Cabo Ligado Weekly: 26 April-2 May
By the Numbers: Cabo Delgado, October 2017-April 2021
Figures updated as of 30 April 2021.
Total number of organized violence events: 863
Total number of reported fatalities from organized violence: 2,821
Total number of reported fatalities from civilian targeting: 1,389
All ACLED data are available for download via the data export tool and curated data files.
Situation Summary
Fires in Palma continued last week, with several reports of buildings and homes burned on the nights of 26 and 27 April. On the second night, a mosque was burned. One press report alleged that government forces were responsible for some of the house burnings. However, multiple sources told Zitamar News that the majority of the arson was committed by insurgents. According to people in the area, insurgents informed civilians when certain areas of the town would be burned and gave them a deadline by which to leave. The destruction, the insurgents told the civilians, is part of an effort to gain control of Palma town.
By 30 April, mobile phone service in Palma was once again down, making it difficult to gather reports from the area. However, there were reports of clashes between insurgents and government forces in Palma. Insurgents were also reported to be present in Quiuia, north of Palma town near Quionga. According to one source with connections to the Mozambican counterinsurgency effort, 14 insurgents and 16 captive women and children were spotted in Palma that day. It is unclear whether the civilians had been abducted that day or had been with the insurgents for longer. Multiple sources reported that insurgents near Quionga targeted civilians trying to flee to Tanzania from Palma, including one that said insurgents killed five civilians and injured another seven attempting to make the trip on 30 April.
Meanwhile, further south, insurgents ambushed fishermen who were working out of Pangane, in coastal Macomia district, on 30 April. The town is still largely deserted, but fishermen have risked camping there in order to attain much-needed food and income. Insurgents beheaded five of the fishermen in front of the others staying in the village. The remaining civilians fled toward Macomia town. According to a Pinnacle News report, insurgents kidnapped three people in nearby Mucojo the same day.
Also on 30 April, insurgents raided Chai, in northeastern Macomia district near the border with Muidumbe district. The raiding party, made up of eight insurgents, captured four civilians and looted food from the village. Local militia responded, causing the insurgents to leave the village. Pinnacle News reported that insurgents were back in Chai the next day. A militia member spotted the approaching insurgents and shot at them, but was injured when the insurgents returned fire.
On 2 May, police arrested two people in Macomia district on suspicion of being insurgents. The evidence against the accused came from a civilian informer who told police that the two had been acting suspiciously. It is unclear if there is further evidence against them, but arrests based on a single denunciation underline the level of concern about potential insurgent attacks in Macomia town.
Police in Nampula province also announced the arrests of accused insurgents last week, without disclosing the date the arrests took place. Police interdicted 21 people who said they were on their way to Cabo Delgado for work but could not say who their employer was or the nature of the work. The provincial police spokesman said that the statements of those accused reflect an established modus operandi for insurgent recruitment in Nampula, with people being brought into the insurgency through promises of employment.
Incident Focus: Ngunga and ADIN
On 27 April, Mozambique’s Council of Ministers removed Armando Panguene as head of the Northern Integrated Development Agency (ADIN) and replaced him with Armindo Ngunga, who had been secretary of state for Cabo Delgado province. The move came as a surprise to many, including to agriculture minister Celso Correia, whose ministry controls the agency. It also took place on the same day that the World Bank signed a $100 million grant to ADIN to be spent on “restoration of livelihoods and economic opportunities, building of social cohesion, and improving access to basic services as well as the rehabilitation of selected public infrastructure intended to benefit internally displaced persons and host communities in targeted areas of Northern Mozambique.” The World Bank also made Mozambique eligible for its Prevention and Resilience Allocation, which gives Mozambique access to another $700 million for similar projects.
The money is welcome, and represents a change in how the World Bank -- and likely other donors -- engage with Mozambique. In 2016, following the hidden debt scandal, international donors led by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) largely withdrew their budget support for Mozambique in an attempt to punish the government for lying to donors and the public. Since then, Mozambique has largely weathered the storm without creating any real accountability for the scandal, and donor money has begun to flow again in recent years. However, as World Bank official Michel Matera noted, the Prevention and Resilience Allocation signals “the recalibration of the Bank’s portfolio to focus on addressing the risks of conflict and violence” -- that is, the international community now looks at Mozambique more as a conflict-affected country than as a financial pariah state. Currently, negotiations between Mozambique and the IMF on a new financial support program are stalled. It remains to be seen if the World Bank’s shift will help break the deadlock.
Ngunga appears to be an unlikely figure to help usher in the new era. A renowned linguist with a focus on African languages, Ngunga is seen as a Frelimo hardliner, more interested in party success than effective governance. As provincial secretary of state in Cabo Delgado during the conflict, his relationship with international aid groups has been strained, and he has overseen aid distribution efforts that have frequently been criticized as corrupt and inefficient. In an interview after his appointment, however, he seemed to recognize that the government’s record on humanitarian assistance has left a great deal to be desired and emphasized that ADIN will have to work quickly in order to catch up to expectations. He emphasized infrastructure projects like roads and improving resettlement facilities for displaced people as priorities for the agency. With $100 million now at hand, progress in those areas is certainly more attainable than it had been previously.
Government Response
More and more displaced civilians are fleeing Quitunda, the resettlement village on the Afungi peninsula where an estimated 20,000 have been staying since the 24 March attack on Palma. As of 4 May, the International Organization for Migration had registered 38,062 people displaced from Palma who have arrived in government-held towns outside the district, an increase of roughly 8,500 in a week.
Despite a government ban on coastal sea travel north of Pemba, private boats have been offering passage for people from Quitunda and nearby Ilha Vamize to points south. The boats bring people to Ilha Matemo, Ibo district, where passengers can transfer to other boats that will take them to Pemba. The entire trip costs between $50 and $60 per person. Between 30 April and 2 May, nearly 500 people had arrived in Pemba through that route, and more are coming each day as the situation in Quitunda becomes even more untenable. The trip is arduous -- reports of travel time vary from five to twelve days, and many arrive in Pemba hungry and sick. Authorities in Pemba are scrambling to receive the new arrivals. One ship with 190 displaced people was forced to remain docked for roughly six hours before authorities allowed its passengers to disembark. When they disembarked, the temporary shelters set up for them were having difficulty standing up to the rain that is still falling in coastal Cabo Delgado.
The situation of those who reach Pemba is still much better than those who head north to Tanzania. At the border, Tanzanian forces are still shipping fleeing Mozambicans west and deporting them back into Mozambique at the Negomano border post in northern Mueda district. According to people who have made the trip, Mozambican refugees are transported to Negomano in open air trucks designed for horses, exposing them to driving rain for hours at a time. Once the displaced civilians arrive at Negomano, it is up to them to organize transport to Mueda town and points south, a task that many have not been able to complete.
For those who fled Palma overland to Nangade, the situation is tense. There is widespread concern in Nangade town that insurgents are among the displaced people who have continued to trickle into the town since the 24 March Palma attack. Between that worry and concerns over dwindling food supplies, many locals are trying to leave the town. Security forces, however, have banned entry and exit from Nangade except between 7am and noon, in an attempt to better prevent infiltration.
The town’s security is further threatened by the fact that, as of 27 April, the military veterans that make up the local militia had not received their March pensions from the government. Nangade militias have proven effective in some engagements with insurgents, and the lack of government support for the groups have further exacerbated security concerns in the town. There is no indication of when pensions will be paid. The source of the delay seems to be that local officials in charge of transporting the cash are too afraid to make the trip.
On the international front, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) was meant to hold a summit on 29 April to consider the plan for regional military intervention in Cabo Delgado put forward by the SADC technical team. However, the summit has been indefinitely postponed amid disagreement both within SADC and within Mozambique about the way forward. Within Mozambique, prominent Frelimo members have continued agitating against foreign boots on the ground in Cabo Delgado, with Frelimo political commission member Alcinda Abreu adding her voice to the effort last week. Abreu said that Mozambique could use foreign logistical support but does not need any foreign combat troops to defeat the insurgency. SADC officials, for their part, intervened to remove the situation in Cabo Delgado from the draft agenda of the meeting of the African Union’s Peace and Security Council scheduled for 6 May.
Mozambican president Filipe Nyusi, who appears more willing to engage with SADC on the issue than some of his Frelimo colleagues, continued to publicly hedge about the possibility of foreign intervention. In a 28 April speech, Nyusi said that Mozambican security forces have a plan to defeat the insurgency and that the government will have to choose carefully which forms of foreign support will best aid the implementation of that plan. He outlined areas other than direct combat support -- littoral and border security and humanitarian aid -- where foreign intervention would be most helpful, but did not directly address the leaked SADC intervention plan. The next day, Nyusi made a surprise visit to Kigali to meet with Rwandan president Paul Kagame. After the meeting, Nyusi told reporters that the two discussed Rwanda’s experience with counterterrorism, including as a foreign intervener in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Meanwhile, Total chief financial officer Jean-Pierre Sbraire said that the French energy major would be delaying work on its liquified natural gas (LNG) project on the Afungi peninsula for at least a year. The company is considering declaring force majeure with regard to its subcontractors in Cabo Delgado, which would be disastrous for many subcontractors and could delay the project even further, as it would be difficult to stand up the same subcontracting capacity after a fallow year.
The announced delay could also put Mozambican state energy company ENH in a tough position, as it has borrowed a great deal of money to pay for its part of the LNG project based on the theory that it would be receiving production revenue sooner rather than later. Indeed, Mozambican National Petroleum Institute head Carlos Zacarias said as recently as 28 April that gas production would start in 2024. With the year delay announced on 29 April, however, no production is likely to take place until at least 2025. That piles yet more pressure on the Mozambican government to find a security solution in Cabo Delgado as soon as possible, as the country’s economic and political plans rely heavily on the continued viability of the gas projects. Nyusi is scheduled to travel to France on 18 May, when presumably he will engage with Total on how to most quickly resume work on the project.
Lastly, the Mozambican government’s legal approach to the insurgency continues to evolve. Mozambican attorney general Beatriz Buchili announced on 28 April that her office will set up a special unit dedicated to prosecuting terrorism and “other… types of crime that are related to [terrorism], such as trafficking in weapons, drugs and people, illegal exploitation of mineral, forest and wildlife resources, money laundering and financing of terrorism, which are other facets of crimes associated with violent extremism.” The move appears to be a response to ongoing suggestions that Mozambique is not capable of effectively prosecuting insurgents under the current legal structure. However, Buchili’s suggestion that trafficking networks are implicated in the insurgency was not borne out by a new report from the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime. The report makes clear that insurgents have not taken over the trafficking routes that used to run through areas of Cabo Delgado that they now occupy or threaten. Instead, those routes have shifted to go around the conflict zone, with traffickers preferring the relative safety of ports in Nampula province to attempting to work with the insurgents.
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