Cabo Ligado Weekly: 1-7 November

November 10, 2021 Cabo Ligado

Total number of organized political violence events: 1,038
Total number of reported fatalities from organized political violence: 3,461
Total number of reported fatalities from civilian targeting: 1,556

All ACLED data are available for download via the data export tool and curated data files.

Situation Summary

Last week, the dual pressures of military offensives from the pro-government coalition and severe supply limitations led to two instances of insurgents surrendering to government troops. In the first case, on 6 November, two insurgents surrendered to government-backed local militia in the village of 5º Congresso, in northern Macomia district. The two men were carrying machetes and firearms, and were first sighted by civilians north of Chai, near an entrance to Macomia district across the Messalo River. The men did not threaten the civilians, and when confronted by local militia members pointed to their non-violent approach as evidence of their intent to surrender peacefully. The men were taken into custody and brought to Macomia town.

The next day, a similar scene played out in Ntchinga, Muidumbe district. There, three insurgents emerged from the bush carrying white fabric to signify their intent to surrender. Local civilians called nearby Mozambican soldiers, who met the insurgents in the village. When the soldiers arrived, the insurgents threw down their weapons and begged the soldiers to give them food and not to kill them. The insurgents, visibly emaciated, said that they had abandoned the insurgency due to hunger and that their unit had been subsisting on mangoes for some time. The soldiers beat the surrendered insurgents before taking them into custody and transferring them to Mueda town.

These surrenders are the clearest evidence yet of the severe supply constraints under which the insurgents are operating, but they also point to the strong incentives against surrender. Both groups of surrendering insurgents took special precautions to demonstrate that they were non-threatening, clearly concerned that they might be killed in the process of surrendering. Indeed, the group that surrendered to the theoretically more professional Mozambican military forces was beaten for their trouble. With no clear process for accepting insurgent defectors and no clear evidence that surrendered insurgents will not be executed, it is difficult for the government to communicate to insurgents that they can safely lay down their arms. Signs of fair and peaceful treatment for surrendered insurgents might go a long way toward inducing other hungry fighters to leave the insurgency.

Another way to increase insurgent confidence that they will be dealt with fairly by government forces is to have public accountability for misdeeds by government troops. Many documented crimes by state security forces remain unpunished and, in many cases, unacknowledged by the government. Yet one category of security force malfeasance does seem to have attracted the government’s attention: bank robbery. Last week, it was revealed that some 30 Mozambican soldiers have been arrested for looting banks in Palma town following the insurgent attack on the town in March of this year. Reportedly, every soldier carrying more than 15,000 meticais in the wake of the looting was arrested. Over 60 million meticais were stolen overall, although it is unclear how much of that was taken by insurgents rather than by security force personnel. Mozambican military leaders refused to confirm or deny the arrests, but lauded the “transparent manner” of military operations. Accountability for looting is welcome, but civilians who have suffered extortion, assault, and worse at the hands of security forces operating with impunity may well be asking why banks are receiving protections denied to them.

Indeed, looting of civilian property by security forces is reportedly still ongoing. Displaced people returning to their communities in Muidumbe district last week accused military and police personnel of stealing goods from their homes. Local militias also got in on the action. Three militia members were arrested in Miteda, Muidumbe district on 28 October for selling solar panels, batteries, televisions, and other goods that local civilians claim was looted from the district capital of Namacande. The civilian population in Muidumbe district is increasing rapidly, leading to more interactions between civilians and deployed security personnel. The accusations of looting are a worrying indicator about the state of the relationship between the two groups.

Displaced civilians far from Cabo Delgado have also had concerning run-ins with security forces. A group of 15 people, mostly from Palma district, were arrested and interrogated last week by Mozambican police and secret services after they were found fishing off the coast of Inhambane province. Taken in on 2 November, the people were released two days later after it became clear that their only crime was being from Cabo Delgado and therefore suspicious in the eyes of authorities. The people were working for a Chinese-owned fishing company that had been forced out of its original area of operations off of Cabo Delgado by the ban on maritime activity north of Ilha Matemo.

New information also emerged last week about earlier events. A joint force of Mozambican and Rwandan soldiers, operating either on 27 or 29 October (reports differ), struck a makeshift insurgent camp near Naquitengue, near Mbau in southern Mocimboa da Praia district. The pro-government units killed 20 insurgents and seized various vehicles and other equipment. Roughly 12 people, including some women and some children, were taken into custody by the Rwandan army during the operation.

Further south, on 29 October, troops from the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Standby Force Mission in Mozambique (SAMIM) attacked insurgents in Quissanga district, killing five. According to the report of the engagement, the insurgents were planning to raid the Quirimbas islands in search of food.

Incident Focus: Institute for Security Studies Report

The Institute for Security Studies (ISS), a leading South African think tank, last week released a new report on the past and future of foreign intervention in Cabo Delgado. As recently as December 2020, the report notes, Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi was demurring in the face of offers of international assistance, warning that accepting them would create a “salad of interventions.” Today, less than a year later, the salad is served, with Rwandan and SAMIM troops on the ground in Cabo Delgado, Paramount Group providing weapons and training for Mozambican forces, and the European Union and the United States both running their own training programs in the south of the country.

The report mostly recapitulates a history of the Wagner Group, Dyck Advisory Group, Rwandan, and SAMIM interventions that will be familiar to Cabo Ligado readers. The real meat of the report comes in its recommendation section, which lays out a vision for using foreign interventions to drive sustainable security sector reform and increases in state capacity in Cabo Delgado. Though unlikely to be adopted in full by the Mozambican government, the recommendations offer a view of what the international community may be pressing for in its interactions with Maputo.

The core of the report’s recommendations for Mozambique focuses on expanding Mozambique’s security capabilities and increasing the reliability of its security personnel. Perhaps the most radical proposal is for the creation of “islands of integrity” in civil and military counterterrorism programs -- an approach that acknowledges current security structures as a sea of corruption. Some steps in the creation of these islands are clear -- one recommendation calls for increasing military pay, which the report calls the “lowest in Mozambique,” to reduce incentives for corruption. Yet there are major structural obstacles to the “islands of integrity” approach in the security sector

Creation of upstanding units in an overall security structure plagued by corruption is an enticing option for foreign interveners, and especially those focused on training. If foreign trainers could get particular units of Mozambican forces to stand on their own against insurgents without victimizing civilians or engaging in other corrupt practices, that would represent a cheap, effective, and repeatable approach to security assistance in Mozambique. Setting aside the fact that neither the US nor the EU are renowned for their ability to train effective or moral counterinsurgents, the idea of “islands of integrity” within security services is unlikely to come to fruition due to civil-military relations concerns. A unit that acts on different impulses than its command structure (even if the difference is between integrity and corruption) is unlikely to last long without being broken up. Intact, it cannot be trusted to carry out orders and is therefore a threat to the overall power structure of the state. Tempting though such an approach seems, the most likely outcome would be the disbursement of highly trained troops to units still facing strong incentives for corruption.

Government Response

Médecins Sans Frontières expanded its reach in the Cabo Delgado conflict zone in the past two weeks, acting as the vanguard of what is likely to become a wider effort from international organizations to reach returning displaced people. In Palma district, the group set up mobile clinics in three villages around Palma town, serving 386 patients in their first week. In Nangade town, the group distributed food last week to displaced families. Among the recipients were both people who had returned to Nangade district after having fled to Mueda and people who had tried to return to villages outside Nangade town but had returned, not having found sufficient supplies near their homes.

The broader effort to provide returning displaced people -- and, indeed, all displaced people in Cabo Delgado -- with humanitarian aid suffered a blow last week when the World Food Programme announced that it expects to continue offering limited rations in the province at least through May 2022. The cuts, which leave the agency providing only 39% of the caloric needs of food recipients, are the direct result of a lack of funding from international partners. As a consequence of the cuts, the Famine Early Warning System predicts that the conflict zone and some districts with large displaced populations will remain in a food crisis through the entirety of the rainy season.

Some extra funding is on the horizon, however. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has earmarked $45 million for food assistance in Cabo Delgado, in hopes of providing food to some 500,000 people. The FAO program will not start until 2022, however, leaving the lean season as an uncovered gap in international support.

The European Union Training Mission in Mozambique (EUTM) kicked off on 3 November with a ceremony in Maputo attended by both the Mozambican and Portuguese defense ministers. The mission, an expansion of a pre-existing Portuguese-run training operation, is set to run for two years with a staff of 140 European military trainers.