapidly throughout all of Africa. This is a massive threat to the security, stability, longevity and happiness of Africa’s 1.3 billion population.

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“I was teaching a girl in 2011. She was 13 years old. I liked her because she was beautiful. I manipulated her grades. If she got a good grade, I tried to lower it. I’d humiliate her in class and she finally agreed to meet me,” the unnamed teacher revealed to Unreported World. He had forced a student into having sex with him – a practice known as “sex for grades” – which remains widespread in many African states. The child in question left school soon after, forgoing her education because of the trauma of sexual abuse.

Despite wishing to remain anonymous, the man, who is still a teacher, spoke candidly about his assault of a minor on camera because he said that the custom is so prevalent that he was not worried about having charges pressed against him. He believed that this kind of exploitation remains rampant since it may be difficult to truly stamp it out of society.

He initially discovered that teachers could wield their authority in this manner when he was a student himself and a teacher asked him to take a girl to his house.

There are little records of how many teachers in African countries engage in the practice, and very rarely do the perpetrators face prosecution. Most of the cases go unreported due to the shame and stigma attached. As a result, innumerable young girls face gender-based violence, which includes sexual abuse, exploitation, and rape by male teachers.

Filmmaker Kiki King, who shot the documentary in Mozambique, told Marie Claire that countless girls are bullied into having sex in exchange for good grades at school. She said that the students are often led to believe that if they do not have sexual relationships with their teacher, they are going to fail the year.

“In terms of people being prosecuted and going to jail, I really struggled to find anyone,” King said.

“What it comes down to is the same problem with sexual violence anywhere in the world under any circumstances; it’s one girl’s word against one man’s word. And unfortunately, women are often blamed for things that happened to them – they’re not believed and they’re not taken seriously.”

Also known as “sexually transmitted grades”, teachers employ various tactics to lure the underage girls into sexual relationships. Apart from the promise of good grades, they may also bribe her with things like mobile phones, clothes, food, and other gifts. The harassment and manipulation generally occurs by the teacher accosting the students either during or after school time. More often than not, girls feel fearful to turn down the lascivious advances out of worry that they may get lower grades or be punished in some other way.

If the sexual assault does become public, the blame is often placed on the girl with the belief that she dressed provocatively or displayed a certain type of demeanour to warrant the unwanted attention from the teacher.

In instances where the girl becomes pregnant, instead of seeking out justice for the sexual assault of a minor, most families prefer to negotiate with the man to provide financial support. Furthermore, in African culture, taboos associated with underage pregnancies mean that the girl will also face the backlash of being a social outcast and her education will come to an abrupt end.

Human Rights Watch believe that the sexual overtones girls experience at school are heavily influenced by gender stereotypes. Some girls told the organisation that teachers had a tendency to use inappropriate language and behaviour – for instance, describing girls’ bodies or clothes in a sexual manner when speaking to students.

While these situations are often nonchalantly characterised as a “relationship” between a teacher and student, Human Rights Watch condemned the practice, stating that it undermines the gravity of the abuse, affects reporting, and blurs the perpetrators’ perception of the severity of these abuses and that cases should be treated, and prosecuted, as sexual exploitation and abuse of children.

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In just two years, Mozambique’s most northerly province transformed from an idyllic, remote, tropical paradise, bursting with economic potential, to a battleground held hostage by an Islamist insurgency.

Exactly who these insurgents are, or what they want, remains a mystery. The militant group has been named by locals and the media as al-Shabaab, but no definitive links have been found to the Somali group sharing that name.

Even the Mozambique government is vague about it – and keen to keep its people in the dark. Journalists are now banned from the region and the group itself is yet to make a public statement. Violence rages throughout the province and it’s not even clear who government forces are fighting.

What is clear, though, is that Mozambique is not able to tap into the great wealth of natural resources in the north, in a country desperate for investment, where over 50% of the population live in poverty.

The upsurge in violence came soon after the discovery of gas reserves in the the province. The estimated $30 billion in untapped resources should have been an economic miracle to Cabo Delgado’s isolated coast, which suffers from crippling levels of unemployment and a disheartening education system.

The gas discoveries have instead become a point of contention throughout the northern province. The local people are yet to see any great benefit from the resources, explains Dr. Eric Morier-Genoud, an expert on Mozambique from Queen’s University Belfast.

“There was high expectation, but very little of this has trickled down,” says Morier-Genoud.

What’s more is that residents are losing their land due to infrastructure development without sufficient compensation. Many believe this to be the genesis of the armed struggle.

Simone Haysom, a senior analyst at The Global Initiative Against Organised Crime, says this anger plays a role, but falls short of claiming this as the root cause of the unrest.

“There is definitely something to be understood around grievance in the way that profits from the resources have been shared,” explains Haysom, but she remains dubious over how this has manifested into such an extensive armed resistance.

The Cabo Delgado Province was first struck by militants in October 2017, when insurgents carried out a series of well organised and deadly attacks on police and military posts in the coastal town of Mocimboa da Praia. Since then, violent incidents from insurgents have intensified. Attacks on villages, burning of homes, kidnapping and public beheadings have become commonplace in a province that had been enjoying a period of peace until just two years ago.

Haysom, who authored a detailed report on the violence in northern Mozambique, emphasised the lack of clarity surrounding the insurgency.

“Nobody really knows how organised the insurgents are,” she says. “No one fully understand why they are doing what they are doing or what triggered the violence to start with.”

The motives of the group are shadowed in uncertainty, but their use of violence is extensive and a serious cause of concern for local residents. The insurgents have battered the province with such severe levels of violence and instability, that in June of 2018 several oil and gas companies ceased operations in the province, stating that they would suspend work until the Jihadi threat has eased. The US and UK followed suit and urged their citizens to leave the region.

“The spread of violence and the intensity of the insurgency has indeed aggravated,” explains Dr. Morier-Genoud. He warns of the shocking nature of the violence, how beheading has become regular practice and the ways in which insurgents are becoming more brazen in their attacks.

“In the last month, more or less, attacks have now started to happen during the day time. Which didn’t happen before,” he warns. “They are more confident and more aggressive. So there is a change there.”

The State is cautious of how this looks to potential investors and have so far been vague in their description over what is going and how Maputo is countering the insurgency.
This is a particularly troubling realisation after it was revealed that L6G, the private security firm, owned by the notorious Blackwater founder Erik Prince, has offered to deal with the Islamist threat on behalf of the government.

Offers of assistance from private firms may be particularly attractive to Filipe Nyusi’s government, who wish to avoid the prying eyes of foreign governments on the north’s untapped resources.

Another theory surrounding the insurency is that the violence is actually being led by organised crime groups, who are blurring the lines between crime and terrorism in Cabo Delgado. The coastal province is a significant transit route for heroin being trafficked through East Africa and into Europe. The illicit trade is growing in the region and provides an annual $100 million to the local economy.

Egidio Vaz, a political analyst at the Mozambican non-governmental organization IREX, believes that criminality is a more likely cause of the violence than religious ideology.

“This conflict comes at a time when the governments of Tanzania and Mozambique are cracking down on poaching, illegal mining, and illegal fishing,” Vaz said in an interview to DW. “They’re also strengthening the borders and trying to better protect flora and fauna.”

The concern is that until recently, organised crime groups were able to operate openly with minimal interference from authorities. Many have therefore conflated the insurgency with a strategically timed offensive from violent smuggling networks.

The link between the violence and organised crime groups is not accepted by everyone.

“I think the question of how the violence in the north relates to these existing networks is one that is not exceptionally clear,” says Simone Haysom. “We don’t find evidence of their being a significant link between the militants and organised crime networks in Mozambique.”

Haysom goes on to explain that organised crime is not particularly violent in Mozambique, unlike narco groups in Mexico which have hundreds of heavily armed foot soldiers.

“They have been able to operate because of a political economy in the north where the illicit economy has a really high degree of political protection. In that context, organised crime does not need to mobilise militias,” explains Haysom. “They just need to pay off the right people and pay and form the right relationships with people in the ruling party hierarchy.”

Eric Morier-Genoud is also sceptical over the connection to organised crime and points to an ideology possibly inspired by Boko Haram in Nigeria.

“My reading is that it is a religious sect, in a sense like Boko Haram,” he says. “It was a religious phenomenon, they tried to establish their own society, ruled by Sharia, separated from the state.”

Mozambique is in desperate need of the income stream that untapped gas resources could provide. The country is still recovering from decades of devastating conflict and, just last month, a cyclone ripped through the country causing an enormous humanitarian disaster. While we do not know what the insurgents want, we do know that local residents do not feel like they are going to benefit from the gas discoveries. The natural resources could be enough to unite the country, but only if State corruption eases and the locals are given their fair share.

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Tropical cyclone Idai, which made landfall on Beira, Mozambique on March 14 of this year, with heavy rains continuing until March 20 – was one of the worst tropical cyclones on record affecting the Southern Hemisphere. The storm caused devastating damage in Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi – with a death toll of hundreds, if not thousands of people, and a further 3 million affected. Strong winds and extensive flooding destroyed roads, bridges, dams, houses, schools, and health facilities, as well as submerging large swathes of agricultural land. Mozambique President Filipe Nyusi fears that 1,000 people may have died in his country alone. 90% of Beira, Mozambique – a city of more than 500,000 people – has been destroyed by floodwaters.

What role does climate change have to play in Cyclone Idai? UN Special Representative for Disaster Risk Reduction, Mami Mizutori, has argued that ‘Cyclone Idai is a clear demonstration of the exposure and vulnerability of many low-lying cities and towns to sea level rise as the impact of climate change continues to influence and disrupt normal weather patterns.’

Although the link between the occurrence of Cyclone Idai and climate change is unclear, climate change certainly had a role to play in the overall devastation that the cyclone unleashed. There are three ways in which climate change exacerbated Idai’s effects. First, a warmer atmosphere holds more water vapour, which makes rainfall more intense – Idai produced nearly a year’s worth of rain in just a few days, which equated to more than two feet of water in parts of the region. Second, the region has been suffering from a considerable drought in recent years, as per climate projections of overall drying in the region. The hard earth was unable to rapidly absorb water, increasing the risk of flash flooding. And third, sea levels are about a foot higher than a century ago, which worsens the effect of coastal flooding.

The world’s poorest regions are already experiencing the effects of climate change. Climate change is not some future hypothetical – it is already happening now, and disproportionately afflicting those who had the least to do with creating it. The wealthiest regions of the world tend to be located in the extratropics, while many of the world’s poorest people live near the equator – thus giving the wealthiest regions an advantage in terms of temperate climate. Further, wealthy countries are better able to prepare and cope with climate-related events than low-income countries.

And yet, the world’s wealthiest countries are not doing enough. The Green Climate Fund, a United Nations program which was established in 2009 to raise a significant portion of an overall funding goal of $100 billion a year by 2020 for climate change adaptation and mitigation in poor countries, as has so far received only $10.3 billion in pledges. The unfairness of the situation is stark, particularly when one considers that Africa contributes the least to global warming in both absolute and per capita terms. Africa accounts for 3.8% of global greenhouse gas emissions, in comparison to the largest emitters like China, the US, and the EU which account for 23%, 19%, and 13% of global emissions respectively. And yet, in spite of its low emissions, Africa is one of world’s most vulnerable regions when it comes to climate change.

The affected region is now dealing with the devastating aftershocks of the cyclone. The United Nations World Food Program (WFP) has designated Mozambique a level three emergency, placing it on par with Syria, Yemen and South Sudan. Cholera, which usually spreads through contaminated water – is now also a major concern. At least 1,428 people have been reported to be infected in Mozambique.

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