Cabo Ligado Monthly: January 2021
January at a Glance
Vital Stats
ACLED recorded 29 organized political violence events in January, resulting in 66 fatalities
Deaths from the violence were nearly evenly spread between Palma, Nangade, and Macomia districts, where insurgents targeted civilians in mostly small-scale attacks designed to either gather resources or deny them to others
Other events took place in Ibo and Muidumbe districts
Vital Trends
With the rainy season at its height, event and reported fatality counts remain low relative to a few months ago, but in line with levels of violence observed in January 2020
Despite two relief convoys providing limited resupply for Palma, the western road between Palma and Mueda remained a battleground, with insurgents attempting to cut off the town with frequent attacks
The Mozambican government restructured its counterinsurgency approach by elevating the military to lead government security forces in Cabo Delgado, but suffered a setback when the new armed forces chief Eugenio Mussa died of an illness
In This Report
Discussion of how shifting maritime security priorities may shape the conflict
Analysis of reported gender imbalances among civilians displaced by the conflict
The latest on Mozambique’s negotiations to secure external support for its counterinsurgency effort
January Situation Summary
January was a relatively quiet month on the Cabo Delgado conflict, as the government retooled its approach and insurgents worked to survive the lean season. Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi opened the month with a major reshuffle, naming army general Eugenio Mussa as the commander of government forces at Mueda -- the de facto commander of all government troops in Cabo Delgado. Mussa, who was also promoted to chief of staff of the Mozambican military, replaced police chief Bernardinho Rafael as the overall leader of the government’s counterinsurgency effort. The appointment seemed to signal a shift in President Nyusi’s involvement in the conflict, as Nyusi is familiar with the inner workings of the military from his time as defense minister and had a pre-existing relationship with Mussa. However, Nyusi’s plan was scuttled in early February when Mussa died unexpectedly -- reportedly of COVID-19. It is unclear who Nyusi will rely on to manage the conflict going forward.
Nyusi also shifted his messaging toward the insurgents in January, promising amnesty for Mozambican insurgents who laid down their arms. Nyusi repeated the offer multiple times, but there have been no publicized instances of insurgents taking him up on it. Part of the reason for that is the government’s credibility problem when it promises to treat detained insurgents well. Security forces stand credibly accused of a long list of abuses toward detainees over the course of the conflict, up to and including extrajudicial execution. At this point, insurgents have no particular reason to believe that security forces have suddenly changed course.
The lack of response to Nyusi’s amnesty is particularly striking now, as the insurgency appears to be suffering from an acute resource shortage. Cabo Delgado is at the height of its lean season, when heavy rains and the agricultural growing season mean there is little food available in the province and travel is difficult. Insurgents largely limited their offensive operations to small-scale strikes in Palma, Nangade, and Macomia districts. Many of those attacks were to gather resources, while some were to further isolate Palma town by threatening the road connecting it to Mueda.
Reports of insurgent resource struggles were capped by the testimony of a civilian who escaped insurgent capture in Mocimboa da Praia. The survivor claimed that there was not enough to eat in the insurgent camp, and that the group was running low on money as well as food. Some fighters, the survivor reported, were being encouraged by the group’s leaders to return home in order to lessen the strain on insurgent supplies. Obviously there is no way to check the specifics of the survivor’s account, but in broad strokes it is consistent with reports from other survivors as well as recent insurgent actions.
Will Maritime Anti-Drug Enforcement Affect the Cabo Delgado Insurgency?
In recent months, international attention to maritime security in the Mozambique Channel has shifted from its decade-long focus on countering piracy to a new target: drug trafficking. At the height of the East Africa piracy crisis in the late 2000s and early 2010s, pirate activity originating in Somalia extended into the Mozambique Channel and as far south as South Africa. In response, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) stood up Operation Copper, a joint South African, Tanzanian, and Mozambican mission to protect shipping in the Channel. Operation Copper began in 2011 and continues to this day as a bilateral mission between South Africa and Mozambique. It was most recently extended in April 2020, with the South African government allowing about $10.5 million to continue its anti-piracy deployments in the Mozambique Channel through March 2021.
Due perhaps in part to the South African navy’s continued attention, however, piracy in the Channel is no longer a significant concern. The International Maritime Bureau Piracy Reporting Centre records zero attempted pirate attacks in the Mozambique Channel in 2021 -- indeed, none off the coast of East Africa south of the Horn at all. In 2020, the only attempts recorded off of East Africa were in the port of Nacala, Mozambique, where small groups of men with knives boarded vessels in four incidents. They failed to take any ships, and there is no sign that they are associated with either Somali pirate networks or the Cabo Delgado insurgency. Piracy in the Mozambique Channel is, for now at least, a thing of the past.
As a result, countering drug trafficking has increasingly become the stated impetus for international involvement in policing the Channel. On 8 February, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) announced that it will establish a maritime security office in Maputo, which will help coordinate maritime operations between Mozambique, South Africa, and Tanzania. The office will be staffed by representatives from the three countries and from the UNODC, and is funded by Japan, the US, France, Germany, and the European Union (EU). The initiative aims to strengthen patrolling and security capabilities of the entire south-eastern African coastline, stretching from Tanzania to South Africa, while also supporting actions to counter the flow of drugs through the region from Asia.
France also joined the anti-drug effort as an enforcer in its own right. In January, the French frigate Nivôse interdicted a dhow carrying 444 kilograms of methamphetamine and heroin in the Mozambique Channel as part of increased French patrolling off Mozambique. French patrolling in the Channel is likely to increase, given the country’s regional naval assets and stated interest in the situation in Cabo Delgado.
Some have argued that, given the Cabo Delgado coast’s long history as a crucial transit point for heroin and other drugs traveling from central Asia to South Africa and then on to Europe, anti-drug operations will hurt the Cabo Delgado insurgency. For example, the UNODC’s representative in Mozambique, César Guedes, has claimed that traffickers and insurgents have a symbiotic relationship, with insurgents creating instability that traffickers can exploit to their advantage, and law enforcement sources have asserted that insurgents have made arrangements with drug traffickers to tax drugs traveling through the conflict zone. Yet these arguments are not borne out by events. Since the conflict in Cabo Delgado began in 2017, the drug trade appears to have moved its routes south, away from the insurgency. Increasingly, Joseph Hanlon reports, drug shipments are being sent not to the conflict zone in Cabo Delgado but to the Pemba area and parts of Nampula province, where government interdictions are up significantly. In January, police arrested a man taking delivery of 61 kilograms of heroin on a beach in Nampula province, which Hanlon called a “typical” drug trafficking operation.
Indeed, even if insurgents do benefit from a relationship with drug traffickers, it is not clear that increased anti-drug enforcement in the Mozambique Channel would hurt the insurgency. Far from profiting on instability, in Mozambique, the heroin trade has been rooted in a steady, ordered approach to transporting the drug. Heroin traffickers have long maintained a stable relationship with the Mozambican government, which has limited enforcement against traffickers in exchange for payments and a reduction of retail heroin sales within Mozambique. If international enforcement and pressure on the Mozambican government were to threaten that relationship, it would result in a more diffuse drug trade that insurgents might be able to find ways to benefit from.
Yet increased anti-drug operations in the Mozambique Channel may well hurt the insurgency in ways that are only incidental to the drug trade. Whether or not shipments of drugs are being delivered to the Mocimboa da Praia coast, a source notes recurrent reports of other goods being delivered to insurgents in Mocimboa da Praia by sea. If added international presence off the Cabo Delgado coast makes such deliveries more difficult, it could put significant pressure on an important insurgent supply line.
Insurgents themselves also continue to utilize boats captured in Mocimboa da Praia to conduct their own littoral operations. In January, for example, insurgents used a stolen boat to attack Ilha Matemo, Ibo district, where they kidnapped at least 21 civilians and stole another motor boat. These insurgent operations take place close to shore, but could still be vulnerable to a concerted effort to police the waters off Cabo Delgado. Indeed, some maritime security experts have already called for remaining international anti-piracy operations to be converted to a counter-terrorism mission to limit insurgent use of littoral areas off Cabo Delgado. Even if drugs are not an important source of revenue for the insurgency, increased international naval presence in the Mozambique Channel will not be welcome news for insurgents.
Gender Imbalance Among Cabo Delgado IDPs
There is an apparent gender imbalance among internally displaced persons fleeing violence in Cabo Delgado. In both formal IDP centers and in communities where displaced civilians live with host families, observers routinely note that women appear to outnumber men. The extent to which this gender imbalance actually exists and the whereabouts of the “missing” men have important policy implications for humanitarian and social cohesion efforts. For humanitarians, the gender imbalance suggests certain vectors of vulnerability for the displaced population, including child marriage and economic deprivation. For those involved in efforts to strengthen civilian resilience against insurgent recruitment, “missing” men begs the question of whether they have already been recruited by one side or another in the conflict.
While the gender imbalance does exist, there is some evidence to suggest that it may not be as stark as it seems. There is no comprehensive publicly-available census of civilians displaced from Cabo Delgado. The fact that the vast majority of IDPs are housed with host families around the province suggests that conducting such a census will be a challenging undertaking. Even for IDPs living in government-run centers, public statistics are limited. In recent evaluations of IDP centers published by the International Organization for Migration (IOM), only the Corrane center in Nampula province reported the age and gender breakdown of IDPs living in the center. There, local authorities report that men make up just over 40% of adults in the camp. That suggests a noticeable imbalance, but hardly a situation where there are few men among the IDPs. Indeed, across the districts from which most residents of the Corrane center fled, the most recent government statistics suggest that men only make up about 48% of the population normally. Yet the Corrane numbers may not be indicative of the overall situation, since the resources required to travel to Nampula -- and the relative security for IDPs there -- may create selection effects that differentiate the gender dynamics in Corrane from those in Cabo Delgado IDP centers.
A source who has spent time in IDP centers in Metuge district and has experience in other conflict-driven displacement situations reported that, while women do seem to be the majority, the apparent gender imbalance was less than in other, similar situations. The men who are present in the camps are largely older, although men of working age are there as well. In Ibo, where IDPs are not housed in formal centers but instead stay among the community, observers report many fewer men of working age around during the day.
This discrepancy suggests an explanation for the “missing” men that has nothing to do with the conflict directly. Men may simply be pursuing economic activity outside the main refugee settlement areas at a greater rate than women. Among rural civilians in northern Mozambique, women’s work, both in terms of housework and agricultural labor, is generally closer to the home than men’s work. Men often travel farther for their livelihoods, as traders, wage laborers, fishermen, or in other industries. IDPs in Metuge reported that men in their families were away from the center looking for work. Fishing in particular is likely to draw men away. Fishing in northern Cabo Delgado is highly gendered, with fishing away from shore conducted almost exclusively by men. Given that IDP populations in Ibo are overwhelmingly drawn from coastal areas of Macomia and Mocimboa da Praia districts, where fishing is a major economic activity, it is not surprising that working age men with families in Ibo would continue their work, to the extent that they are able. We have seen evidence of this, as insurgents have repeatedly attacked fishermen working in areas from which many people have been displaced. As recently as 5 January, insurgents stole a fishing boat and its whole catch off the Macomia coast.
The dynamic of men leaving displaced families behind to work elsewhere is likely accelerated by overcrowding in IDP communities. Reports of overcrowding in informal IDP communities are frequent, and IOM rated three of the five biggest IDP centers as overcrowded because the centers offer less than 3.5 square meters of living space per person (see figure below). In overcrowded areas, men are more able than women to ease the overcrowding by pursuing economic activities elsewhere, leading to a gender imbalance among remaining IDPs.
Sources have also speculated that there are conflict-driven reasons for the imbalance. One pointed out that men are more often killed in insurgent attacks, and suggested that may account for the imbalance. Certainly, men make up the vast majority of fighters in both the insurgency and government-backed militias, which may also add to the imbalance. Yet evidence from an IOM survey of IDPs in the Democratic Republic of the Congo shows that a disproportionately high number of women among IDP populations is no clear indication of increased involvement in the conflict among men. In IDP communities where IOM found a proportion of women similar to that reported at the Corrane center -- between 56% and 62% -- the mobility of male labor accounted for most of the gender imbalance. On the other hand, some IDP communities were as much as 60% men. Those communities were in areas of high insurgent forced recruitment, and men fled to the camps in hopes of avoiding being pressed into service as rebels.
A true census of civilians displaced from Cabo Delgado is required to get better answers, but early indications are that the gender imbalance in IDP communities is real and mostly a result of men pursuing work outside those communities. A potentially worthwhile avenue for future research would be to investigate the economic opportunities open to those men and how their labor is changing social dynamics at the edge of the conflict zone.
International Update
Many of those watching the situation in Mozambique remain understandably puzzled by the apparent limited progress made by Maputo toward securing much-needed support to tackle the deepening interrelated security and humanitarian situation in Cabo Delgado.
The Southern African Development Community (SADC) has been open to exploring assistance options since May 2020, and the EU agreed to help in September 2020. Bilaterally, countries including France, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, the US, the UK, India, Brazil, Nigeria, and others have all indicated a willingness to help. However, this has translated into only limited and somewhat fragmented concrete support.
A resuscitated memorandum of understanding between the Mozambican and Portuguese defense ministries has seen some Portuguese military trainers arrive in country, and there are isolated bits and pieces of support from the UK, US, and others designed to bolster capacity in various ministries. Yet these piecemeal efforts seemingly lack a wider strategy. Mozambique’s preference for negotiating bilateral support regionally also seems ill-directed. Maputo’s ongoing efforts to secure Zimbabwean support are unlikely to be successful unless Maputo can finance the operation, and Harare is unlikely to agree to deployments with a SADC mandate.
SADC support has never really seemed likely in the circumstances. The Extraordinary SADC Summit which was scheduled for 17 January in Maputo would have focused on how the regional body and its member states would support Mozambique in its efforts to address the insurgency in Cabo Delgado. It was postponed at the last minute, ostensibly due to challenges faced from the resurgence of COVID-19 in the region. The meeting has now been postponed to either May or June, which means that Mozambique will have spent almost its entire presidency of the regional body avoiding this interaction. This is a damning indictment of SADC and the failings of its peace and security architecture. The summit’s postponement appeared to elicit a sense of bewilderment from the South African Minister for International Relations and Cooperation, Naledi Pandor, who described the lack of request for support as a “worrying puzzle.”
Prospects for EU cooperation took another important step forward in January as a delegation led by Portuguese Foreign Minister Augusto Santos Silva came to Maputo (19 – 21 January) to discuss the development of plans for possible support for military training, medical equipment and humanitarian support. While the EU remains publicly upbeat about these developments, the process has been inexplicably delayed and Brussels is now waiting for Mozambique to provide it with detail on what support is needed and why. It remains to be seen if and how Maputo will try and expedite this approach, but Maputo’s foot dragging coupled with EU bureaucracy is likely to ensure the process is relatively slow.
Maputo’s dithering may be a reflection of its inability to balance the multiple potential offers on the table. There is a great deal to balance, as offers may be tied to certain conditionalities and there are diverging preferences within the Mozambican establishment over how to approach the conflict. There is not yet even clarity about how the police and military will work together in Cabo Delgado, despite the apparent decision to place the military as the lead partner in the counterinsurgency effort. Yet the foot dragging may instead be part of an organized plan to maintain Mozambique in control of the counterinsurgency effort and keep prying eyes at bay, while securing longer term commitments to help the country reorientate and rebuild its security forces.
Officially, the mantra remains that Maputo does not want foreign boots on the ground, and the focus will remain on training and re-equipping. A distinct lack of urgency suggests Maputo is unlikely to change course or to expeditiously ramp up internal capacities.
Understanding of regional and international dynamics, and how these relate to internal, regional and geopolitical dynamics, continues to be clouded by limited disclosure from the Mozambican government. For example, the visit by President Nyusi and his security chiefs to meet Tanzanian President John Magufuli on 11 January reportedly focused and agreed to strengthen security cooperation, but neither government provided additional public detail on how the two countries would practically achieve this. Several similar bilateral commitments have been made over the last 18 months without accompanying public disclosures of terms.