Cabo Ligado Weekly: 19-25 July
By the Numbers: Cabo Delgado, October 2017-July 2021
Figures updated as of 23 July 2021.
Total number of organized political violence events: 933
Total number of reported fatalities from organized political violence: 3,162
Total number of reported fatalities from civilian targeting: 1,471
All ACLED data are available for download via the data export tool and curated data files.
Situation Summary
This edition of the Cabo Ligado weekly will begin with new information on incidents that predate the week in question, since they frame much of the violence that followed. On 17 July, there were simultaneous insurgent attacks in villages in Muidumbe and Mocimboa da Praia districts. In Nampanha, Muidumbe district, insurgents killed two civilians and slept in the village overnight. In Mitope, in Mocimboa da Praia district along the border with Nangade, insurgents attacked but no casualty or damage estimates are available.
The insurgents who camped at Nampanha on 17 July continued southeast into Mandava the next morning, attacking civilians there. Again, no casualty estimates are available. By 19 July, the group had also struck at Namande, killing three civilians.
Also on 19 July, a ship carrying supplies from Pemba to displaced populations on Ibo wrecked off the coast of Metuge district, killing 12. According to press reports, the ship was overloaded with both supplies and people. Initial reports that the ship was carrying a World Food Programme (WFP) shipment to Ibo were denied by WFP, and it appears that it was carrying private goods.
South African special forces troops arrived in Pemba on 19 July, reportedly as part of an advance party for a larger Southern African Development Community (SADC) standby force deployment to come.
On 20 July, reports of attacks on insurgents by Mozambican forces and their Rwandan allies increased in earnest. According to one report, Rwandan troops patrolling north of Palma town killed 30 insurgents in a firefight in Quionga -- a report that will be addressed further below in this week’s Incident Focus. The same day, Mozambican troops launched attacks against insurgents at Mitope, Mocimboa da Praia district, and Saba Saba, Muidumbe district. No casualty estimates for those engagements are available.
Local militias in Nangade captured two suspected insurgents the same day. In a video circulated on social media, the men say that they were with the insurgency for 90 days, and had escaped the insurgency together. Militia members then beat the men.
On 21 July, insurgents returned to the offensive, raiding Nova Familia in Nangade district. Civilians in the area fled ahead of the insurgents, and there were no casualties. Homes, however, were burned. The next morning, the same group continued into Mandimba, which was also deserted when they arrived. The raiding insurgents burned more homes there.
On 23 July, Rwandan troops saw their first combat action outside of Palma district, confronting insurgents in Mandela, Muidumbe district. In the firefight, the Rwandans killed 26 insurgents and captured two others. There are no available reports of Rwandan casualties. See more on this incident in this week’s Incident Focus below.
Insurgents returned to Panjele, a village north of Diaca in Mocimboa da Praia district, on 24 July. A battle there between insurgents and local militia in January left 27 insurgents and three militia members dead. In the most recent attack, an unknown number of civilians were killed and homes were burned down.
The same day, insurgents were spotted near Nangade town, in an area where Mozambican border patrol officers reside. Mozambican forces chased the insurgents eastward, finally losing them in the forests of eastern Nangade district. No casualties were reported on either side.
Finally, though there are conflicting reports as to the specifics of the attack, multiple sources agree that by 25 July a force made up either largely or entirely of Rwandan troops was engaged in a battle for Awasse, the strategic Mocimboa da Praia district village on the road between Mocimboa da Praia and Mueda. Casualty estimates -- and even the outcome of the attack itself -- are unclear at this point.
Incident Focus: Rwandan Troops in Action
Rwandan troops appear to have entered the fight in Cabo Delgado quite quickly. Just 11 days after entering Mozambique, the first reports of Rwandans being involved in major fighting against the insurgency began to appear. Since then, it has become clear that the Rwandan contingent is being used in an offensive capacity, and that the campaign plan for Rwandan forces aims to put the insurgency on the defensive in a way that Mozambican forces have not yet been able to accomplish.
The first indications of the Rwandan campaign plan were reported in the most recent edition of the Cabo Ligado Weekly, which recounted Mozambican efforts to get all civilians in the area around Palma town to shelter at Quitunda. The objective, it seemed, was to turn the rest of the district into a free fire zone in which Rwandan forces would not have to wonder whether people they came across were associated with the insurgency. By 20 July, Rwandan patrols within that zone extended at least as far as Quionga, some 20 kilometers north of Palma town, where Rwandans reportedly encountered insurgent fighters and killed 30 of them. With so many civilians having left the area and Mozambican troops seemingly focused on keeping the civilians who remain within the bounds of Quitunda, Rwandan troops have more operational freedom than any previous pro-government force in the Afungi theater.
It also became clear last week that Afungi would not be the only theater in which Rwandan troops would be deployed in a combat capacity. Rwandan troops also undertook an offensive in Muidumbe district, in an attempt to interdict the insurgents who attacked Nampanha, Mandava, and Namande. They appeared to succeed, catching a large group of insurgents at Mandela and killing 26 of them.
That offensive, almost certainly mustered out of Mueda, points to a more substantial target for a Rwandan offensive moving east out of Mueda: Mocimboa da Praia. According to one source, Rwandan troops have taken delivery of additional armored personnel carriers for exactly that purpose. That account places the beginning of the Rwandan push to break through the Mueda to Mocimboa da Praia road on 25 July, with a partially successful attack on Awasse that resulted in several Rwandan casualties. Another account has the battle beginning on 22 July and continuing through at least 26 July, with Rwandans and Mozambicans successfully executing a joint operation to regain control of Awasse. Multiple sources agree that Rwandan casualties in these operations have been substantial, but no casualty estimates are available. On 25 July, Mozambican president Filipe Nyusi claimed in a national address on the Cabo Delgado crisis that “we have attacked and re-occupied the enemy position at Awasse, after we took their positions at Diaca, Roma and Nantili” -- other towns on the road between Mueda and Mocimboa da Praia. Nyusi added that insurgents had counterattacked to retain Awasse, but said that the counterattack had not been successful.
If Awasse is, in fact, in government control, then there may be an opportunity for a substantial effort to retake Mocimboa da Praia town for the first time since insurgents occupied the town in August 2020. If successful, the retaking of Mocimboa da Praia would hardly spell the end of the insurgency, but it would be a major step for the government toward restoring its territorial control in Cabo Delgado.
Government Response
In one area where the government has successfully re-established control -- Meluco district -- schools are reopening. The administrator of Meluco reported on 22 July that 10 of the 11 schools that had closed in the district as a result of insurgent action have reopened. Students at the last closed school, which was destroyed in an insurgent attack, are now walking to a nearby school to study while the district government gathers the funds to rebuild.
Government administration is running rather less smoothly in neighboring Mueda district, where veterans of Mozambique’s independence war are accusing officials of demanding kickbacks in exchange for disbursing their veterans’ pensions. In addition to being a crucial source of income for veterans and their families, veterans’ pensions also form the core of compensation for local militias, which draw from veteran communities. These are not the only recent complaints about pension delivery in northern Cabo Delgado, although earlier problems were largely limited to veterans living in Nangade district. Mozambican police chief Bernardino Rafael has promised to investigate the accusations and ensure that pensions are delivered in full going forward.
In Maputo, President Nyusi’s 25 July address about the Cabo Delgado conflict made news beyond his claims that Awasse had been retaken. Nyusi used the speech to lay out the most comprehensive statement he has yet made about the nature of the conflict. Departing from previous rhetoric that emphasized the insurgency as a threat from outside, Nyusi placed the origins of the group firmly within Cabo Delgado, saying that “radicalization” in the province had begun as far back as 2011, fomented by both Mozambicans and foreigners. Today, he said, the insurgency includes Mozambicans, Tanzanians, Kenyans, Somalis, Congolese, Burundians, and some hailing from Arab countries. He also gave an accounting of the humanitarian toll of the conflict, highlighting displacement, lost schooling, and the destruction of health infrastructure.
As he described his plans for the future of the conflict, Nyusi praised the efforts of Mozambican security forces. He claimed that the purpose of creating the Afungi theater, along with protecting the natural gas projects, was, “above all, to defend and protect the resident population” -- a claim that might come as news to civilians who complain frequently of being victimized by soldiers in that theater. Nyusi called the military response to the 24 March attack on Palma town a “turning point” in the conflict, and said that the military situation is “substantially improved” over what it was a few months ago.
Nyusi also addressed his government’s approach to bringing international partners into the conflict. He clarified that Rwanda’s entrance into Cabo Delgado has taken place under the auspices of a Memorandum of Understanding between the two countries on defense issues that dates back to the 1990s. He reiterated a line other members of his government have said previously, noting that Mozambique explicitly reserved the right to conclude bilateral intervention agreements during its negotiations with SADC about a regional standby force. He also reiterated that Mozambicans will be “in the vanguard” of the conflict and driving its strategic direction, despite the arrival of foreign forces. Nyusi did not clarify which SADC countries would be involved in an eventual SADC standby force deployment, but the Mozambican defense ministry later said that South Africa, Botswana, Tanzania, and Angola will all be involved in the deployment.
Nyusi’s last substantive point was to lay out an embryonic strategy to prevent radicalization. He explicitly cast the goal of the Northern Integrated Development Agency (ADIN) as preventing radicalization, and highlighted job creation as the core of ADIN’s strategy to reduce extremism. He did not go quite as far as acknowledging the legitimacy of economic grievances in Cabo Delgado, but his speech made clear that economic grievances are the only category of complaints his government is willing to address in the province.
19 July 2021: Namacande
19 July 2021: Namande
19 July 2021: Nampanha
20 July 2021: Mitope
20 July 2021: Namacande
20 July 2021: Namande
20 July 2021: Nampanha
20 July 2021: Quionga
20 July 2021: Saba Saba
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