A MARSHALL PLAN: ''WHAT MOZAMBIQUE NEEDS TO ENCOUNTER ISLAMIC INSURGENCY''



The insurgency in Cabo Delgado is an ongoing conflict in Cabo Delgado Province, Mozambique, mainly fought between Islamist militants attempting to establish an Islamic state in the region, and Mozambican security forces. Civilians have been the main targets of attacks by Islamist militants. The main insurgent faction is Ansar al-Sunna, a native extremist faction with tenuous international connections. From mid-2018, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant(ISIL) has allegedly become active in northern Mozambique as well and claimed its first attack against Mozambican security forces in June 2019. In addition, bandits have exploited the rebellion to carry out raids. 

Northern Mozambique needs a Marshall Plan to generate mass employment for local young people and prevent them from turning to the region’s extremist Islamic insurgency. Attempts at development in northern Mozambique, which has been grappling with the insurgency since 2017, need to focus on creating large numbers of low-skilled jobs in construction and agriculture, says Ian Krohn, a director at the ThirdWay Africa advisory group in Maputo. He sees a “Marshall Plan” to reconstruct the region as the quickest way to do so. The share of people in Cabo Delgado living in poverty is estimated by the South African Institute of International Affairs at 60%. Focusing on low-skilled jobs is “unsexy for the development world,” says Krohn, who was recently in Pemba, the capital of the northern Cabo Delgado province. “But it’s a good first step for a place like Cabo Delgado.”

The activism of the Salafi-jihadi actors in Cabo Delgado seems also to relate to the recent discovery of liquid natural gas reserves in the offshore waters north of Mozambique (between 150 and 180 trillion cubic feet are estimated, the third-largest gas reserves in Africa). Ahlul Sunna Wal Jama leveraged on dynamics of economic marginalization and social exclusion in one of the less developed regions of the country. Local communities feel they are excluded from the potential benefits resulting from the exploitation of those huge gas deposits and are in fact often targeted with forced land seizures or deprived of their traditional livelihoods, such as fishing or subsistence farming.

The Southern African region has never experienced terrorism of this scale in its post-colonial history. The intensity of the attacks shows the violent extremists’ determination to carve out part of the country for themselves to establish a caliphate, or safe haven, from which to plan and execute further attacks in Mozambique and the region.

This is not a crisis that one country can solve alone. Filipe Nyusi announced his intention to eradicate the violent extremists but his government has been unable to do so for the past three years. Each passing day strengthens extremist resilience and complicates the liberation of Cabo Delgado and the millions of Mozambicans at risk. SADC must lead a regional response.SADC is faced with a conundrum. On the one hand, it must respond to the unfolding humanitarian catastrophe in Mozambique, which it condemns as terrorism. On the other, it seeks to protect Mozambique’s sovereignty and won’t intervene unless asked to by the government. Up to now, Mozambique has only requested SADC to provide military supplies. 

On 14 December, Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi convened a meeting of the Southern African Development Community’s (SADC) Troika of the Organ on Politics, Defence and Security to discuss the situation in Cabo Delgado. The meeting, attended by the presidents of South Africa, Botswana and Zimbabwe as well as Tanzania’s deputy president, didn’t agree on a specific role for SADC. Instead, the main decision was to hold an extraordinary SADC summit in January 2021 to discuss the issue further.

The lack of a concrete plan is symptomatic of Mozambique’s resistance to any kind of external support that may lead to multilateral foreign intervention in the country. But the January meeting is a sign that Mozambique may, at last, be willing to discuss regional support.



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