Mercenaries “complicate rather than help”

The acting United States counterterrorism coordinator said on Thursday that the presence of private military contractors in the country  “has not demonstrably helped the government of Mozambique  in countering the terrorist threatt from ISIS-Mozambique that they face”, John Godfrey told a virtual press conference in which Lusa participated that the US was concerned about the presence in Cabo Delgado of private military contractors.

“We’re mindful of that. It’s frankly a feature of the landscape in Cabo Delgado that complicates rather than helps efforts to address the terror threat there,” considered the interim coordinator, who took office in Joe Biden’s administration in February.

“This is a phenomenon that we have seen in other areas of conflict as well. And as in those other areas in Cabo Delgado, we assess that the presence of those entities has not demonstrably helped the government of Mozambique in countering the terrorist threat from ISIS-Mozambique that they face.” said John Godfrey.

“And, indeed, that because those entities operate outside the strictures of normal international partnership, they have historically tended to be less responsible with respect to things like observing human rights and the law of armed conflict as they conduct their efforts.,”  the acting special envoy of the Global Coalition to Defeat the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) added.

Amnesty International (AI) has repeated allegations that have emerged since 2018 about alleged human rights violations carried out by government forces. In a new report released in early March, AI concluded that in addition to armed rebels, whose origin remains unclear, the Defence Forces and a private military group from South Africa hired by the Mozambican government are also responsible for attacking civilians during clashes with insurgents. The Armed and Defence Forces of Mozambique (FADM) consider the information false, and the Mozambican government has never admitted to hiring private security companies. The US official said on Thursday that the US “takes seriously allegations of violations of human rights or violations of the law of armed conflict, particularly when they apply to countries with which we’re partnering on counterterrorism and other efforts”.

“II think as everybody on this call knows, we have a very rigorous process under the Leahy Law – Leahy vetting of units with which we would seek to partner that requires that the individuals and leaders of those units with which we would partner have a clean record with respect to any human rights or law of armed conflict violations. We take that very seriously, and there’s rigorous congressional oversight of that,” said John Godfrey. “If it’s determined that units that we have trained have individuals who don’t meet that standard, we either pause or suspend those lines of effort,” the U.S. counter-terrorism coordinator said.

 The armed violence in Cabo Delgado, home to Africa’s largest private multinational investment for natural gas exploration, is causing a humanitarian crisis with more than 2,000 deaths and 670,000 people displaced, without housing or food. The violence emerged in 2017, some of the incursions were claimed by the ‘jihadist’ group Islamic State between June 2019 and November 2020, but the origin of the attacks remains under debate.