• Total number of organized political violence events: 1,083

• Total number of reported fatalities from organized political violence: 3,577

• Total number of reported fatalities from civilian targeting: 1,574

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Situation Summary

In northern Mozambique, violence continued on both the southern and western fronts of the conflict zone last week, with insurgent attacks registered in Macomia district of Cabo Delgado province and Mecula district of Niassa province.

Early in the morning of 29 November, insurgents invaded Naulala, Mecula district, a village about 60 kilometers northeast of the district capital. Insurgents had been there two days earlier, and on their return they stole food from the market and medicine from the local health center before burning an unknown number of buildings in the village. An eyewitness reported that only some of the attackers carried firearms -- the rest had machetes -- and that the raiding party included women and men. The Islamic State (IS) claimed the attack, saying that insurgents burned down a Mozambican military barracks in the town as well as a number of civilian homes.

That night, insurgents entered the village of Chitoio, in Macomia district. Firing on a gathering in the village, the insurgents killed two civilians and then burned an unknown number of homes. Two children are missing after the attack. IS appeared to claim the attack, issuing an announcement that insurgents had attacked the nearby village of Chai on the same date. According to the claim, insurgents drove Mozambican military forces from the village, killing and wounding an unknown number of soldiers.

The gathering that insurgents targeted in Chitoio was held in preparation for a coming of age ritual for children in the village. These initiation rites normally take place far from the village -- traditionally, children would be taken 10 kilometers or more into the forest. This year, however, security concerns have led villages in Macomia to conduct the rites closer to home, with children traveling no more than two kilometers from the village. Similar rituals have been targeted by insurgents in the past -- in November 2020, insurgents massacred children and adults involved in initiation rites in Muatide, Muidumbe district.

On 30 November, insurgents ambushed a truck driven by members of the Mozambican security forces outside Macananje, a village roughly 20 kilometers from the capital of Mecula district, Niassa province. One security force member was wounded, shot twice by insurgents, and the truck and a nearby motorcycle were burned. The attack shows insurgents are moving further south in Niassa province, demonstrating the potential threat they pose to Mecula town.

On 3 December, insurgents arrived at dawn in the village of Nova Zambezia, Macomia district, launching an attack that, according to a local source, resulted in the beheading of one civilian and the burning of 16 homes. IS claimed the attack, saying that insurgents killed one Mozambican soldier. Nova Zambezia sits on the N380, south of 5º Congresso and under 20 kilometers north of Macomia town. Despite this, no independent source records any troops from the pro-government coalition defending the town, a fact that exasperated residents remarked on in the wake of the attack.

New information also came to light last week about earlier incidents in the conflict. The Lesotho Defence Force (LDF) announced that its soldiers, who are normally deployed in Nangade district, spent 1-10 November supporting a previously unreported offensive by the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Mission in Mozambique (SAMIM) in eastern Muidumbe district. According to the announcement, the offensive destroyed five abandoned insurgent bases and resulted in the capture of weapons, some of which were shown in accompanying photographs. The LDF also announced that it suffered a non-combat casualty when an enlisted soldier died of malaria on 28 November.

On 13 November, according to multiple sources in Tanzania, civilians from the village of Micomela in northern Mueda district arrived across the border in Tanzania seeking shelter following an insurgent incursion into their village that day. Tanzanian locals took them in, and they returned home within a week. No details on the Micomela attack are available.

Regarding the insurgent raids in southern Tanzania that took place over the night of 12 November and into 13 November, new information has emerged on both the extent of the raids and the casualties inflicted. In addition to the previously reported raids at Sindano and Michawe, in the Masasi district of Mtwara region, the raids also targeted nearby Nangomwa. Between Sindano and Nangomwa, the raiders killed three civilians and kidnapped an unknown number of others, forcing them to carry looted food away from the villages.

Sindano is also the site of an operation to smuggle apparent insurgent operatives over the border between Mozambique and Tanzania, according to local sources. A young man from a nearby village was arrested on 22 November by Tanzanian authorities after locals saw him transporting two bearded men disguised as women, wearing veils over their faces. During the arrests, police found guns in the bags of the disguised men. The man who was contracted to bring the disguised men into Mozambique is locally known as a human smuggler, and has recently brought people into Mozambique from as far away as Lindi, Tanga, and Dar es Salaam. Tanzanian authorities have not commented publicly on the arrests, nor on the raids near Sindano.

Carta de Mocambique has withdrawn its article on the 25 November insurgent attack in Gomba, Mecula district, which reported that the attack targeted a truck carrying salaries for the Niassa Special Reserve and that four police were killed. Independent sources still confirm that an attack took place, however, in which a truck belonging to the Niassa Special Reserve was burned and one police officer killed.

Incident Focus: Security Response in Niassa

As insurgent violence continues in Niassa province, creeping south toward the district capital of Mecula, the provincial government is struggling to adapt to the new reality of being embroiled in the conflict. At the local level, displacement is already taking place. Whereas initially Mecula town was seen as a safe haven to which civilians fleeing insurgent attacks in Naulala could run, now it is largely abandoned, as residents are concerned that insurgents could soon strike. Their concerns have not been assuaged by Mozambican security forces being stationed in the town, which is perhaps unsurprising given the security forces’ record against the insurgents. Overflights by government helicopters to search for insurgents, which local sources reported took place on 1 December, neither served to locate the insurgents nor to calm nerves.

Civilian concern has not been mollified in part because the provincial government response is so reminiscent of the Cabo Delgado provincial government response at the beginning of the conflict. The official line so far has been denialism mixed with stern orders not to panic. The provincial police spokesman refused to confirm or deny the 29 November Naulala attack, and no public official has made mention of the 30 November ambush at Macananje. Dinis Vilanculos, the provincial secretary of state for Niassa and a direct appointee of Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi, only acknowledged the “possibility” of insurgents operating in Niassa province in a statement in which he urged calm.

The district administrator of Mecula went further. In a speech on 3 December, in Mecula town, he demanded that civil servants stay in the district and that any who had fled must return by 4 December. He said that Mozambican security forces were up to the task of securing the district, despite early evidence to the contrary. Most concerning, he suggested in his speech that anyone who fled the district would be opening themselves up to the accusation that they were attempting to join the insurgency. That threat puts people hoping to avoid insurgent violence in Mecula in a very difficult position, as it conjures the specter of state violence against displaced civilians. Such violence was a major feature of early counterinsurgency efforts in Cabo Delgado province and remains a threat there. Nevertheless, a number of civil servants, particularly from the health sector, are reported missing from Mecula.

The only provincial official to publicly take the insurgent threat seriously last week was, perhaps not incidentally, the only one mentioned so far who is subject to direct election by people in Niassa province. The president of the Niassa provincial assembly, Artur Chitandale, warned in an assembly meeting that insurgents from Cabo Delgado could try to use Niassa as a “refuge” and urged civilians to “be more vigilant” against potential insurgent incursions. Even Chitandale, however, called the situation in Niassa “unclear.” Clarity, both in terms of what is happening in the province and how the government will work with civilians to ensure their safety, will be important for the provincial government to find as violence in the province continues. Cabo Delgado offers a disturbing example of the humanitarian consequences that can result from a government ignoring the effects of conflict for too long.

Government Response 

Despite ongoing violence in Macomia district, civilians who had fled Nanjaba following a 13 November insurgent attack there have returned home. They had been living in Macomia town, but were persuaded to return following promises from Mozambican and SAMIM forces to protect the village. Work to repair the road between Macomia town and Mucojo, which runs through Nanjaba, is expected to begin soon.

For displaced people living further outside the conflict zone, the Northern Integrated Development Agency (ADIN) has finally begun to exert its influence on daily life. The new agency, which ostensibly was established to lead the humanitarian and development response to the Cabo Delgado conflict but which has been very slow in getting up to speed, began distributing agricultural input kits to displaced people in Mueda district last week. The kits, which include a variety of seeds, 150 kilograms of fertilizer, and a hoe, are meant to allow each family that receives one to cultivate a 1.5 hectare plot. ADIN distributed 600 kits last week, and expects to distribute 39,211 in Metuge district alone as part of a collaboration with the World Bank designed to alleviate the ongoing food crisis among displaced people in Cabo Delgado. 

The kits will surely be welcome for displaced families facing many months in which World Food Programme food aid will not meet their nutritional needs, but they pose a problem for relations between host communities and displaced populations. In order to plant all the seed kits, displaced people would need to find 58,817 hectares -- about 227 square miles -- of arable land not already under cultivation by host communities. Metuge district, in total, is 622 square miles. If the government wants the agriculture kits to allow displaced people to delay returning to their home districts until the security situation is well in hand, this program is likely to be a failure.

ADIN has also been in action elsewhere in Cabo Delgado. In Montepuez, the agency built a four classroom schoolhouse, intended to allow for the schooling of the thousands of displaced children in the district. Many displaced families in Montepuez, however, report that they cannot think of schooling because they lack sufficient food and water and are not sure how to acquire it besides making a risky return to coastal districts and resuming the fishing activities that sustained them before the conflict.

One coastal district, however, continues to grow on a different trajectory than the rest of the Cabo Delgado conflict zone. The situation in Palma grows more normal by the day, as extended security delivered by Rwandan troops allows for the resumption of economic activity. Last week, a Vodacom popup shop appeared in Palma town, and an import/export company is building up its operations in the town. Food prices are now comparable to those in Pemba, and companies that once thrived off of the activity around the liquified natural gas projects in the district are now hiring again, anticipating a return to work. At this point, it seems clear that Palma is expected to become a protected enclave, buffered from the conflict by extra security measures. It is unclear if that approach will satisfy natural gas companies, who have repeatedly called for peace in the province overall as a precondition for the resumption of gas development, nor is there any evidence that Palma’s protected status can outlive the deployment of Rwandan troops there. If the conflict continues elsewhere in Cabo Delgado, Palma’s resurgence will be hostage to the Rwandan government’s willingness to continue its intervention in Cabo Delgado. That, perhaps, is why Mozambican Prime Minister Carlos Agostinho do Rosário responded to a question in parliament last week about potential payoffs by Mozambique in exchange for Rwandan intervention by calling the intervention “priceless.” The Prime Minister made no comment on whether Mozambique had promised anything to Rwanda in exchange for this priceless service.

Yet the Mozambican government does seem aware that the clock is ticking on international intervention and that, sooner or later, it will once again be solely responsible for providing security in Cabo Delgado. To that end, Mozambican police chief Bernardino Rafael (whose mandate was extended by President Nyusi last week until 2025) announced on 27 November the return of Community Security Councils (CSCs) in Cabo Delgado. CSCs are effectively elected neighborhood watches, set up to liaise between citizens and the police, a function which will be important in preventing insurgent infiltration into civilian communities. The United Nations International Organization for Migration (IOM) has backed the CSCs (which it calls, rather more diplomatically, “Community Safety Councils”), and overseen the donation of six trucks to be used by the Community Policing Department of the Mozambican police in the southern districts of Cabo Delgado. IOM sees the CSCs as a crucial part of the effort to improve “cooperation and trust between communities and law enforcement.” There is no doubt that a cooperation and trust deficit exists between communities and law enforcement in the north, but arguably the gap does not arise from a lack of desire by civilians to prevent insurgent infiltration. Instead, it arises from ongoing human rights abuses by Mozambican security services against civilians, a practice that is unlikely to end through the establishment of a civilian police auxiliary.

Correction: This report has been updated to clarify that the trucks donated through the IOM are for use by the Community Policing Department of the Mozambican police, not the CSCs.

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