Cabo Ligado Monthly: July 2020
July at a Glance
Vital Stats
ACLED recorded 26 conflict events in July 2020, resulting in 109 fatalities
Continuing a trend, that represents a decrease in conflict events, but an increase in fatality count, over the previous month
Conflict events took place in Ibo, Macomia, Mocimboa da Praia, Muidumbe, and Quissanga districts, but the vast majority of action happened in Macomia and Mocimboa da Praia
Vital Trends
The pace of insurgent attacks slowed, but the lethality of those attacks increased
State security forces’ violence against civilians continued in all areas affected by the conflict, not just areas with active counterinsurgency operations
Government control and civilian security improved in Quissanga district over the course of the month
In This Report
Analysis on the range and origins of human rights abuses by Mozambican security forces
An investigation into insurgents’ use of arson as a displacement strategy
Updates on approaches from Maputo and Pretoria to shaping potential regional intervention in Cabo Delgado
July Situation Summary
Violence continued in Cabo Delgado in July, with insurgents focusing their efforts on deadly attacks in Mocimboa da Praia and Macomia districts, where there were 19 conflict events resulting in 71 fatalities. Other attacks also took place in Muidumbe, Ibo, and Quissanga districts. In addition to insurgent attacks, Cabo Delgado civilians also continued to suffer Mozambican security force abuses, displacement, and a cholera outbreak that spread through much of the conflict zone in July.
The month began with an Islamic State (IS) statement in Al Naba threatening to strike at liquified natural gas infrastructure in Cabo Delgado and targets abroad if foreign governments came to Mozambique’s aid and supported the counterinsurgency effort. The article emphasized international issues and centered IS as a strategic driver of the conflict, while still speaking to local concerns about the failure of natural gas investment to improve most people’s lives in Cabo Delgado. The balance speaks to a central tension, caused by IS involvement in the insurgency, between the insurgency’s roots in local grievances and the global vision of IS.
As civilians fled Mocimboa da Praia after the insurgent attack there in late June, many areas they sheltered in could not supply sufficient fresh water and cholera spread rapidly. The disease soon worsened in Macomia district as well, where there was a major outbreak among displaced people in Pangane. Due to the conflict, government and NGO medical teams had a very difficult time reaching affected areas, which left suffering civilians with no resources to control the disease. In all, over 90 people died, mostly in Pangane, before assistance could arrive.
Local militias, armed by the government, also appeared on the scene for the first time in July. Civilians have been forming self-defense groups since shortly after the conflict began, but the government has long resisted offering these groups any formal support. In late July, however, reports came in of the government arming local militias in Macomia and Muidumbe districts. One local militia, in Litandacua, Macomia district, killed 12 insurgents in a 28 July skirmish, although it is unclear where they got their weapons from. The militias may improve local security in the short term, but adding more arms to the mix is unlikely to improve the prospects for stability in Cabo Delgado. Once local militias begin pursuing their own political goals, it is hard to predict what will happen next.
Abusive Behavior by Security Forces
Instability in Cabo Delgado results not only from insurgent attacks, but from state security forces abusing civilians with apparent impunity. Accusations of security force abuses appeared as far back as 2018, with Human Rights Watch publishing credible accounts of arbitrary detention, mistreatment of prisoners, and summary execution by security forces. That behavior, along with persistent efforts by government troops to expropriate civilian wealth, has created an ever-increasing divide between local communities and state security forces. In one MediaFax article published in 2020, locals referred to soldiers as “terrorists.”
The abuse of civilians by state forces creates three intertwined concerns:
Abuses wear away at trust between local communities and the government. In July, security forces beat, tortured, kidnapped, and raped civilians in Cabo Delgado. On 12 July, fusiliers captured a dhow off the coast of Pemba and arrested 15 passengers. Carta de Moçambique reported that those detained were tortured into confessing that they were insurgents. Also in July, soldiers were accused of raping six teenaged girls who had fled to Ibo Island. Many reported that soldiers and police were involved in looting and vandalism, as well as excessive use of force against suspected insurgents after the Mocimboa da Praia attack at the end of June. On 25 July, three unknown armed men -- likely police -- abducted Sheikh Saide Bacar in Pemba, one of many arbitrary arrests of Muslim religious leaders over the course of the conflict. Other instances include the abductions of Sheikh Kidume from Palma, who disappeared in April, and Sheikh Kada Sualeh Chabane from Mucojo, Macomia district, who disappeared in 2019. These incidents make it extremely difficult for security forces to build any sort of relationship with local communities.
State forces not being held accountable for their actions means that the social contract between the state and communities fades, and the state is viewed as an agitator rather than the protector of its citizens. Reports of punishments for wrongdoing by state forces have been few and far between, and the punishment rarely rises to the level of the crime. For example, the soldiers accused of the sexual assaults in Ibo were disciplined by simply transferring them to another area. In an Afrobarometer study published in June 2020 (based on data gathered between June and August 2018), only 22% of respondents in Cabo Delgado said that state forces acted professionally and respected civilian rights “often” or “always,” lower than in any other province. Nationally, the number was 40%. Afrobarometer concludes that citizens in Cabo Delgado “showed above-average levels of fear and negative perceptions of the military and of government performance.”
The general indiscipline of state forces exacerbates an already dire humanitarian situation. Soldiers coerce outrageous bribes in exchange for safe passage at road checkpoints, exploiting people desperate to leave areas that those same soldiers have failed to protect from insurgent attacks. Looting of private property in Mocimboa da Praia and Macomia also remains a consistent pattern. When displaced people resettle, they are often still not free from abuse by state forces. In Ibo, home to many displaced families, a contact reported that soldiers have become the law unto themselves.
There are multiple causes for misbehavior by state forces. Adriano Nuvunga, director of the Center for Democracy and Development, correctly noted that abusive behaviour is a reflection of the lack of coordination, command, and control in the government’s security architecture. Indeed, Mozambican forces broadly lack sufficient training and logistical support, and face massive morale challenges due to their battlefield failures. In addition, most Mozambican soldiers are not from the north and are not familiar with local customs or languages, making them less able to assist or form connections with local communities. That, in turn, makes it harder for members of the state forces to gather reliable intelligence from civilians, increasing their suspicion of the local population. The suspicion leads to profiling of certain civilian populations (internally displaced persons, Muslims, etc.), which drives further abuses.
Those calling for international and regional involvement to support the Mozambican government in countering the insurgency are faced with a conspicuous dilemma: how do you partner with a force proven to be unreliable and abusive in behavior? The Mozambican government seems to believe that it can avoid examination of its human rights record in Cabo Delgado by simply refusing to admit that a problem exists and impeding any journalists that try to cover the issue. The government has never been willing to share information about the real scope of abuses by state forces, and the Media Institute of Southern Africa and the Center for Democracy and Development (CDD) have both expressed concerns about declining media freedom in Mozambique.
One of the findings in the 2017 United Nations Development Programme report on extremist recruiting in Africa particularly applies to the current Mozambique situation. The report finds that “71 per cent of those involved in extremism identified ‘government action,’ including ‘killing of a family member or friend’ and ‘arrest of a family member or friend’ as the incident that prompted them to join [an extremist group]... This large percentage illustrates that in a majority of cases, paradoxically, state action appears to be the primary factor finally pushing individuals into violent extremism in Africa.”
The Mozambican government will do well to take cognizance of these findings.
Patterns in Insurgent Arson
One of the defining mysteries of the Cabo Delgado conflict has been the insurgency’s long-running, widespread use of forced displacement against civilians. Historically, it has been primarily counterinsurgents who have used this strategy, as a method to coerce spread out populations into higher population density areas, where the state can more easily monitor them. For insurgents -- particularly rural insurgents like those in Cabo Delgado -- civilians living in remote villages that are difficult for state forces to access are usually a good thing, as they are easier to pressure or persuade into collaborating with the insurgency. Yet, in Cabo Delgado, insurgents have consistently employed arson in their attacks on villages, even in areas where they might reasonably expect to be able to control civilians in their homes.
Early in the conflict, experts on civilian displacement in civil wars suggested that, based on the few cases of systematic civilian displacement by insurgents in other conflicts around the world, that the goal of the house burnings might be ethnic or religious cleansing. In Sri Lanka, for instance, the LTTE expelled Sinhalese and Muslim civilians from areas where the group hoped to establish a Tamil ethnostate. There was some evidence early on that displacement in Cabo Delgado did follow this logic, with arsons being committed overwhelmingly on homes belonging to ethnic Makondes. As the conflict has gone on, however, that theory has come apart in the face of both evidence about the ethnic makeup of the insurgency -- with multiple reports of Makonde speakers among the insurgents -- and the sheer scale of destruction in areas like Quissanga district, where few ethnic Makondes live.
Today, civilian displacement as a result of mass arson and fears of future violence is at an all time high in Cabo Delgado. Estimates are approaching 300,000 displaced persons in the province, and new refugees are arriving in Pemba, Mueda, and elsewhere each day. Yet home burnings continue apace. Of 15 insurgent attacks on villages recorded in July, eight involved home burnings. To identify fruitful paths for future research about why this insurgent tactic persists, even as large swaths of the conflict zone have become essentially ghost towns, we can look to those July attacks to see what differentiates the incidents where insurgents chose to utilize the arson tactic from those where they did not.
Geographically, non-arson attacks are much more prevalent in areas of clear government control. Ibo district, where Mussemuco was attacked on 19 July, is a government stronghold that has welcomed many people fleeing from areas of more tenuous government control. Similarly, 19 de Outubro is in an area of Quissanga district that has seen major government deployments and lessening insurgent activity since a government offensive there in May. Mocimboa da Praia and Mucojo, Macomia district, which both experienced attacks with and without arson in July, are highly contested areas -- government forces control both towns, but insurgents operate freely in the surrounding countryside.
Conversely, arson attacks were most prevalent in areas of greater insurgent control. House burnings continued in rural eastern Macomia district and along the Macomia-Muidumbe border, both of which have been areas of insurgent focus since major government offensives in June. Awasse, Mocimboa da Praia district, which was hit with an arson attack on 12 July, is part of the N380 route into Mocimboa da Praia town that Ligado analysts identified as an insurgent priority in early June.
One possible explanation for this discrepancy is insurgent risk calculation: arson takes time, and the smoke makes the fact that an attack is taking place obvious from far away. If government forces are near, then insurgents may not want to increase their risk of being drawn into a battle by waiting around for homes to burn. A more strategic-level explanation, however, has to do with the actual effect of displacement. If a goal of insurgent forced displacement is to move civilians into insurgent camps, house burnings in government controlled areas would be unlikely to accomplish that goal. The cost in those areas of finding new housing still under government control is relatively low, while the cost of leaving an area of government control for an insurgent camp is relatively high. The opposite, of course, is true in villages where insurgents have greater control.
The control argument is bolstered by another characteristic common among non-arson attacks: they are more likely to involve kidnapping than arson attacks. In July, over twice as many people were kidnapped in non-arson attacks as in arson attacks, and the kidnappings all took place in areas of substantial government control (Mussemuco, 19 de Outubro, Mucojo). As a strategy for moving civilians, kidnapping is fairly inefficient -- usually, only a few people can be kidnapped at a time, and they require constant supervision to prevent escape. In areas where insurgents can force the kind of civilian relocation they would prefer by a combination of house burnings and local control, kidnapping makes little sense. In areas where house burning will not have that effect, however, kidnappings may function as the next best option for growing the insurgent ranks. Continued investigation into the insurgents’ displacement strategies could shed light on the group’s overall goals and improve civilian protection policies.
SADC and the Potential for Regional Intervention
The regional response from the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and its member states to the May call by SADC’s Organ for Politics Defence and Security (OPDS) to assist Mozambique in its fight against insurgents continues to raise more questions than answers.
No public statements about what SADC support might look like have been issued. Mozambique continues to drag its feet on OPDS processes, effectively going through the motions of engaging OPDS preparations for assistance, while at the same time pursuing an array of bilateral options outside of the SADC security framework. This apparent lack of progress reflects Mozambique’s general reluctance to pursue a SADC intervention. It had to be cajoled into the May OPDS meeting in Harare, and the statement issued from that meeting did not reflect a particular commitment to a security intervention. Mozambique remains wary of certain SADC member states, such as Botswana (which takes over the OPDS Chair in August), Tanzania, and South Africa, becoming overly involved in their security arrangements.
Support from Zimbabwe, however, is regarded as a preferred option; there is a history of trust around security issues between the two countries. Sources from both Zimbabwe and Mozambique, however, claim President Mnangagwa prefers a regional intervention rather than developing bilateral support options. There is also the thorny question of who would underwrite such support. Neither Zimbabwe nor Mozambique have any spare budget for Zimbabwean military assistance, although there is some conjecture that comprador capital may be in a position to offer financing in exchange for resource concessions.
Amid the speculation, there have been no visible developments around deployments or confirmation of such from either Mozambique or its member states. In late July, several media outlets claimed South African military forces had commenced an intensive training program in preparation for deployment in Cabo Delgado, purportedly reflecting a lobby within South Africa’s leadership for military intervention. Africa Intelligence claimed on 29 July that this preparation was necessary to ensure rapid deployment if President Ramaphosa gave a green light. The same report claimed Mozambique has made no specific requests for military intervention.
South Africa’s opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) has claimed South African Special Forces assets have already been deployed in Cabo Delgado in some capacity. Local sources deny any evidence of this. At the same time, certain Zimbabwean media sources claimed that 30 specialists / advisers from the Zimbabwe Defence Force had been sent to Cabo Delgado. The Zimbabwean government has neither confirmed nor denied this. The DA’s shadow State Security and Defence ministers have submitted a host of questions to the respective ministers about the insurgency and its import for South Africa. Questions include detail on the evolution of the insurgency, its import for regional security, which member states are responding and how, and detail on the role of private military companies. Interestingly, though, no question was asked about the legality of the current Dyck Advisory Group deployment. There have also been tensions in the Defence Portfolio between South Africa’s Defence Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa- Nququla and DA representatives around the secretive nature of the South African government’s response. There are also unresolved questions as to whether deployment, especially of any Special Forces component, would require parliamentary approval.
Maputo is under pressure from several countries, especially those with interests in liquified natural gas developments, to press ahead with deepening its security response. One major investor, Total, has expressed its confidence in the government’s security strategy. Yet, at the same time, they have been beefing up security options on the peninsula, as well as exploring options to strengthen security for contractors who operate outside of the Green Zone.
Several countries have publicly offered support, including Portugal -- the former colonial power -- and the US. Maputo has also reportedly reached out to France, with a maritime cooperation agreement currently under discussion to provide training and strengthen coastal security. France is well positioned to lend its support, with a naval base located at its island territory of Mayotte in the Madagascar Channel. It is unclear how this development would complement or supplement current anti-piracy operations (i.e. Operation Copper) that have been in play with South Africa for the last decade and were extended for a further year this April.
The US has also reportedly offered to support Mozambique’s maritime security on the Cabo Delgado coast. In a telephone briefing on drug trafficking in Africa on 21 July, the US government, echoing concerns raised by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, identified Cabo Delgado as an increasingly important site for criminal networks that have taken advantage of the paucity of security infrastructure along Mozambique’s extensive coastline. They claimed that “there’s a lot of overlap between the drug traffickers and extremists and the types of conditions that enable them to thrive.” The connection between the insurgency and such criminal networks remains largely speculative, but strengthening law enforcement capacity is recognized as a critical component for addressing broader governance and security threats in the province.
All eyes will be on the SADC Summit (10-17 August), to see how Mozambique explains recent developments and what attention is given to SADC support for Mozambique’s efforts in Cabo Delgado. Mozambique will take over from Tanzania as SADC Chair. Botswana will take over from Zimbabwe as OPDS Chair. It appears unlikely that Mozambique will use its position to move SADC towards contributing to the fight against the insurgents.
South Africa Assesses Domestic Extremist Threat
In the wake of IS threats in early July, South Africa has stepped up its own domestic security and intelligence work focusing on extremist elements. State Security Minister Ayanda Dlodlo has said South Africa is taking the threat “very, very seriously.” There is cause for concern, though, given the degradation of the country’s intelligence services, set out in a highly critical 2019 government review.
As part of the response, Dlodlo appointed former Independent Police Investigative Directorate director Robert McBride as the new head of State Security’s foreign intelligence service. Rebooting relations with Mozambique’s intelligence community will be a priority. The exact nature of the threat to South Africa is moot, and several experts argue the evidentiary link to IS remains thin.
Nevertheless, extremist elements are certainly present in South Africa and there are concerns about the presence of sleeper cells and training facilities, as well as evidence of some South Africans heading abroad to join extremist groups.
Following Dlodlo’s announcement, there was a breakthrough in what appeared to be an unrelated kidnapping case in Gauteng, which resulted in the reported discovery of weapons, bomb making manuals and IS propaganda, along with a vehicle that was involved in several unresolved drive-by shootings in Johannesburg on New Years Eve. This has fed speculation about a potential IS threat, as well as prospects of “lone wolf” operations.