Cabo Ligado Weekly: 11-17 October
By the Numbers: Cabo Delgado, October 2017-October 2021
Figures updated as of 15 October 2021.
Total number of organized political violence events: 1,026
Total number of reported fatalities from organized political violence: 3,415
Total number of reported fatalities from civilian targeting: 1,538
All ACLED data are available for download via the data export tool and curated data files.
Situation Summary
Last week was a relatively quiet one in Cabo Delgado, punctuated by offensive operations by the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Standby Force Mission in Mozambique (SAMIM) and the freeing of civilians kidnapped by insurgents. Two civilian women arrived in Chai, Macomia district on 12 October, having escaped from insurgent captivity. The women reported that insurgents in the Messalo River valley are struggling to secure supplies. The insurgents had hoped to feed themselves through small farms they set up in the area, but recent offensives by government and government aligned forces have driven them away from the farmland. As a result, groups of insurgents are moving around frequently, looking for food. They are attempting to keep civilian hostages with them to use as human shields, but the lack of supplies is forcing them to let many civilians go.
On 13 October, SAMIM forces freed 47 civilians who had been held by insurgents in Quissanga district, in operations in Bilibiza and Namuluco. The civilians were largely from Macomia and Mocimboa da Praia districts. They were held by a total of five insurgents, who fled upon seeing SAMIM forces.
The same day, Mozambican, SAMIM, and Rwandan forces held a summit in Mocimboa da Praia to share intelligence and discuss future operations. Leaders from each detachment agreed to create a joint command, to be led by Mozambique, through which to coordinate operations going forward. Speaking at the summit, Mozambican army commander Cristóvão Chume estimated that the conflict could drag on for up to three more years.
Also on 13 October, Mozambican forces tried to set up a meeting with villagers in Nguida, Macomia district. The troops urged locals to take photos with them, to demonstrate their close working relationship. Villagers fled, refusing to take the photos, as they do not trust Mozambican forces. Indeed, many did not show up to the meeting at all, fearing they were being gathered for a massacre. Nguida has chosen to rely on a well-developed local militia for self-defense rather than engage with Mozambican forces.
On 15 October, SAMIM troops captured five insurgents near Cagembe, Quissanga district. In addition to capturing the insurgent fighters, SAMIM also recovered 12 firearms, 14 motorcycles, two all-terrain vehicles, a generator, and a 350 kilowatt solar panel believed to belong to the insurgents. Cagembe, long known as an insurgent base area, has been cleared and re-cleared by government and government aligned forces over the course of the conflict, but insurgent-held pockets clearly remain.
In a report the same day, Mozambican security forces were accused of looting fruit crops from districts where few civilians are living and selling the fruit in Macomia town. Civilians in Macomia reported the looting, saying that the fruit had been trucked in from depopulated areas of Mocimboa da Praia, Muidumbe, and Macomia districts.
On 16 October, Mozambican and Rwandan forces held a community meeting in Quitunda, Palma district, which went more successfully than the aforementioned one planned at Nguida that only involved Mozambican forces. The meeting was the first in a series planned to extend to Palma town and parts of northern Mocimboa da Praia district where civilians are present. The troops exhorted civilians to collaborate with them, and especially to report any insurgent movements in the area.
The meeting also served as a recruitment call for the Mozambican military. Cabo Delgado residents who serve in the military gave frank answers when asked by locals about the poor relationship between the military and Cabo Delgado civilians. The soldiers said that they had to follow orders from southern Mozambican officers because there are so few northerners in the military. If there were more, they argued, it would be easier to communicate with Cabo Delgado residents who do not speak Portuguese, resulting in fewer instances of abuse. The argument appears to be compelling, as many Cabo Delgado young people have begun to express interest in joining the security forces. According to one source, over 5,000 young people in Pemba -- over 70% of them displaced -- have signed up to join the Mozambican police. Others are enlisting in the military. When asked, displaced people say that joining the military gives them a chance to protect their families and reduces the chances that they will be mistaken for insurgents and killed.
A report from 17 October described a press event in Pemba in which Mozambican law enforcement officials oversaw the burning of 250 kilograms of seized illegal drugs. The drugs included 28 kilograms of heroin that had been found in a building in an area long held by insurgents, according to a provincial spokesperson. The rest of the drugs were discovered in Pemba. Citing the heroin, the spokesperson said that “we suspect that we are facing a case of narco-terrorists,” arguing that the amount of heroin recovered suggests that the insurgents intended to sell the drugs.
By the standards of Cabo Delgado heroin trafficking, however, 28 kilograms is not very much at all. Before the conflict shifted drug routes, a single dhow moving between Pakistan and Mozambique would carry between 100 and 1,000 kilograms of drugs and other contraband -- most of it heroin. A mere 28 kilograms is as likely to be leftover from a pre-conflict shipment as a sign of insurgents engaged in trafficking. Indeed, the insecurity in Cabo Delgado brought on by the conflict has sent traffickers further south with shipments now largely going through Nampula province. If heroin trafficking does return to the Cabo Delgado conflict zone, it is likely to be a sign that the security situation there is improving rather than that insurgents have entered the drug business.
New information about earlier incidents also came to light last week. On 9 October, SAMIM troops from Lesotho and Tanzania defused a 60 millimeter mortar shell that had been discovered in the village of Samora Machel, Nangade district, when civilians began to move back into their homes there.
The next day, Mozambican security forces arrested 60 people at sea off of Ilha Matemo, Ibo district. The people were civilians traveling from Matemo to Palma. They are currently being held on Ibo. Mozambican police also arrested a local chief on Ilha Matemo for authorizing the trips. It is unclear if the 10 October arrests are the same as those reported on Mozambican national television network TVM. The TVM report showed three ships that had been confiscated and claimed that 150 people had been arrested for attempting to resupply insurgents. Regardless, the arrests of people leaving Ilha Matemo for Palma highlight the tension between the pressure displaced people feel to return to their homes and the limits government forces are trying to put on those returns.
Incident Focus: Informal Finance
During the 13 October summit between pro-government forces at Mocimboa da Praia, Mozambican army chief Cristóvão Chume declared that all known insurgent bases have been conquered and dismantled by the pro-government coalition. This announcement signals a shift in the government’s counterinsurgency effort. Insurgents have largely been scattered, and conventional offensives of the kind Rwandan, SAMIM, and Mozambican forces have been carrying out since August are now of limited utility. Instead, the work of defeating the insurgency militarily now shifts toward pursuing small groups of insurgents and preventing the group from reconstituting itself.
One of the proposals put forward to accomplish the latter goal is an effort to limit informal finance networks in Cabo Delgado. The SADC technical team, whose report forms the basis for the SAMIM deployment, claimed that the insurgency was “financed through money transfer from sympathisers through electronic means of payment such as M-Pesa, M-kesh, E-mola, and others,” and others have also pointed to informal finance as a key source of support for the insurgency. Some experts have suggested, therefore, that informal finance in Cabo Delgado be subject to strict restrictions and regulation as part of the counterinsurgency effort.
Researchers from the South African think tank Institute for Justice and Reconciliation, however, take a different view. As they point out in a recent report, mobile finance and the hawala networks of informal money brokers that rely on the technology play a crucial role in the economy of Cabo Delgado. In an area where formal banking services are difficult to come by, hawala networks provide banking and financing services to the informal traders who make up the backbone of Cabo Delgado economic life. Attempts to restrict the use of informal finance without a concomitant expansion of access to formal banking, they argue, would hurt a civilian population that is already economically marginalized.
Even before the conflict, access to banking in Cabo Delgado was extremely limited. According to Afrobarometer data, as recently as 2018, nearly 90% of Cabo Delgado residents reported that there was no bank within walking distance of their home, and nearly 60% reported that no one in their household had a bank account. Over 30% reported receiving remittances from abroad -- a number that likely increased in more northerly sections of the province where cross-border trade with Tanzania is a major part of life. Since the conflict, the situation has grown worse. The destruction of infrastructure led to a loss of formal banking services in the area in and around the conflict zone, much of which has only recently begun to be restored. In addition, US sanctions against insurgent leaders have led international financial institutions to steer clear of the province entirely, leaving Cabo Delgado without access to wire services like Western Union. Mobile finance, therefore, is more crucial than ever to Cabo Delgado civilians.
As displaced people begin to return home and restart their economic lives in a period of extreme precarity, it could be disastrous to restrict their access to funds in the name of counterinsurgency. Economic activity is already beginning to pick up in some areas that suffered mass displacement, and the ability to trade for food and other necessities will be crucial for returnees seeking to navigate the coming lean season. It will be important, therefore, for governments wishing to restrict insurgent financing to be sure that they are not choking off legitimate economic activities in Cabo Delgado at the same time.
Government Response
Displaced civilians who remain on the edges of the conflict zone are once again experiencing an increase in cholera rates. According to the International Committee of the Red Cross, there were 3,400 cholera cases in the province at the end of August 2021, compared to roughly 2,200 cases at the same point in the year before. Response to these cases has been limited by the destruction the conflict has wrought on Cabo Delgado’s health infrastructure, as 80% of health facilities in the most conflict-affected districts of Cabo Delgado remain out of commission.
The destruction of health facilities also poses a major challenge for providing mental health services to displaced people. The president of the Psychological Association of Mozambique said last week that the association is working with international organizations to try to bridge the gap in mental health care, but that he is worried that widespread, untreated trauma will lead to an increase in suicide among displaced people.
Despite the challenges facing displaced people, the Cabo Delgado government continues to warn against people returning home too soon. Provincial governor Valige Tauabo said last week that security operations are still ongoing in many areas and that they are therefore not yet safe to host civilians. He cautioned against returning to areas that Mozambican security forces have not yet declared safe.
In Maputo, civil society groups called last week for a reevaluation of the government’s approach to the conflict. Researcher Abdul Carimo released a report that had been commissioned by the Northern Integrated Development Agency (ADIN) that traces the roots of the insurgency to economic inequality in Cabo Delgado, contradicting Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi’s claim that economic grievances were not crucial to the formation of the insurgency. Carimo, arguing in favor of ADIN’s economic development mission, wrote that “without the elimination of social inequalities, peace will always be threatened in Mozambique.”
The Center for Democracy and Development (CDD), for its part, urged the government to open dialogue with captured insurgents to learn more about the insurgency, in order to develop effective responses to insurgent grievances. CDD president Adriano Nuvunga, speaking at a workshop on the conflict held in Pemba, called on the government to treat low ranking insurgent fighters as victims in the conflict and to engage with them about how they were recruited and what would have prevented them from joining the group.
On the international front, both Rwanda and SAMIM announced increases in their deployments to Cabo Delgado. Rwandan President Paul Kagame, speaking to Global Security Forum 2021, said that his forces in northern Mozambique now number nearly 2,000, close to twice their initial deployment. Kagame also reiterated that Rwanda’s deployment is self-funded with support from Mozambique, and not backed by any outside actor. The civilian head of SAMIM, Mpho Molomo, also announced troop increases last week, but did not specify how many additional troops would be deployed as part of the SADC mission. A news report from last week clarified that the SAMIM mandate, as announced 5 October after a SADC summit in Pretoria, will be extended for 90 days and be up for renewal at the end of that period.
The troop increases come as the counterinsurgency mission shifts from conventional offensives against insurgent bases to more widespread civilian protection. As more civilians return to the conflict zone, demands for troops to prevent insurgent attacks against vulnerable communities are likely to increase even beyond the newly announced deployment levels.
The European Union Training Mission (EUTM) in Mozambique announced last week that it is taking over from the ongoing Portuguese training mission, and will be up to full strength by mid-December. The EUTM will involve about 140 trainers and work to create a “Quick Response Force” of roughly 2,000 troops split into 11 companies within the Mozambican military over the course of two years. The goal is ambitious, for both practical and political reasons. Practically, the Mozambican military has struggled to put large numbers of battle-ready soldiers in the field, so finding enough candidates to field a 2,000-person fighting force may prove difficult. Politically, if such a force were to be created, it would constitute a major shift in the composition of power in Mozambican security institutions. Since the security sector reform that integrated Renamo cadres into the military in the 1990s, it has been Mozambican police forces -- broadly seen as more politically identified with Frelimo -- that have been the main instrument of the government’s coercive power. A battle-ready 2,000-person military unit would compete for preeminence with police special forces units that have long been the proverbial tip of the spear. That competition could have substantial ripple effects within Frelimo, potentially causing further rifts between military and police stakeholders.
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