Cabo Ligado Weekly: 12 December 2022-8 January 2023

January 10, 2023 Cabo Ligado

Total number of political violence events: 1,564
Total number of reported fatalities from political violence: 4,540
Total number of reported fatalities from political violence targeting civilians: 1,995

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

Situation Summary

The intensity of insurgent attacks remained relatively low over the last four weeks, with most activity concentrated in the vicinity of the Messalo river in Macomia and Muidumbe districts. On 12 December, insurgents launched a raid on the adjacent villages of Nova Zambézia and Nkoe, approximately 20 km north of Macomia district headquarters. One member of the Local Forces was killed as well as up to six insurgents, local sources reported. One witness claimed the attacks were carried out simultaneously by two separate groups of fighters. Pictures published on Islamic State (IS) affiliated social media channels, allegedly in the aftermath of the Nova Zambézia attack, feature burning buildings and a dead body in camouflage fatigues. IS also claimed to have seized several types of ammunition at Nkoe.

Large quantities of munitions were also stolen from a Mozambican Defense Armed Forces (FADM) garrison at Chai, about 15 km north of Nkoe, on 20 December. A photo distributed through IS social media showed a stockpile of captured assault rifles, light machine guns, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, and ammunition. One soldier and three civilians were also killed according to IS, but this has not yet been corroborated.

This attack was mentioned by President Filipe Nyusi in a speech at the Presidential Palace on 21 December, where he said: “Yesterday there was another attempted attack in the Chai area, but it was repelled by our forces.” Given the quantity of equipment that was stolen by the insurgents, it seems unlikely the attack was repelled as Nyusi claimed.

Exchanges of gunfire were also reported around Chai on 4 January, but no further details have been forthcoming.

Insurgents continued operations in Muidumbe district, on the other side of the Messalo river. On 26 December, two people were beheaded outside Muambula village, which has been frequently visited by insurgents in recent months. In mid-November, it was attacked twice in one week.

On 30 and 31 December, insurgents swept through three villages in the same area of southern Muidumbe – Namande, Namacule, and Nampanha – killing at least two people. IS claimed to have killed one in Namacule and the other in Namande. Photos of burning huts in Namacule have been shared by IS social media. Some reports suggest as many as 10 were killed in the attacks, but this has not been confirmed.

Efforts by the security forces to clear the Messalo river basin of insurgent hideouts commenced on 1 January with the launch of operation “Vulcão IV.” According to a statement from FADM, the operation is being undertaken with “Friends,” presumably referring to the Rwanda Defence Force (RDF), and the Southern African Development Community Mission in Mozambique. FADM said the purpose was to destroy all bases that have been used as staging posts for attacks in Muidumbe and Macomia, west of Chai. Vulcão IV follows Vulcão I, which cleared the Catupa forest east of Chai in July last year. The details of Vulcão II and Vulcão III have not yet been disclosed. MediaFax also reported that Local Forces had been directed not to join the offensive, but rather to stay behind and protect the villages and communities from fleeing insurgents. Coordinating backstopping operations to deal with insurgents fleeing military operations has been a challenge for FADM and intervention forces since their arrival last year.

Isolated incidents were reported in Nangade and Mocímboa da Praia districts, where an insurgent presence still appears to linger. On 20 December, the village of Mitope in Mocímboa da Praia was attacked, the details of which are so far unclear. One source claimed as many as 20-30 insurgents were involved in the assault, which used mortars and which left one civilian dead. A recent video published by IS shows Mozambican fighters practicing with mortars, and mortars are known to have been captured in raids on military garrisons, so this detail is plausible but unconfirmed.

Two days later, Mozambican forces and the RDF were reported to have captured 10 suspected insurgents in Mocímboa da Praia district, shortly after which up to 20 insurgents were reportedly spotted in the nearby village of Lucheti, which a source claims the RDF denies. The failure of security forces to prevent infiltration into the district will likely have a damaging effect on confidence in the program to return displaced civilians to their homes in Mocímboa da Praia.

In Nangade, insurgents invaded the village of Chacamba, approximately 8 km from the district headquarters, on 4 January, beheading one man and kidnapping up to three women. The attack coincided with a visit from the governor of Cabo Delgado to Nangade district; a local source suggested the insurgents regularly attack ahead of scheduled visits from the governor.

Finally, a Tanzanian man was captured and shot on 18 December for helping transport insurgents across the Rovuma river. The man, allegedly named Sadath and based in Tanzania, was arrested in Lissulo village, Nangade, and confessed before being shot by the Tanzanian military, according to local sources.

Weekly Focus: Six Guilty of Terrorism Charges in Tanzania

Six men were found guilty of terrorism charges by Tanzania’s High Court on 16 December. The case was heard in Songea, the administrative center of Ruvuma region, by Judge Yose Mlyambina. The detailed judgment gives some insight into security operations in southern Tanzania, and the existence in Tanzania of support networks connected to the insurgency. Ambiguities and apparent misunderstandings in the judgment raise questions about the Tanzanian state’s understanding of the extremist threat.

The six men were accused of conspiracy to commit offenses under the Prevention of Terrorism Act enacted in 2002, and of meeting in preparation to commit such offenses. While all offenses took place in a particular mosque in Lukumbule village in Tunduru district of Ruvuma region, the judgment mentions a network within Tanzania across Ruvuma, Mtwara, Lindi, and Pwani regions. Lukumbule itself lies just 15 km north of Niassa province, and 80 km west of Mtwara region. The accused were “motivated … to join terrorist groups” by three figures: Jamal Seleman aka Kunyata, Abudhali Maonyo, and Mtumbei. No further details are presented about these figures.

The judgment gives few specifics on the charges, other than stating that “at Lukumbule village and various places within Tunduru District in Ruvuma Region and other places within the United Republic of Tanzania, the accused persons conspired to collect youth, motivate them to have strong faith, hate the Government of Tanzania and train them to overthrow the Government of Tanzania led by a Kafir and establish an Islamic State through the use of force and violence.” According to the confessions of the accused, they went to Mozambique “to join with Mozambique terrorist group known as Alal Sunna wa Aljamaa (sic) or AL Shabab (sic) of Mozambique.” No further details are given.

The evidence on which they were found guilty came from confession statements, which the accused claimed they did not make, and that they were forced to sign, and the evidence of a police informer in a mosque in Lukumbule village described in the judgment as “Al Sunna Mosque,” and alternatively as “Answar Sunna Mosque known as Al Malid.” The name of the mosque is not the only unclear element of the judgment. The offenses are said to have been committed variously between 1 January 2014 and 13 July 2020, and 1 January 2017 and 12 July 2020.

Perhaps the most surprising element of the judgment is the assertion that the insurgents in Mozambique are part of Somalia’s al-Shabaab. Three pages of the judgment deal with Somalia’s al-Shabaab, including naming Abu Mansoor al-Amriki, who was killed in 2013, as its current leader. Al-Amriki was an American fighter who was likely killed by the al-Shabaab leadership in an internal dispute. Somalia’s al-Shabaab is described in the judgment as being active in northern Mozambique with “activities spilling into Tanzania and it is busy recruiting members for training which is done in Somalia.” There is no mention of IS and the documented links between the insurgency in Cabo Delgado and IS networks across the region, including in Tanzania. Whether this arises from the nature of the evidence presented in court, or from gaps in the judge’s reading is not clear.

Undertaking operations in the intimate space of the mosque is a risky proposition in predominantly Muslim communities. Yet plentiful evidence from Tanzania and Mozambique indicates that these are the sites of radicalization and recruitment. Recently published work by Salvador Forquilha and João Pereira also highlights the overlap between legitimate religious networks between Mozambique and Tanzania, and those that promote violent jihad.

The six were arrested in July 2020, the month before military operations against “groups involved in crime and banditry” in Ruvuma, Mtwara, and Lindi regions were publicly announced by the Tanzania People’s Defence Force (TPDF). The networks that straddle the Ruvuma river and support Cabo Delgado’s insurgency remain intact, as last month’s killing by TPDF of a Tanzanian people smuggler indicates. There has been evidence of insurgent activity in the wider area over the years. Mozambican police claimed in December 2021 that insurgents were active in the Mavago and Mecula districts in Mozambique’s Niassa province, which borders Tunduru to the south. In 2018, Tanzanian police offered an amnesty to Mozambicans suspected of hiding weapons in Masunguru, a village near the Unity Bridge, in 2018.

Weekly Round-Up

IS Media

On 5 January, IS released through its social media channels a clip of insurgents in Cabo Delgado pledging allegiance to IS’s new caliph, whose appointment was announced on 30 November. The clip is in three parts. It opens with footage of small groups of fighters in orchestrated training scenes. It then features a masked speaker who stresses the tradition of leadership transition in Islam. Like his counterpart in IS Central Africa Province clip released on 29 December, his address is primarily in Swahili, with Arabic embellishments. The remainder of the almost six-minute clip is video footage of three groups pledging allegiance.

The clip had been in production for about one month; stills from the video were used in announcements issued on 6 and 7 December 2022. The clip’s only speaker is also seen in the 7 December announcement, leading a pledge exercise in Nangade district. This does not indicate that the speaker has a paramount leadership role. All intelligence over the years has indicated that the insurgency has a flat, collegial leadership structure.

The clip gives some clues about insurgents’ military capability. Capacity to operate heavier weaponry, such as the heavy machine gun and mortar seen in the clip, is limited, according to security consultant Bill Kondracki who spoke to Cabo Ligado. Individuals, as seen in the clip, cannot effectively operate such crew-served weapons, he says, while supplementary items, such as the mortar’s base plate and sight, seem to be missing or not in use. For weapons that were likely seized in combat, the latter is probably to be expected. The training demonstrated is technically of poor quality, and may indicate a lack of professionally trained fighters in their ranks. Nevertheless, it indicates ambition on the part of the insurgents that may be “good enough,” according to Kondracki, for attacking civilians, and Local Forces.

Displacement and Humanitarian Issues

The International Organization for Migration continues to record the displacement of hundreds of people in Cabo Delgado each week. According to its Displacement Tracking Matrix, over 2,000 people arrived at displacement destinations between 14 December and 3 January, the vast majority of whom have already been displaced at least once before. More than 500 people were also observed returning to Mocímboa da Praia in the same period, with a few also returning to Palma and Ancuabe.

Many have returned home due to the lack of humanitarian support in displacement centers, a situation which continues to deteriorate according to NGOs operating in northern Mozambique. But a claim by Cabo Delgado State Secretary Antonio Supeia, that 361,000 had so far returned seems high, and difficult to substantiate.

That displaced people have the ambition of returning home is not in doubt, however. Efforts by the provincial government in Niassa to get refugees from Cabo Delgado to settle there are being rejected, according to a report. The people have been given space to build homes and encouraged to do so – even being taken on field trips to the Corane refugee camp in Nampula, and to a displacement camp in Mecula, in Niassa, to see the type of homes other people have built. But they are refusing to make any investment in their new life in Niassa, apparently believing that “any time now” they will return to Cabo Delgado, according to Niassa State Secretary Dinis Vilanculo.

The Military Response

The insurgency in Cabo Delgado was allowed to get out of hand due to the leadership of Mozambique’s Defence and Security Forces (FDS) underestimating it when it began in 2017, interpreting the first attacks as mere banditry, according to Reserve Lieutenant Captain Abdul Machava of the Mozambican navy, speaking as an analyst on private television station STV on 8 January. Machava said that the Mozambican forces had lost time by trying to show communities in Cabo Delgado that the attacks were not important, and only came to terms with the reality when the situation had already worsened. He criticized General Commander of the Police Bernardino Rafael, for having given the attackers a seven-day ultimatum to surrender to police authorities, instead of immediately working with intelligence services to capture them.

Machava said the insurgent group operates by planning, coordination, and communication, and it is up to the FDS to continue to equip itself with the capabilities to take it down. He does not advocate negotiation with the insurgents at this time, saying the Mozambican authorities should only do so when they are in a position of superiority, after weakening the insurgency militarily. He said Mozambique could be free of “terrorist” attacks and dispense with foreign forces in the next two to three years, if relations with local populations continue to improve, and if military capacity is developed.

Stories of poor relations with locals keep coming, however. On the night of 27 December, a group of villagers in Namacande, in Muidumbe district, were beaten by unknown but uniformed assailants who stole their chickens. The following morning, they followed the footsteps of their attackers – which led them to the military barracks in the village.

Difficult times could be ahead for the Mozambican military. Integrity Magazine says it has seen a letter from the finance ministry to the office of the president, saying that the salary bill of the FADM must be reduced as it is “stifling” state accounts under the controversial new public sector salary scale, known as the Single Wage Scale. According to Integrity Magazine's military sources, the possible reduction could “greatly discourage” the military, especially at a crucial moment when some gains are being made in the northern operational theater.