The Christmas season offered no respite
from terror for the already suffering people of Mozambique’s northernmost Cabo
Delgado province. The litany of atrocities that had been reported steadily for
over two years continued. Minibuses and trucks ambushed; civilians burnt alive
in vehicles or beheaded, one in front of his wife and children; 16 members of
Mozambique’s army killed in one attack on their base. Gruesome photographs of
bodies beheaded and otherwise mutilated with machetes circulated on social
media. Depending on what and who you choose to believe, there have now been
around 350 such incidents since the suspected insurgency by a local jihadist
group now generally referred to as Ahlu Sunnah Wal Jammah (ASWJ) erupted
with simultaneous attacks on police and military bases in October 2017. It soon
morphed into a terror campaign brutally directed mainly at unarmed civilians. The
death toll of this insurgency, including security personnel, insurgents and civilians
(by far the greatest number), stands at over 600. Many more have been injured
or internally displaced, some intelligence sources say.
Yet the government in Maputo continues
to present these atrocities as mere criminality. Its fellow members of the Southern
African Development Community (SADC) seem to be going along with that
complacent view, at least officially. No Mozambique insurgency has yet made it
onto the agenda of SADC’s Organ on Politics, Defence and Security which is
mandated to address such regional threats. This despite evidence of spillovers
into neighbouring Tanzania and links with other jihadists up the east coast. A
large part of the problem in correctly characterising this phenomenon is that
so little is known about the perpetrators. That in turn is because ASWJ makes
no public claims to any attacks or deaths, and because the Mozambican
government almost completely restricts access to the conflict zone for researchers and
journalists. This has also raised suspicion about what Maputo may be
trying to hide. The Cabo Delgado coastline is a major conduit for smuggling
drugs and other contraband – a trade also believed to help finance the ASWJ
insurgency, but which may also involve government officials. But if ASWJ has taken no
public ‘credit’ for the attacks, the Islamic State (IS) ostensibly has. It has
so far claimed responsibility for 27 of the attacks, according to some security
analysts. This raises questions about how IS and ASWJ are related Is ASWJ the local affiliate of IS?
Is IS simply claiming credit to boost its
public stature, especially since the loss of face caused by the fall of its
caliphate in Syria and Iraq?
Or is the local outfit happy to be
regarded as an IS franchise to boost its prestige by borrowing a global
dimension?
Analysts seem unsure, though most
suggest ASWJ is indeed a home-grown organisation but with links to global IS.
This may in part be through Islamic State Central Africa Province (ISCAP) which
has claimed responsibility for some attacks.
At a symposium last month in Pretoria
by ACCORD and the European Union Institute for Security Studies, one terrorism
expert suggested that ISCAP could well be no more than a small cell of the
Alliance of Democratic Forces (ADF). ADF originates in Uganda but has been
terrorising eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo citizens for years. Like
ASWJ, it has taken on some jihadist character. The analyst thought this ADF
cell might have hitched its wagon to IS because it was losing influence within
the wider ADF organisation. However another security analyst at the symposium
suggested that ISCAP and the IS influence in northern Mozambique generally
should be taken more seriously than that, as it was growing. He suggested to ISS
Today that the arrival of Wagner, the private Russian military company in Cabo Delgado in 2019, had
increased IS presence in the province, as ISCAP had redeployed ADF fighters to
Cabo Delgado to counter the Russian forces. Many analysts remain sceptical
about the IS connection. However ISS Today’s source claims to have been
told by senior Mozambican military and police officials that several IS members
were recently arrested in Cabo Delgado. He said a recent military press release
about an attack in which police vehicles had been captured stated that ISCAP,
in particular, had been responsible.
There is little doubt that ASWJ
originally was and probably still is essentially a domestic phenomenon. Rooted
in the soil of Cabo Delgado, conditions common to such insurgencies seem to
have given it birth and continue to give it life. These include grinding
poverty and a sense of marginalisation and inequality, both between the
citizens of the province and the elite down south in Maputo and elsewhere in
the country, and among certain ethnic groups and Muslim factions in Cabo
Delgado. The recent discovery of vast gas reserves in the Rovuma Basin may be
aggravating a sense of relative deprivation among the mostly young ASWJ foot
soldiers who probably feel this windfall will pass them by as everything else
has. Nevertheless the putative affiliation
to IS could be enhancing ASWJ’s menace, including the potential for the
transfer of deadlier technologies and skills as well as a ready supply of
reinforcements. Whatever the links with international IS, there seems little
doubt that the regional ramifications should be taken more seriously. It was
noted at the Pretoria seminar that the insurgency already straddles the border
with Tanzania where similar attacks have occurred recently. When suspected
perpetrators appeared in Mozambique’s courts in 2018 they included nationals of
nearby states. Senior Kenyan prosecutors and analysts have said there are
jihadist links all the way from Somalia, through Kenya and Tanzania, to
Mozambique. One analyst at the seminar advised South African government
officials present to take more notice of the threat, even if SADC clearly
wasn’t. It was a short route from Cabo Delgado to South Africa, he
warned. If SADC continues to ignore or at least minimise the problem,
Pretoria should launch or intensify intelligence and security cooperation with
Mozambique, Tanzania, Kenya and Somalia to get a surer grip on this cancer on
South Africa’s doorstep before it metastasises.
Peter Fabricius, ISS
Consultant
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