Mozambique’s Bloody Conflict Is Spreading
CABO DELGADO, Mozambique—Anita sits on a woven mat, her legs straight out on the ground before her. She speaks in a quiet but urgent voice over the sounds of rumbling traffic and a cockerel crowing, as she recounts how the attacks on her village in Cabo Delgado—the northernmost province in Mozambique—unfold.
“When the insurgents come, they block all the ways out from the sea and from the road so no one can leave,” she told World Politics Review in March. “If they like, they can kidnap you. They can rape you.”
Anita, who asked to use a pseudonym for fear of being identified amid the ongoing conflict, speaks as if describing horrors experienced by someone else.
The insurgents she refers to call themselves Al-Shabaab, or “the youth” in Arabic. They have been waging a bloody campaign in northern Mozambique for the better part of a decade. More than 1 million people have been displaced over the course of the conflict in Cabo Delgado, and some 6,000 have been killed. After a lull in fighting that lasted most of last year, militants crept southward through the isolated province in late 2023 and early 2024, burning houses, schools and churches as they went.
The fighters are better known to a global audience as the Islamic State Mozambique since swearing allegiance to the international terrorist organization in 2018. They’ve set up communication channels with the Islamic State’s central command, which often broadcasts videos of attacks in Mozambique on its propaganda network.
But the war in northern Mozambique is also rooted in local grievances, including political exclusion, poverty and a lack of control over the mineral wealth in Cabo Delgado, explains Eric Morier-Genoud, a historian at Queen’s University Belfast and author of the recent book, “Towards Jihad? Muslims and Politics in Postcolonial Mozambique.”
“It’s a mixture between a local movement feeding on local grievances and an internationally inspired politico-religious project that says it can resolve all issues by establishing an Islamic state,” he said. “The two are not exclusive. It’s not either/or. It’s both, together.”
Not much is known about the insurgents themselves. While their forces are estimated to be in the hundreds, the exact number of fighters and even the precise locations of their bases are subject to guess work.
The conflict gained widespread global attention in March 2021, when the militants attacked the town of Palma, which is also the site of a $20 billion natural gas project operated by the French major TotalEnergies. They killed more than 1,000 people in the attack, according to a survey by investigative journalist Alex Perry that has been verified by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, or ACLED.
After that ambush, foreign troops from Rwanda and South Africa arrived in Mozambique. Battling alongside the national army, they dislodged Al-Shabaab from a nearby stronghold in the coastal town of Macimboa da Praia in the far north of Cabo Delgado. In October 2023, insurgent leader Bonomade Machude Omar was killed by armed forces.
Mediation or attempts to address the root causes of the insurgency in northern Mozambique appear far off, as the government is committed to addressing the situation militarily.
But this heavy troop presence has also forced militants to revert to guerilla tactics, with civilians caught on the front lines of the conflict. “Civilians are often bearing the brunt of both the activities of nonstate armed groups and also the responses from formal security forces,” said Olivier Milland, a security analyst at the Swedish Defense Research Agency.
The military presence in northern Cabo Delgado might also explain Al-Shabaab’s recent move to the south of province, which is not unprecedented but has led to violence in areas that had been relatively peaceful for the past four years. Attacks in February and March of this year have forced 100,000 people to flee their homes, according to the United Nations refugee agency. Humanitarian workers, many of whom have based their operations further north, are stretched thin, with funding equally tight. OCHA, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator, has received just over 11 percent of the funding it needs for its operations across Mozambique.
“They are looking to displace people, and that, of course, places all elements of the state under pressure,” Peter Bofin, a researcher with ACLED, said of the insurgents.
“I think the main strategic idea behind these attacks is just to create as much chaos as possible, and in doing so demonstrate that the government doesn’t have a handle on the security situation,” added Tom Gould, a journalist covering Mozambique for Zitamar News.
Anita managed to flee her village in the Quirimba islands, which were occupied by insurgents for several days in March. She came to Pemba, the regional capital of Cabo Delgado, by canoe, crammed into the boat with a dozen other people. In the rush to escape, she was separated from her 3-year-old son. Through neighbors she learned that he reached Palma and is being cared for by relatives there, but she does not know when she will see him again. She also does not know when she will feel safe.
“Even when you get here in Pemba, you are not calm. Whoever comes, you may think that it’s one of them,” she said, speaking of the insurgents. This is her second time being displaced. She first fled her village and sheltered in Pemba in 2019.
Antonio, also speaking under a pseudonym, told WPR that insurgents occupied his village in Quissanga in March. At first, they tried to persuade the local residents to support them. The fighters, who Antonio recalls were a mix of adults, teenagers and children wearing both army uniforms and civilian clothing, told villagers not to run away. They also promised not to target them. Antonio had difficulty believing their assurances, especially after they proceeded to burn down a government building.
“We’re human beings. We are made of fears, and those are not people that you’re going to be living together with,” he said. “That’s why I had to run away.”
Antonio hid in the forest for two days. His anxiety speaks to the difficulty the fighters face in finding support, despite their recent efforts to shift from terrorizing the local population to winning hearts and minds. Most of the insurgents are forced recruits, Morier-Genoud of Queen’s University Belfast told WPR. Villagers will also house the fighters for fear of being killed. “The people who are really committed to supporting them out of genuine ideological agreements are probably very few,” he said.
By the time Antonio returned to his village, the fighters had left. But he was still too afraid to stay, so he arranged to travel by car to Pemba with his wife and five children. “I managed to run away with them, because I couldn’t live without them,” he said.
South Africa plans to withdraw its troops from Mozambique in July. Their impending exit will put additional pressure on the Rwandan forces remaining in the country. The European Union has provided training to Mozambican troops, and the U.S. pledged an additional $22 million to fight terrorism there in March, on top of $100 million it had previously pledged. But little other international or media attention is being paid to Cabo Delgado, even as the conflict rumbles on.
Mediation, or attempts to address the root causes of the insurgency, also appear far off, as the government is committed to addressing the situation militarily. “Development and security are two sides of the same coin. So unless you have security, it will be difficult to have development and the other way around,” Milland, of the Swedish Defense Resource Agency, said.
Antonio has been taken in by his mother-in-law, but his daily life in Pemba is idle. “I have nothing to do,” he said. “I am a guest here.” He is trying to send his children back to school, but has not been able to yet. Like Anita, this is his second time being displaced.
“The first time we managed to get back home, because we believed that the war was over,” he said. “It’s getting worse and worse,” he added, wondering aloud whether any outside help would come.
Last weekend, militants committed fresh attacks against the villages in the south of Cabo Delgado, which were broadcast and shared on Islamic State networks. They also attacked villages in the neighboring province of Nampula. Another 19,000 people fled their homes in late April, according to the International Organization for Migration.
Anita struggles to envision what lies ahead, beyond the current violence. “It’s hard to think about the future,” she said. “It’s hard to have hope, because you don’t know if this war will end.”
Sophie Neiman is a freelance reporter and photojournalist covering politics, conflict and human rights across east and central Africa. She is a grantee of the Pulitzer Center and holds a master’s degree in African Studies at the University of Cambridge. Follow her work on Twitter at @sophie_neiman.