Cabo Ligado Monthly: March 2023
March At A Glance
Vital Stats
ACLED records 11 political violence events in Cabo Delgado province in March, resulting in 5 reported fatalities
Reported fatalities were highest in Mocímboa da Praia district, where insurgents clashed with Local Forces and Rwandan forces
Other events took place in Muidumbe, Macomia, Meluco, and Pemba
Vital Trends
Insurgents continue outreach to communities
Insurgents deploy advanced IEDs in Muidumbe district
Return to Mocímboa da Praia continues
In This Report
The Global Fragility Act in Mozambique: small-scale US peacebuilding policy
The insurgency targets ‘hearts and minds’
Reintegrating returnees
Amnesty and reintegration: lessons from elsewhere
March Situation Summary
March was a quiet month in terms of political violence events. However, insurgents continued outreach to communities, particularly on the coast, while people displaced from Mocímboa da Praia by the conflict continue to return home. Worryingly, there were two IED incidents during the month.
Insurgents’ outreach to communities took place in villages along the coast, mostly in Macomia district, but also in southern Mocímboa da Praia. At least five such visits were undertaken, with insurgents staying for some hours in some cases, and destroying alcohol and cigarettes. Visits to villages in Macomia district were likely undertaken from a suspected new base not far from the village of Calugo, and closer to the coast than previous bases in that district.
Insurgents were active over the course of the month in Muidumbe district. Three armed clash events between insurgents and security forces and two IED incidents were recorded in the district last month. The IED attacks, on 9 and 24 March, targeted patrols of the Botswana contingent of the Southern Africa Development Community Mission in Mozambique (SAMIM). The devices are understood to be more advanced than IEDs deployed in the past in northern Mozambique, and are a worrying development in the conflict.
Finally, people continue to return to their home district of Mocímboa da Praia in large numbers. In the first week of March, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) recorded over 2,500 arrivals. Over the following two weeks, almost 3,000 arrivals were recorded. The vast majority of these are understood to be returnees.
The Global Fragility Act in Mozambique: Small-Scale US Peacebuilding Policy
By Sam Ratner, Policy Director, Win Without War
The Global Fragility Act (GFA) is a United States law passed in 2019. It aims to use US funds and technical expertise to mitigate violent conflicts and to prevent new ones from appearing without the kinds of large-scale military interventions that characterized the preceding two decades of US foreign policy failures. Last year, the US government declared that Mozambique would join Haiti, Papua New Guinea, Libya, and coastal West Africa as a GFA priority country, meaning that US diplomats would develop a 10-year plan for programming to address conflict in Mozambique. Last month, after lengthy delays, that plan was transmitted to Congress, and an executive summary was released to the public.
In theory, GFA programming across all five priority sites is supposed to be supported by combined appropriations of 230 million US dollars annually – so, if spending were evenly distributed, programming for Mozambique would receive US$46m per year. In reality, funding may be even lower than that. Last year, the two accounts that fund GFA programming received a combined US$195m budget. Funding at that level would make GFA programming small potatoes compared to the rest of the US$560m worth of bilateral aid the US provides Mozambique yearly, and the combined 106m euro (US$117m) the European Union has appropriated to support SAMIM and Mozambique’s Defense and Security Forces operations in Cabo Delgado. Even if it does not change the funding landscape in Cabo Delgado though, the new GFA plan is still worth examining as a measure of both how the US understands the conflict in the north and how it intends to involve itself in peacebuilding and reconstruction efforts going forward.
The most important positive feature of the plan is that it embraces a focus on local political disenfranchisement in Cabo Delgado as a key conflict driver – a narrative the relentlessly centralizing Mozambican government has sought to suppress. The plan outlines programming to address the lack of local political power through training and financial support for local civil society organizations and community resource management councils in northern Mozambique, as well as through diplomatic pressure to push Maputo to allow northern communities a greater say in reconstruction and resource distribution policies.
This approach is closely tied to another positive feature of the plan – a focus on supporting short-term humanitarian response and long-term climate resilience. Both of these are crucial, underfunded needs in northern Cabo Delgado, and the plan prioritizes both as areas where US assistance can contribute to peaceful outcomes. The plan also envisions a tangible role for local organizations in making decisions about prioritizing and implementing humanitarian programs and climate adaptation projects, thereby reinforcing the plan’s focus on reducing local political disenfranchisement.
But the plan also demonstrates crucial blind spots in US policy toward Mozambique. The first is that the plan’s budget does not line up with its ambitions. On climate, for example, the World Bank estimates that Mozambique will need to spend $35.8 billion in the next seven years on climate change mitigation measures. Even if we narrow the scope of climate mitigation to Cabo Delgado, a fraction of $46m annually will be a drop in the bucket compared to the need. This budgetary mismatch also extends to the plan’s ambitions to place the US at the center of joint donor community efforts to pursue peace, security, and reconstruction in northern Mozambique. Funding through GFA pales in comparison to World Bank and EU commitments, both of which have their own priorities in Mozambique that do not necessarily align with US interests.
The plan is also astonishingly credulous about the extractive industry’s claims to be a valuable partner in peacebuilding efforts. The prospect of liquified natural gas (LNG) development created the very democratic decline that the plan identifies as being a crucial driver of the conflict, but the plan still lists LNG development as being an asset in ending the conflict. LNG development, the plan argues, will pay into a sovereign wealth fund that can be used to address conflict drivers and bring peace, and in the meantime, it will provide widespread, long-term employment opportunities to local people in Cabo Delgado. Neither of these contentions is true.
First of all, the size of the national sovereign wealth fund is shrinking all the time, both because returns from gas investment keep being kicked further down the road and because the Mozambican government keeps pre-plundering the fund for budget support. Second of all, even if the fund were used to redistribute resources to the north, centralizing constitutional reforms in Mozambique means that the redistribution would only reify southern political control. A promise to spend 10% of government revenue from gas at the provincial level does not mean provincial control, it means a slush fund for a provincial secretary of state who is appointed by and serves at the pleasure of the president. Finally, contra self-serving claims from energy majors, the massive education gap that Cabo Delgado youth have suffered from since before the conflict means that there is little chance of skilled extractive industry employment for them in the short or medium term. Instead, the best jobs will continue to go to workers from outside the province, increasing local dispossession. The US risks a serious credibility gap at the local level if it cannot come to terms with the challenges extractive industry poses to its agenda of increasing local political power.
There is also a real question as to whether the plan’s laudable focus on growing people’s capacity to advocate for themselves at the local level will survive contact with the central government in Maputo. Recent donor attempts to acknowledge local disenfranchisement as a conflict driver and to put donor-funded resources in the hands of local communities through the proposed Northern Resilience and Integrated Development Strategy (ERDIN) for reconstruction in the northern provinces have been stonewalled by the Mozambican government bent on centralization at all costs. With the US bringing significantly fewer resources to the table than the $2.5bn promised as part of ERDIN, it is hard to see Maputo changing its tune to accommodate GFA programming.
Indeed, the plan’s attempt to align its efforts with the central Mozambican government only underscores the challenges it faces in this regard. The plan frequently restates the US commitment to aligning with the Northern Resilience and Integrated Development Program (PREDIN), the successor plan to ERDIN, endorsed by Maputo, that centralizes reconstruction in Maputo’s hands and dismisses the idea that local disenfranchisement is a major conflict driver. Aside from the inherent tension between the plan’s ideas about conflict drivers and PREDIN’s, the focus on aligning with PREDIN elides the reality that PREDIN is nearly a dead letter. With the ERDIN donors reducing their commitments after President Filipe Nyusi rejected their vision for reconstruction, it is not at all clear that PREDIN will be able to move forward in order for the US to align with it.
In all, the plan represents a step forward for US policy in Mozambique, but not a sea change in the conflict. GFA programming will face the same pressures that all other donor country programs face in Mozambique, and with a fraction of the financial resources available to conflict-related programs from the EU and international financial institutions. But the US remains an important partner for the Mozambican government and a valued voice in Maputo. Hopefully, this plan is a declaration of intent for the US to use that influence to make real progress toward ensuring that people in Cabo Delgado and across Mozambique have a real say in the decisions that affect their political and economic lives.
The Insurgency Targets ‘Hearts and Minds’
By Tom Gould, Cabo Ligado
Following a surge of activity in January amid the Mozambique government’s Operation Vulcão IV offensive, incidents of insurgent violence in the last month have reduced to a trickle. Just 11 political violence events were recorded for March, compared to 19 for February. However, insurgents have not disappeared. In fact, along the coast of Macomia and Mocímboa da Praia, they are more visible than ever, but now they are usually found asserting their peacefulness as they approach villages, looking to trade.
This strategy of trying to win ‘hearts and minds’ is a new modus operandi for a militant group that has relentlessly targeted civilians, burning villages, beheading prisoners, and posting pictures of the gruesome results on social media for shock value. Nonetheless, this strategy appears to be deliberate and coordinated. The first example was reported on 25 January in Calugo village, Mocímboa da Praia district, where about 30 insurgents stayed for several hours, buying food and mobile phones while insisting there was no reason to fear them. This encounter set a precedent that would be repeated many times over the following weeks.
Initially, groups across Cabo Delgado adopted this strategy. At the Ravia gold mine in Meluco, insurgents arrived on 29 January and split the Christian and Muslim workers into separate groups before assuring them they just came to buy food and other supplies. In Nangade, another insurgent group of about 20 fighters appeared in Mbuyuni village on 1 February, separated the Muslims and Christians, and explained they were only there to trade.
In the last month, these incidents have been concentrated almost exclusively along the Macomia and Mocímboa da Praia coastline. Insurgent visits have become a regular fixture, particularly in the villages along the coast in Macomia and Mocímboa da Praia districts. This perhaps reflects the relocation of insurgent bases from the Messalo river basin to the Catupa forest in east Macomia, which followed the conclusion of Operation Vulcão IV in February.
Although these visits are ostensibly peaceful, the threat of violence is always implied. Offers to trade are usually prefaced with a warning not to alert the security forces that they were there. On other occasions, insurgents instruct locals to buy goods from the market on their behalf and pledge to kill them or their families if they inform the authorities.
Several factors may have influenced the insurgents’ strategic reasoning. First, it appears increasingly evident that the insurgency’s offensive capability has been significantly diminished since the intervention of the Rwanda Defence Force and the SAMIM in July 2021. The number of adult male insurgents active in the field has collapsed from an estimated 2,500-3,000 prior to the coalition’s arrival, to just 280 in February 2023, according to a United Nations Security Council report. Unable to hold territory or mount decisive operations, insurgent leaders may have concluded that their efforts are better spent trying to earn the cooperation of civilians with diplomacy, rather than brute force.
Feeding into this issue is the culmination of the ‘lean’ season just before the harvest begins in April when food is most scarce. Like any military force, the insurgency marches on its stomach, and its inability to resupply has hindered its expeditionary capability. Traditionally, insurgent groups have lived off the land by raiding fields and looting villages, but now so many farmers have been forced into displacement camps, those groups may have realized it is more sustainable to simply buy what they need to survive.
The recapture of insurgent strongholds such as Mocímboa da Praia and Mbau has also forced the insurgents into the bush, where they have focused their attacks largely on vulnerable, undefended villages. Consequently, approximately 285,000 people were displaced between September 2021 and November 2022, adding to the 745,000 who had already been displaced by the conflict since October 2017. Beyond the district headquarters, much of Cabo Delgado has been abandoned, especially in Nangade and Macomia, where the insurgents are most active. Terrorizing the population out of the province has undermined the insurgency’s own stated goal of establishing an Islamic state, and a move towards a ‘hearts and minds’ strategy may reflect a realization of this fact.
This theory is supported by an unconfirmed, but plausible report published by the Center for Investigative Journalism in Mozambique, which claimed that in the summer of 2022, Islamic State (IS) Mozambique leader Ibn Omar was instructed by senior IS members to stop killing so many civilians and start charging taxes. This would bring IS Mozambique policy into line with that of groups such as IS West Africa Province in Nigeria, which has made more concerted attempts to appeal to civilians as an alternative to the government.
Reintegrating Returnees
By Tomás Queface, Cabo Ligado
The pressures on the needs of those displaced by the conflict are felt in both centers for Internally Displaced People (IDP), and areas of origin, and this goes beyond the food assistance dimension. This has been the case as returns have been steadily increasing. According to the UN Refugee Agency, more than 350,000 people have returned to their areas of origin, but the number could be much higher. In the two weeks from 8 to 21 March, the IOM recorded around 3,978 arrivals, most of them (2,960) to the district of Mocímboa da Praia. Most of these, by far, are returnees.
There are broadly three factors driving the significant return in recent months. One is the continued poor conditions where displaced people are living, including constraints on food aid which has fallen short of what humanitarian organizations say they need, exacerbated by a surge in the number of IDPs in the second half of 2022. At the same time, the government, keen to portray a scenario of normality, has been encouraging people to return to their areas of origin by suggesting that basic services such as water, energy, education, and health have already been restored in some districts affected by violence. And finally, the reduction in violence has played a major role in persuading displaced people to move home. From February to March, political violence incidents involving insurgents dropped from 17 to 10, according to ACLED data.
The ongoing conflict has nevertheless had a devastating impact on thousands of displaced people in northern Mozambique, and profound damage to their mental health. As of November 2022, there were an estimated 1,028,743 displaced people, according to the IOM, which corresponds to 80% of Cabo Delgado’s 2017 population. Many of those have been forced to relocate not once, but several times. Trauma is significant for those who have lost loved ones and left their belongings behind. Children have grown up without access to education and basic services. Women and girls have suffered sexual and physical violence, both in conflict zones and in displacement camps. These mental and physical traumas are part of a prolonged crisis, and need to be properly addressed, particularly at a time when displaced people now face the challenges associated with starting over and reintegrating into their areas of origin.
With most infrastructure partially or totally destroyed, health services are now severely limited in conflict-affected areas. According to ACAPS – an international non-governmental organization that provides humanitarian analysis – by December 2022, the districts of Macomia, Mocímboa da Praia, Muidumbe, and Quissanga had only one partially functioning facility per district, each serving an average of 109,000 people. Doctors Without Borders has resumed healthcare provision in the town of Mocímboa da Praia, using mobile clinics to provide consultations in the town and the most populous neighborhoods. But the services fall far short of serving the more than 87,000 people who have returned to Mocímboa da Praia so far, and most of the assistance provided is emergency care and does not directly address the psycho-social component. In other districts such as Nangade and Muidumbe, areas of limited access, the provision of psychosocial services is almost non-existent.
A number of technical and professional training initiatives for local youths are underway in Cabo Delgado. The Mozambican government and TotalEnergies are implementing a training program for young people from the districts of Palma, Mocímboa da Praia, Macomia, Quissanga, Muidumbe, Metuge, and Ancuabe in the areas of electricity, civil construction, metalworking, mechanics, among others, at the Alberto Cassimo Professional and Labor Training Institute in Pemba. On 30 March, 464 of them graduated, joining another 2,000 trained in the same area last year. This initiative aims to provide local youths with techniques and knowledge so that they can integrate into the local market.
The US Agency for International Development has teamed up with ActionAid Mozambique – a non-governmental organization – to implement a similar program, but targeting the southern districts. The program “Community Resilience and Youth Empowerment in Cabo Delgado,” which was launched in November 2022, aims to train 7,500 young people for the job market. While such complementary projects will contribute to lowering the likelihood of youth recruitment in areas of high vulnerability, they have a limited reach in the communities along the coast and in the north of Cabo Delgado, where most of the insurgents are believed to come from.
In the district of Ibo, which in February and March 2022 witnessed a series of insurgent attacks, the UN Children’s Fund is committed to resuming classes by building makeshift classrooms out of local materials and tents. This experience can be replicated in other areas of districts with high population returns to enable children to regain access to education.
A significant part of the psychosocial support, access to education, and health is concentrated in the southern districts of Cabo Delgado. So far, this has been justified by the insecurity in the northern districts of Cabo Delgado, which has limited the movement and operations of humanitarian organizations. However, the return of populations to their areas of origin needs a certain amount of stability. Security may be improving, but the lack of health, education, and livelihood services for the populations needs to be guaranteed. Without the involvement of international humanitarian organizations, the implementation of support projects may put the populations in difficult situations, given the inability of the Mozambican authorities to provide these services as a matter of priority. In Mocímboa da Praia, for example, the rehabilitation works underway include only the courthouse, supported by the UN Development Programme and the National Institute of Social Security. Infrastructures such as schools and hospitals are still untouched. Hence the absence of humanitarian organizations in districts such as Mocímboa da Praia, Palma, Muidumbe, Nangade, and Macomia may represent an important shortcoming, and put at risk the integrity and recovery of the populations.
There have also been some efforts by the government to reintegrate former insurgent fighters into their communities. Although controversial for not following any legal procedure, President Nyusi has made a series of amnesties to former insurgent fighters in the provinces of Nampula and Cabo Delgado throughout 2022. This is seen as an incentive for other fighters to lay down their weapons and join civilian life. However, no real rehabilitation and resocialization programs have appeared. This could lead to potential risks, such as reprisals in the communities, or even a threat to public order, as many of them have committed heinous crimes.
Amnesty and Reintegration: Lessons from Elsewhere
By Peter Bofin, Cabo Ligado
Amnesty, followed by reintegration, is perhaps the most consistent policy that Mozambique has taken on the conflict in northern Mozambique. General Commander Bernardino Rafael of the police made the first offer in December 2017, just two months after the conflict’s start. Repentance and surrender of weapons would be met with reintegration to “the country’s normal production and development processes,” he stated. President Nyusi made two amnesty offers in 2021. He followed this up in September 2022 in Mocímboa da Praia, presenting alleged insurgents at a public meeting in the town, who testified to the benefits of return. On 17 March, the district police commander urged people’s cooperation with the security forces so that insurgents could hand themselves in, and be rehabilitated. One week later, the district administrator again offered amnesty, and rehabilitation to those who hand themselves in, and asked the community to forgive them.
Offers of amnesty are not unusual in similar conflicts in the region. In Somalia, at least four offers of amnesty have been made to al-Shabaab members. Kenya offered its first amnesty in 2012, targeting those involved in al-Shabaab in Somalia, and another in 2015. Experience from that conflict suggests that communicating amnesty is the key issue. This is how individuals can be encouraged to exit from armed groups, and how communities can be prepared to receive them. Alongside this is the need to account for exit from armed groups, and return to communities that take place outside formal amnesty, rehabilitation, and reintegration programs.
Evidence from Somalia suggests that amnesty offers from the state can be significant drivers of exit from armed groups. Rehabilitation programs for former al-Shabaab fighters regarded as “low risk” are provided at the Serendi Rehabilitation Center in Mogadishu. “Low risk” indicates that they left al-Shabaab voluntarily, renounced its ideology, and are no longer a threat to the public. In research conducted there in 2015 by James Khalil et al. for the Royal United Services Institute, over two-thirds of respondents claimed that amnesty proclamations “substantially motivated their decision to exit.” It should be noted that the sample of 27 was small. However, their “low risk” category suggests that such proclamations are likely to have traction with a significant proportion of ‘foot-soldiers.’
Despite such a high proportion citing amnesty proclamations as being significant in their exit from al-Shabaab, Khalil’s report points out that without a clear policy and legal framework for amnesty, this can create expectations that are not met. Within this, determining who is eligible for amnesty and rehabilitation support is important. More recent work by Khalil in Nigeria argues that setting a high bar for eligibility for rehabilitation programs excludes a large cohort that could benefit from such programs. At the time of the research in March 2022, Nigeria’s Operation Safe Corridor program – a rehabilitation program in Gombe state in the northeast of the country –, only received people who had been forced into Boko Haram, and not those who had joined for other reasons, such as ideological sympathy, or material reasons.
The opportunity to return to one’s community, how to do so, and any rehabilitation and reintegration support available, needs to be communicated effectively to those in armed groups. In practice, evidence from Serendi and Gombe indicated that people’s exit from armed groups was precipitated by a range of factors, including poor living conditions, fear of violence from either the group itself or government forces, and revulsion at the group’s actions. Exit itself can be realized if, firstly, there is awareness of amnesty and rehabilitation programs, and pathways to exit are clearly communicated. In Gombe, respondents mentioned both radio and leaflets – a method also used in Cabo Delgado – in this regard. Direct communication by family through mobile phone was also important to both “motivate and facilitate,” exit in Nigeria, as Khalil said. In Somalia, for respondents in the Serendi Center interviewed in 2017, radio and mobile phones were critical to the learning of amnesty, and in some cases facilitating exit through communication with family.
Studies such as those in Gombe and Serendi give critical insights into exit, but are necessarily limited in terms of the numbers of respondents, and their gender – both centers are male only. As the Gombe report points out, this reflects “the usual gender biases in this field.”
Having prioritized amnesty as a policy to induce exit, Mozambique is now faced with multiple challenges in meeting demand. These are related to screening, rehabilitation, and continuing efforts to prevent future recruitment.
Authorities will need screening mechanisms to assess the risks presented by insurgents who hand themselves in or are otherwise detained. That screening will help set the balance between rehabilitative and judicial responses. This will also need to be effectively communicated in order to set realistic expectations.
Perhaps the greatest challenge lies in responding to informal exit, which likely accounts for a considerable number in Cabo Delgado, and is perhaps inevitable when amnesty has been so clearly communicated. The UN estimates that the insurgent force has fallen from approximately 2,500 members to just over one-tenth of that. This strongly suggests that hundreds, if not more, of those involved in the insurgency in various roles have simply returned home, or made their way elsewhere. If large numbers have indeed returned voluntarily, and informally, the absence of clear screening, rehabilitation, and judicial processes may simply store up trouble.