Cabo Ligado Weekly: 27 March-2 April 2023

Apr 4

By the Numbers: Cabo Delgado, October 2017-March 2023 ¹

Figures updated as of 31 March 2023. Political violence includes Battles, Explosions/Remote violence, and Violence against civilians event types. Violence targeting civilians includes Explosions/Remote violence and Violence against civilians event types where civilians are targeted. Fatalities for the two categories thus overlap for certain events. ACLED is a living dataset and figures are subject to change as new information becomes available.

Total number of political violence events: 1,623
Total number of reported fatalities from political violence: 4,658
Total number of reported fatalities from political violence targeting civilians: 2,000

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

Situation Summary

Insurgents continue to pursue their strategy of trying to win the ‘hearts and minds’ of civilians along the coast of Cabo Delgado. Groups of insurgents arrived in the village of Luchete in Mocímboa da Praia and Pangane in Macomia on 25 March, assuring residents that they had come in peace to buy food and other supplies. The group in Pangane comprised 30 to 50 men, one source reported. Another source told Cabo Ligado that a large concentration of insurgents had been observed in the forest of Quiterajo in Macomia and that fishermen often see them moving along the beach in this area.

Insurgents have also been sighted around the villages of Limala, Marere, and Calugo in southern Mocímboa da Praia district. They have not yet attacked anyone, but they often instruct locals to go to the market and buy supplies on their behalf, threatening them with violence if they do not cooperate.

An intense exchange of gunfire was reported on 30 March near Mucojo, on the road to Macomia district headquarters. No details of the incident have emerged so far, but the South African contingent of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Mission in Mozambique (SAMIM) responded to the incident and was seen conducting patrols in the area over the following days.

The Rwanda Defence Force (RDF) brought about 20 men, believed to be captured insurgents, to the police station in Mocímboa da Praia on 27 March. It is not known where or how they were captured, but they were a significant number, considering the claim of the United Nations Security Council report in February that there were approximately 280 insurgents active in the field. If those taken by the RDF are insurgents, their return is likely a response to both the amnesty offers made recently in Mocímboa da Praia, and rumored shortages of supplies on their side.

In Nangade district, insurgents are still on the run from security forces and were last seen in the lowlands of Lucuamba, near the village of Litingina, according to one source.

Weekly Focus: Return to Mucojo

The appearance of SAMIM’s South African contingent near Mucojo on Macomia’s coast last week highlights the insurgents’ return to coastal areas in both Macomia and Mocímboa da Praia districts in recent months. This follows the seemingly spontaneous return of displaced people to coastal areas of Macomia district in recent months, and attempts to reach out to them by insurgents who have also moved eastwards. The response to these return dynamics will need to be carefully calibrated if pre-conflict communal tensions are not to resurface.

In January 2023, Cabo Ligado received its first report of spontaneous return to Mucojo. Driven by inadequate food aid, people in Macomia district headquarters started to return to Mucojo Administrative Post, before moving onward to coastal villages such as Pangane, Crimize, and Nambo. This has continued, with people by now also back in villages such as Olumbua and Rueia. A little further north in Quiterajo Administrative Post, people have returned to the fishing villages of Pequeué and Milamba.

Prior to military intervention in 2021, Mucojo was a significant site of insurgent violence, most of it directed at civilians. The first recorded incidents of political violence in Macomia district involving the insurgents were in May and June of 2018 in Mucojo and Quiterajo Administrative Posts. In Mucojo that year, all five political violence events were violence against civilians. In 2019, of 26 political violence events recorded in Mucojo, over three-quarters were violence against civilians. Recorded incidents of political violence in Macomia peaked at 113 in 2020. Of these, nearly 39% occurred in Mucojo, and of those 38 events were violence against civilians. Following military intervention in 2021, events began to decline, with just three political violence events recorded there in 2022. Given the lack of violence in Mucojo, and harsh conditions of displacement, spontaneous return has been a rational choice.

In recent weeks, the insurgents' approach in the area has been quite different. Insurgents have visited villages in Mucojo three times in the past three weeks, according to a local source, the first time on 13 March at Pangane, promising no harm, and offering to buy goods. Two weeks later, they visited two neighboring villages over one weekend, according to a source. Moving in large groups of up to 50 people, they probably come from a suspected new base situated a little inland. Similar approaches to villagers continue to be made in Mocímboa da Praia district, as noted in the Situation Summary.

Returnees will remember the violence they suffered at the hands of the insurgents, and may well have welcomed last week’s operations by SAMIM. Yet there is a risk that memories of recent violence may be trumped by the province’s structural inequalities. The Rural Environment Observatory noted recently that current support for agricultural activities is not balanced by support for fishing. The former is dominated by the Christian Makonde, while coastal Muslim communities depend on fisheries. Eric Morier-Genoud pointed to such fissures within the province in his study of the origins of the insurgency. Ana Margarida Sousa Santos also noted these deep divisions and the challenges they present to processes of reconciliation in her examination of the Mocímboa da Praia riots of 2005. If people are to spurn these approaches from insurgents, recovery and security strategies will need to center their livelihoods.

Weekly Round-Up

Nyusi hails ‘African solutions’ on UN visit in New York

President Filipe Nyusi attended UN meetings in New York last week, marking the last week of Mozambique’s month holding the rotating chair of the Security Council. In an address to the Security Council about terrorism, he proposed “establishing a fund to strengthen sustainable local development initiatives,” in the context of the upcoming review of the Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy in July. In his full remarks, made available to the media, he highlighted the role played by SADC and Rwanda, using their scarce resources, “to the detriment of [their own] social and economic development agenda.”

Personal Envoy of the UN Secretary-General for Mozambique, Mirko Manzoni, also emphasized the importance of African solutions to African problems – highlighting both the “national ownership” of the peace process with Renamo. Not mentioning SADC or Rwanda, he noted that “Mozambique is also applying a model of building peace and security through dynamic regional and local solutions, seeking to make use of inter-African interventions.”

The European Union delegation to the UN supported this stance, pointing to the bloc’s support for the Mozambican armed forces, SAMIM, and Rwanda’s intervention: “always in the spirit of ‘African solutions to African problems.’”

Security concerns linger over elections in Mocímboa da Praia

Renamo, Mozambique’s main opposition party, has voiced opposition to the holding of local elections in Mocímboa da Praia district in October on the grounds that security and fairness cannot be guaranteed. According to the Center for Public Integrity (CIP), the Electoral Administration Technical Secretariat has proposed registering all voters in Mocímboa da Praia district within the municipality, rather than throughout the district like the rest of Cabo Delgado, due to the unpredictability of the security situation. CIP also questions whether the National Elections Commission (CNE) has the funds to pay for the air transport services necessary to support the logistics of the elections, which could cost more than 2 million US dollars. CNE is expected to decide this week on whether to exclude Mocímboa da Praia from the elections in light of these challenges.

Secretary of state for youth and employment visits Cabo Delgado

The Secretary of State for Youth and Employment, Oswaldo Petersburgo, visited Cabo Delgado last week, inspecting a project in Pemba to train 464 young people coming from around the province, mainly from conflict-hit districts, as well as a vocational training project in Palma.

Petersburgo also held a meeting with the UN Office for Project Services in Pemba, discussing progress on the World Bank-funded Northern Crisis Recovery Project – known by the Mozambican government as the Cabo Delgado Reconstruction Project (Plano de Reconstrução de Cabo Delgado).

EU ambassador to Mozambique visits Cabo Delgado

The EU ambassador to Mozambique, Antonino Maggiore, paid a three-day visit to Cabo Delgado last week, signing a 15 million euros development grant for the province to be disbursed under the EU’s ResiNorte (Resilience for the North) program in partnership with the UN Development Programme and the UN Population Fund.

Maggiore also visited Rwandan and Mozambican security forces in Mocímboa da Praia. At the end of his trip, he said he was very impressed with the work of RDF and SAMIM, as well as the Mozambican forces. Speaking to reporters, he described the humanitarian picture as “very difficult” but emphasized “the people are not left alone” by the government, international community, or non-governmental organizations.

The visit comes as Mozambique awaits Jean-Christophe Rufin’s report on the humanitarian situation in Cabo Delgado commissioned by TotalEnergies. Maggiore’s spirit of optimism contrasts somewhat with the Doctors Without Borders assessment the week before of a ‘protracted crisis’ in Cabo Delgado.

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