Cabo Ligado Weekly: 5-11 July
By the Numbers: Cabo Delgado, October 2017-July 2021
Figures updated as of 9 July 2021.
Total number of organized violence events: 917
Total number of reported fatalities from organized violence: 3,103
Total number of reported fatalities from civilian targeting: 1,449
All ACLED data are available for download via the data export tool and curated data files.
Situation Summary
As Rwandan soldiers and police made their move into Cabo Delgado last week -- a development covered in this week’s Incident Focus -- there appeared to be a lull in fighting, as no new violent incidents could be confirmed. Yet the apparent lull could also be a reflection of the difficulty of verifying on the ground information. There continue to be ongoing, unconfirmed reports of fighting in more rural areas of the conflict zone. What did emerge last week were new accounts of earlier incidents, providing more clarity about the state of three crucial zones of the conflict.
Two new accounts of the 2 July battle at Diaca, in Mocimboa da Praia district have come to light. The first, from a source close to the government’s security operations in the town, described the attack as a serious attempt by insurgents to take the town back from government forces. Insurgents arrived in four vehicles, but were eventually forced to retreat by government troops. At least one member of the Mozambican police force’s Rapid Intervention Unit was killed in the attack.
The second account, also from a source in the area, suggested that insurgents had captured two police armored personnel carriers in the attack. This appeared to be confirmed in a 13 July Islamic State claim of the attack. The Islmaic State’s statement said that the group had fought off a Mozambican government advance along the road between Mocimboa da Praia and Mueda towns -- a road on which Diaca holds a strategically important position -- and captured two armored vehicles and four rifles. Accompanying photos show two Chinese-made armored personnel carriers with Mozambican police markings. The 13 July claim is the Islamic State’s first in Mozambique since the Palma attack of 24 March.
New details also emerged last week regarding the 2 July insurgent raid on Namande, in Muidumbe district near the border with Mueda. The insurgents arrived in the village on motorbikes, taking the village by surprise. By the time the attackers left, however, local militias had recovered enough to coordinate a response with government security forces in the area. Mozambican troops ambushed the insurgent raiding party as it left the village, killing four insurgents.
People who fled the ongoing violence in Palma district and arrived in Pemba last week reported that during the struggle for the outskirts of Palma town at the end of June, insurgents looted substantial weapons caches from two makeshift government barracks on the edges of the town. Government troops had abandoned the barracks during insurgent attacks in the area. The weapons add to the already sizable stockpile that insurgents have been able to secure from government sources.
Incident Focus: Rwanda Enters the Fray
The biggest piece of news concerning Cabo Delgado last week did not break in the province, or in Mozambique at all, but instead in Kigali, Rwanda. The Rwandan government announced on 9 July that it is sending a 1,000 person Joint Force made up of Rwandan military and police personnel to Cabo Delgado. According to Rwanda’s announcement, the force will “support efforts to restore Mozambican state authority [in Cabo Delgado] by conducting combat and security operations, as well as stabilisation and security-sector reform.” The deployment is legally distinct from the mooted Southern African Development Community (SADC) Standby Force mission that the regional body recently authorized. Instead, the Rwandan deployment exists in the context of the bilateral relationship between Maputo and Kigali, agreements between the two countries dating to 2018, and, according to the Rwandan government, a “commitment to the Responsibility to Protect doctrine.” There have been no public indications about the planned duration of the deployment.
Little is known about what exactly “combat and security operations… stabilisation and security-sector reform” will entail. The first flights of Rwandan troops landed at Nacala, Nampula province on 9 July, but details of where they went from there are unclear. Rwanda’s Deputy Inspector General of Police told over 300 of his officers who were preparing for the deployment that they would be split between Mueda and the Afungi peninsula in Palma district. However, other sources say that most -- if not all -- of the Rwandan troops will be based in Afungi, establishing a secure perimeter around the liquified natural gas projects there. Sources on the ground say that there is an ongoing offensive to clear the area around the gas projects, and that Rwandan troops will be charged with holding positions once they are cleared.
International reaction to the deployment was split. African Union Commission Chairperson Moussa Faki Mahamat hailed the Rwandans’ arrival in Mozambique as a “strong and concrete act of African solidarity,” painting it as progress toward a cooperative approach to counterterrorism on the continent. SADC governments, however, were rather less pleased. South African Defence Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula called the fact that the Rwandans had arrived before the SADC Standby Force “regrettable” and expressed her wish that the Rwandan deployment had been integrated into the SADC mission rather than arriving on its own.
Indeed, there seems to be a delay on Mozambique’s part that has allowed Rwandan troops to arrive before the SADC force. SADC leaders had already stated that the SADC mission would deploy on 15 July, but, as of 13 July, the Mozambican government had not yet signed the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) with SADC necessary for the SADC mission to begin. Without a SOFA in place, the SADC mission is now indefinitely delayed as Rwandan troops settle into their positions. By the time the SADC force does deploy, its role in the development of an integrated strategic plan between itself, Mozambican, and Rwandan forces may be lessened due to its late entrance into the conflict.
In Mozambique, the arrival of the Rwandans brought sharp criticism from opposition and civil society voices. Renamo chief Ossufo Momade said that the invitation to the Rwandans was illegal, since parliament was never informed of the mission -- a legal argument disputed by some experts. Yet President Filipe Nyusi was enthusiastic about the deployment during a speech in Mueda on 9 July. During the speech, Nyusi told a crowd of security personnel that Mozambique had “ask[ed] for support from our friends in Rwanda… they are already arriving.” Yet he was also quick to caution that neither the Rwandans nor an eventual SADC deployment would take the lead in counterinsurgency in Cabo Delgado. Instead, he said, foreign interveners will work with Mozambican security force commanders who will “divide areas so that not everyone will go to the same place” -- that is, foreign forces will be deployed in a strategy of Mozambican design. Nyusi also acknowledged publicly for the first time that Zimbabweans are already conducting military training with Mozambican troops in Mozambique.
Major questions remain about both the Rwandan and SADC missions. The content of the SOFA between Mozambique and Rwanda remains a secret, as do the points of contention preventing the signing of a SOFA between Mozambique and SADC. The budget and funders of both missions are also unclear. The most pressing question, however, if foreign troops are to be engaged on the front lines in Cabo Delgado, is how they will operate in a violent and confusing environment. Mozambican forces, even with the linguistic and local knowledge advantages they have, are routinely taken in by insurgent disguises, be they military, police, or civilian. At the same time, Mozambican troops have frequently mistreated civilians who they could not effectively differentiate from insurgents. How will Rwandan and, later, SADC troops handle the vagaries of a confusing insurgency in a foreign country? And, if their inexperience leads to these foreign troops harming Mozambican civilians, what will be the resulting political fallout?
Government Response
There still is no humanitarian mobilization to match the mass military mobilization for Cabo Delgado. The World Food Programme (WFP) last week released a warning, stating that without more funding, Cabo Delgado is at risk of a “famine emergency,” with service cutoffs a possibility as soon as August. WFP’s proposed budget for Cabo Delgado remains underfunded by $121 million.
In addition to food concerns, provision of medical care for displaced people in hard to reach areas of the province remains a challenge. Last week, a displaced child died in a Nangade health center from complications from diabetes. Staff at the health center say that a lack of supplies, combined with the horrible conditions many patients undergo in order to arrive in Nangade, makes providing even lifesaving care sometimes very difficult.
There is some good news on the humanitarian front, however. Food is making its way to Quitunda and other areas where civilians are gathered outside Palma town. Shipments from Pemba land at Maganja. As a result, market prices at Quitunda are high -- about $1.73 (110 meticais) for a kilogram of rice -- but not nearly as high as they were at the height of hunger in Palma when prices were over double what they are today.
Beyond immediate humanitarian concerns, there were announcements of new development projects in the province last week. Portugal and the European Union (EU) committed to funding a job training program for around 1,200 Cabo Delgado youth, based in Pemba. At the announcement, Mozambique’s deputy labor minister unintentionally captured a tension at the core of the issue in Cabo Delgado, saying that the program will provide young people with qualifications that will “enable them to work anywhere in the world” but that he is “convinced that they are going to work in Cabo Delgado, in Palma, because we believe that it will [be possible] to resume the whole process" of natural gas investment. Given the track record of local hiring around the gas projects, the youth could be forgiven for being less convinced than the deputy minister.
Finally, as expected, the EU gave its approval for a 120 person military training mission in Mozambique. The mission will continue the work already being done by Portuguese trainers, and is not expected to involve any sort of combat deployment or even combat logistics component.
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