Mozambique

Sub-Saharan
 by Rise to Peace

Islamic State Allegiances in Africa: A Sub-Saharan Breakdown

The ideology of the Islamic State has taken a significant hold in Sub-Saharan Africa. The group’s ideology has spread from just the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria to a rapidly growing movement throughout Africa encompassing thousands of members. The Islamic State has various affiliates throughout Africa, including the Islamic State West Africa Province, Islamic State Central Africa Province, Islamic State Mozambique, and others who have pledged their allegiance to the organization.

The Islamic State in the Greater Sahara

The Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS) was first officially recognized by the Islamic State in the spring of 2019. Its first operations occurred in Burkina Faso near the Malian border and western Niger, and northeastern Mali. The ISGS has spread to southern Mali, and along the border of Niger and Burkina Faso. This organization has claimed the Tongo Tongo attack that occurred in Niger in 2017 that resulted in the death of four American and four Nigerien soldiers. This organization is a sub-group of the Islamic State of West Africa Province (ISWAP), after being taken over by ISWAP in 2019. The goal of the ISGS is to establish a Salafist-Jihadi caliphate.

Islamic State West Africa Province

The Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) first pledged its allegiance to the Islamic State in 2015. While ISWAP is often referred to as Boko Haram, the two organizations diverged from one another in 2016.

In late August 2021, ISWAP faced a significant setback when its former leader, Abu Musab Al-Barnawi, was killed. The details surrounding Al-Barnawi’s death remain greatly disputed; it is argued that Nigerian troops killed him, but others attest that he was killed by a rival organization. Despite this setback, ISWAP remains active throughout West Africa. Its most recent attack was on June 5, 2022, at an annual festival in Okene, Nigeria, that resulted in the death of two people.

Islamic State Democratic Republic of the Congo

The Islamic State Democratic Republic of the Congo (ISIS-DRC) is active in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Uganda. This organization was first officially recognized by the Islamic State in 2018, but it may have begun operations as early as 2017.  In 2021, this group conducted attacks that resulted in the deaths of 1,200 people in just the DRC, not including its large-scale urban attacks in Uganda. It was formerly known as the Allied Democratic Forces but rebranded and aligned its ideology with the Islamic State.

Islamic State Mozambique

Officially recognized by the Islamic State in August 2019, the Islamic State Mozambique (ISIS-Mozambique) is most widely known for its siege of Palma in the province of Cabo Delgado in March 2021.  A French company, TotalEnergies’ liquified natural gas plant was attacked causing the project to be suspended until safety was guaranteed.  ISIS-Mozambique’s actions, overall, have resulted in the deaths of over 1,700 civilians and the displacement of 784,000 people from Northern Mozambique.

 Islamic State Central Africa Province

The Islamic State Central Africa Province (ISCAP) does not work as a cohesive unit but rather is an overarching entity comprised of distinct regional affiliates, such as ISIS-Mozambique and ISIS-DRC. These two organizations are distinctly different in their attacks, goals, and actions throughout the DRC and Mozambique and, therefore, should not be viewed as one single group.

Outlook and Mitigation Efforts of the Islamic State in Sub-Saharan Africa

The ideology of the Islamic State has taken hold of thousands throughout Sub-Saharan Africa, making the region a breeding ground for more radicalization and attacks.  Countless organizations, countries, and private militaries have become involved in hopes of slowing the growing threat of the Islamic State in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Reasons behind the involvement of the Islamic State in Sub-Saharan Africa range from economic instability to individuals identifying with the organization’s ideology, leaving a complex and extensive range of issues that the international community must address and mitigate. Without proper economic development in Sub-Saharan Africa, the number of individuals involved with the Islamic State will likely grow. It is uncertain the future of the Islamic State in Sub-Saharan Africa, but the Islamic State’s affiliate organizations continue to grow, and without a proper and warranted response, this security threat will continue to increase.

 

Claire Spethman, Counter-Terrorism Research Fellow

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Natural
 by Rise to Peace

Europe Turns to Mozambique for Natural Resources Despite Islamic State Attacks

Allegedly, energy companies are planning to return to the Mozambique province of Cabo Delgado despite unrest caused by ISIS-Mozambique. Due to the unrest with Ukraine and Russia, liquified natural gas production has slowed. Therefore, Europe is turning to Mozambique in hopes of mitigating the slow production.

Liquified Natural Gas Project in Mozambique

The Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) Project, led by TotalEnergies, began with the discovery of a vast amount of natural gas in 2010 off the coast of Northern Mozambique. It was previously on track to begin providing liquified natural gas in 2024. Still, production has been put to a halt since April of 2021 due to the security situation in Cabo Delgado. LNG was forecasted to bring in over $100 billion to Mozambique in just 25 years of production.

Origins and the Current State of ISIS-Mozambique

ISIS-Mozambique has been in operation since October 2017, with Abu Yasir Hassan as the lead. Currently, 670,000 people within Northern Mozambique have been displaced, and the ISIS-Mozambique has claimed the lives of more than 1,300 civilians. According to reports, ISIS-Mozambique allegedly pledged allegiance to ISIS in April 2018, and was officially acknowledged by ISIS-Core in August 2019.

While it is unclear how many individuals are currently fighting for ISIS-Mozambique, the number is estimated to be in the thousands. The group quickly grew by leveraging economic grievances in a poverty-stricken and resource-rich area of the country. Additionally, ISIS-Mozambique provided loans to young men without any opportunity otherwise.

ISIS-Mozambique’s Palma Attack

On March 24, 2021, a siege lasting four days by an estimated 200 ISIS-Mozambique fighters left dozens dead at the Cabo Delgado town of Palma, with much of the city’s infrastructure destroyed. The town of Palma is home to over 70,000 people. There were numerous foreign workers for the LNG project trapped at the project site in the nearby area of the Afungi Peninsula. The prospect of ISIS-Mozambique gaining access to the LNG project proved worrisome and extremely dangerous; it would be alarming if high-yielding natural resources fell under their control.

Continued Attacks by ISIS-Mozambique

In the past six months, there have been numerous attacks in Northern Mozambique by ISIS-Mozambique. The violence has continued despite growing military interventions from different groups deployed to Mozambique in hopes of mitigating the continued violence. There are 24 countries and a multitude of other organizations working in Mozambique, including troops from Rwanda, the European Union, the South African Development Community military force, Angola, Botswana, and Zimbabwe.

Europe Turning to Mozambique for Liquified Natural Gas (LNG)

As the crisis in Ukraine continues, the shipping of LNG in Russia has reduced significantly. Russia provides one-third of the LNG to Europe, behind the U.S. and Qatar. After Russia invaded Ukraine, most international investors involved in Russian LNG projects froze their financing shares.

Europe has now turned to Mozambique in hopes of filling their need for LNG. Italian Foreign Minister Luigi di Maio traveled to Mozambique in hopes of developing new deals regarding LNG supply partnerships as well as European government officials and parliament members have met to discuss how to best reduce its reliance on Russia’s liquified natural gas.

Outlook for Future Company Involvement

Mpho Molomo, the head of the Southern African Development Community mission in Mozambique, stated that it was too early to declare Mozambique safe enough to renew operations. The current state of Cabo Delgado has not reached a point of stability to guarantee the safety of energy company workers.

Environmental activists have viewed this as an opportunity to emphasize renewable energy sources instead of depending on fossil fuels, such as LNG. While attacks have slowed in Mozambique, it is still not safe enough to continue production despite the need of liquified natural gas in Europe. If the safety of the workers are not guaranteed, production should remain halted until ISIS-Mozambique is no longer a threat.

 

Claire Spethman, Counter-Terrorism Research Fellow

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 by Stefan Bakumenko

The Crisis in Cabo Delgado: A Policy for a New Generation

This is the final piece in a series examining the ongoing extremist threat in Mozambique.

After understanding Cabo Delgado’s history of economic marginalization, socio-political agitation, and geographic remoteness, one might not be surprised by the government’s military-oriented approach to dealing with ASWJ. With politics dominated by FRELIMO since independence, Mozambique ranks 149th in the world on Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index. Consequently, only 27% of Mozambicans see a difference between the ruling party and the state.

The central government has long lacked credibility in the region due to its ties to criminal networks, acquiescence to foreign companies, and a highly publicized scandal in which government officials hid and pocketed $2.2 billion in off-budget loans. Cabo Delgado is also home to the single largest private investment in Africa, Total SA’s $15 billion liquefied natural gas (LNG) project along the coast. But this project has provided little profit or opportunity to the locals, fueling further discontent and rent-seeking. 

Missteps and Militarization

For the past few years, the central government has outsourced its handling of the ASWJ crisis to foreign mercenaries. The notorious Russian Wagner Group was initially deployed but replaced by the South African Dyck Advisory Group (DAG) after sustaining losses. In 2021, Amnesty International accused government forces, ASWJ, and DAG of war crimes targeting civilians, and DAG let its contract lapse in April.

The governments of South Africa, Zimbabwe, the United States, and the European Union have all expressed their commitment to resolving this crisis, and their assistance initially came as advising, training, and financing government forces. But these government forces are the same ones frequently accused of extrajudicial killings, arbitrary arrests, torture, and harassment of civilians. 

And now international military involvement is escalating. South Africa, a regional leader, initially ruled out putting boots on the ground but ended up sending soldiers to extract its foreign nationals from the siege of Palma. Last month, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) approved the deployment of its standby force, but much of its makeup and mission remain unclear. In early July, President Paul Kagame of Rwanda preempted them, sending 1,000 troops in a bid likely meant to increase Rwanda’s sway in the region. The EU also announced its own military mission, staffed primarily by Portuguese, to provide further training to Mozambique’s armed forces.

The government and its partners seem to be making the same mistakes that the Portuguese made when battling guerrillas in the very same region. Over the course of their ten-year fight to keep their colony, the beleaguered Portuguese made various attempts at dislodging FRELIMO from Cabo Delgado. Yet, they never seemed to try the classic counterinsurgency strategy of developing communities and protecting the populace. This, local support was pulled away from the guerrillas. Instead, they swept the jungles of Cabo in the massive Operation Gordian Knot, which ultimately failed due to its onerous death toll and resource drain. This lack of community outreach, paired with blind military violence, only perpetuated the grievances fueling the insurgency. The same cycle of government rigidity and insurgent vitality appears to be the case in modern Cabo Delgado.

Attention and Investment

The chorus of international funds and troops meant to pacify Cabo Delgado has mainly reinforced this militarized approach. International partners must instead only finance those government initiatives which support rather than antagonize communities. They must also be more discerning in which squads they are funding and training, pulling support from those government forces with bad track records on human rights and battlefield conduct.

It seems that the West has yet to learn in its dealings with Islamist insurgencies that military force and weapons proliferation are not conducive to de-escalation. Throughout the war with FRELIMO, Portugal’s semi-fascist dictatorship also formed alliances with the West, yet for all the intelligence, finances, and training provided from abroad, Portugal could not pacify Cabo by the strength of arms alone. 

In the 1960s, Cabo consisted primarily of smallholder peasants growing cash crops. Today, though this region remains largely rural, there are increased opportunities in coastal trade and energy extraction. Yet, the youth see few of the benefits. The locals should be enabled to participate in their own economy, and this starts with conscious governmental policy. Instead of abusing already-marginalized communities, the government could push the conflict in a constructive direction if it took a whole-of-society approach to peace in Cabo. This involves responsive community policing, accountability for rights violations by security forces, development partnerships that include local businesses, investment in infrastructure and education, increased space for journalists and civil society, and consultative mechanisms to communicate with locals. These are the practices and institutions that international partners should be funding instead, even if they must be built entirely anew.

Conclusion: 

One can reasonably conclude that the conflict in Cabo Delgado is only going to intensify, and will remain a major security issue in southern Africa. Though international actors from the West to SADC have expressed their willingness to provide training and even troops, the history of Cabo gives little reason to be optimistic about external intervention. The people of this resource-rich coastal province have experienced purely extractive, disinterested economics for centuries, from Britain to Portugal to Total SA. And yet, when hundreds of youth take up arms under a salvationist banner of Salafism, the government and its international partners immediately opt for clumsy militarization and pacification.

Though their violence has been brutal, meeting the insurgents on the battlefield does little to solve the problems that energized them in the first place. Instead, anyone concerned with actually de-escalating the conflict must look to NGOs, local activists, and social institutions that should be invested in and listened to.

 

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 by Rise to Peace

The Growth and Impact of ISIL in Mozambique: The Difficulties to Defeating their Insurgency

Mozambique’s conflict with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) has experienced a notable increase in the level of violence within the last year. Although active in the region since 2017, it is only more recently that ISIL’s attacks have escalated in both frequency and severity. The bloodshed caused by ISIL throughout Mozambique has had an alarming impact, evident from the recurring raids on innocent villagers and the growing number of casualties, as seen by the increasing rate of people beheaded or raped.

Furthermore, the details of these raids have become even more brutal and cruel in recent times, in that dozens of the decapitated victims have been young children. This not only serves to highlight the extent of terrorism within the state but its rapid escalation. This merits further discussion and analysis, as it arguably provides an indication as to the future of the insurgency, whether ISIL extremism will continue to grow and intensify, or if they will be ultimately defeated. 

All throughout the country, thousands of citizens have been reported as missing or misplaced as ISIL target their communities at a shocking rate from previous years of the conflict. The statistics reveal that the increase has multiplied several times over, with 172,000 misplaced in the spring of 2020 to over 732,000 this spring one year later. This demonstrates the impact that ISIL has had on a multitude, which has grown exponentially within a relatively short timeframe. This, therefore, illustrates the extent of their power as a terrorist organization. 

To further expand upon this is ISIL’s attack on the town of Palma last March. Although the local security forces were reported to have secured control of the town and defeated the terrorists, ISIL’s actions certainly left their mark there, with multiple buildings destroyed, several dozen military personnel killed and beheaded bodies covering the streets. The main image that can be taken from this fight in Palma is the barbarity and destructive power of ISIL. The counterinsurgencies victory and claim to have retaken the town pales in significance and impact when the atrocities of ISIL are brought to attention.

Upon examining the level of violence by the terrorists, the success of the security forces appears to be a mere detail in comparison to the widespread brutality of the insurgency. The extent of this is that ISIL activity nowadays seems to capture the spotlight whenever their presence is noted, their reputation and crimes far more prominent than the efforts of those who try to stop them.

This interpretation shows an alarming undertone as it can be argued that, regardless of whether ISIL wins or loses its battles with Mozambique’s forces, it leaves behind a clear atmosphere of death and destruction and from this an obviously daunting degree of fear. This fear is evident in that that so many citizens have been misplaced due to the terrorists; hundreds alone fled during the fighting at Palma.

So many in Mozambique clearly feel greatly threatened by the presence of ISIL. Thus, the danger that this organization presents cannot be understated. Indeed, this is apparent given that the primary goal of a terrorist is not always to overthrow a regime, but rather to spread chaos and terror amongst their victims. From this, it can be argued that ISIL is becoming more and more successful when discussing its actions, reputation, and infamy.

A worrying thought that comes from the Palma attack is that, on a certain level, the efforts of Mozambique police and military make little difference. If they are defeated in battles with ISIL, this increases the terrorists’ strength and reputation and damages the state’s morale, as well as likely resulting in a large number of deaths in both security personnel and civilians. However, even if the counterinsurgency technically defeats ISIL, as seen by the fight in Palma, the terrorists will still have been successful in their goal of causing casualties and spreading fear amongst a multitude. It can be determined from this that ISIL stands to gain whatever the outcome of their skirmishes and perceivably always one step ahead of the authorities.

In order to combat them, it has been more recently announced that multiple allies of Mozambique from other regions of Africa have promised to contribute their forces to the effort to eliminate ISIL, whilst Portugal and the United States have been providing training for Mozambique’s troops. Although the results of this are yet to be seen, it makes sense that a strong international backing is likely to increase Mozambique’s chances of defeating ISIL in the long-term. Whilst ISIL is fearsome and enjoys clear advantages in their conflict, it must be remembered that they had a similar experience in the Middle East, yet were successfully driven out. The same can occur in this current conflict. The combined efforts of multiple nations focused on overwhelming ISIL appear to be the best option to ending terrorism in Mozambique.

Overall, it is clear that the extent of ISIL activity and its impact on Mozambique is significantly growing. Furthermore, the threat they pose may also increase and become more serious. Unlike with other conflicts, ISIL terrorism is likely to continue to remain strong as the results of their fighting with local security forces appear to have less consequence for them. So long as they are able to spread chaos and fear, they remain a successful threat.

From this, it is apparent that ISIL is likely to be successful from its current methods. Their position as terrorists makes their ambitions, whilst highly cruel, simpler and easier to accomplish than those of counterinsurgent forces, placing them at an advantage. Despite this, they are not unbeatable and there is hope that the foreign support Mozambique has received will be enough to ultimately defeat ISIL.

 

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