Cabo Ligado Weekly: 7-13 February

By the Numbers: Cabo Delgado, October 2017-February 2022

Figures updated as of 11 February 2022. Organized political violence includes Battles, Explosions/Remote violence, and Violence against civilians event types. Organized 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.

  • Total number of organized political violence events: 1,162

  • Total number of reported fatalities from organized political violence: 3,748

  • Total number of reported fatalities from organized violence targeting civilians: 1,642

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

Situation Summary

The locus of the conflict in northern Mozambique returned to Cabo Delgado’s northern districts last week, with insurgent and pro-government operations taking place in Nangade and Palma districts. Between 7 and 8 February, a joint force made up of Rwandan military, Rwandan police, and Mozambican military personnel carried out clearing operations in western Palma district, focusing on the villages of Nhica de Rovuma and Pundanhar. Two insurgents were captured and another two killed in the operations, although no clear information is available on where the fighting between insurgents and pro–government forces took place. 17 civilians who had been held by the insurgents were taken into government custody in the operations. Following the operations, Rwandan President Paul Kagame said that Rwandan forces have now cleared at least 80% of their area of responsibility of insurgents. The strategic significance of these operations is discussed in depth in this week’s Incident Focus.

On 7 February, a group of insurgents attacked the village of Namuembe, about 30 kilometers south of Nangade town. The insurgents killed one civilian in the attack, and burned homes and looted food and other goods. After the raid, a group of local militia reinforced by vigilantes from the local population launched an ambush against the raiders. In the ensuing firefight, seven insurgents, three of the local vigilantes, and one militia member were killed. The insurgents were driven from the village.

Three days later, on 10 February, local militia members patrolling the forest near Namuembe captured an insurgent. According to a local source, the captured insurgent reported that his group’s base is near Nangade town and that much of the leadership there is made up of Tanzanians. Using information gathered from the captured insurgent, the militia members then set up another ambush near Namuembe, in which, according to one report, they killed six insurgents and injured another 12. Militia members involved in both ambushes complained that they could have been more successful if they had access to more modern weapons and more ammunition. According to one source, some of the militia involved in the first ambush were armed with bows and arrows, and the group could not press their advantage because those who had rifles ran low on bullets.  

The Botswana Defence Force announced that a soldier deployed with the Southern African Development Community’s (SADC) Standby Force Mission in Mozambique (SAMIM) died in Mueda town on 9 February. The cause of death is unclear, but there is no indication that it was related to combat operations. 

The Zambia Air Force announced last week that it has sent a C-27 cargo plane to Pemba as a contribution to SAMIM. The plane, which has been in theater since 28 January, significantly augments SAMIM’s air transport capacity. As of late November 2021, the mission only had five aircraft on hand, with a sixth on standby, and a lack of fixed-wing aircraft was among the capability gaps identified in an internal review.

Two captured insurgents, Ahmed Mohamed Dadi and Abdul Bakhali, were interviewed in a Rwandan online news outlet last week, and offered insight into both the current state of the insurgency and the process by which new fighters are brought into the group. Dadi, a Tanzanian boat operator, reported being captured by insurgents on his boat in January 2021 at Pangane in Macomia district. He was held as a prisoner for between eight and 12 weeks under suspicion that he was a Tanzanian agent, and then he was transferred to a training program that involved religious instruction and weapons training. After that, he was sent to an insurgent camp (he does not say where), where he said he worked carrying injured insurgent fighters and protecting the camp, alongside a group of people who had been abducted from Palma. The insurgents, he said, were constantly on the move following the fall of Mocimboa da Praia in August 2021, and there were disagreements within the group about whether and how to continue their campaign. He eventually escaped to the Namoto border post in northern Palma district, where local officials turned him over to Rwandan forces. Since then, he said, he has provided information about the insurgency and served as a guide for Rwandan troops, even after leaving their custody.

Bakhali is from Pangane, and was captured there during an insurgent attack in which raiders killed his father. He also underwent a training program, which was cut short when the camp he was at was attacked by a helicopter and he was injured by a piece of shrapnel. While he was recovering, a leader both Bakhali and Dadi called “Sheikh Hassan” – potentially Abu Yasir Hassan, the man named in US sanctions as the sole leader of the insurgency – visited him and, learning that Bahkali had computer skills, recruited him to assist in electronic communications for the group. 

Both Dadi and Bakhali list a number of insurgent leaders, nearly all of whom, they allege, are Tanzanian. One way to read the interviews, and their publication in KiSwahili in a Rwandan news outlet, is as a shot across the bow from the Rwandan government to their Tanzanian counterparts. The site that conducted the interview is embedded with Rwandan forces, and the interview appears to take place at a Rwandan military encampment in Cabo Delgado. Dadi has been in custody since at least early January 2022,  The Tanzanian government has worked tirelessly to prevent news of the northern Mozambique conflict from entering the public discussion in Tanzania, with considerable success to this point. For allegations that the insurgency is led primarily by Tanzanians to come from another vector – Rwandan media – in a language optimized for consumption in Tanzania is a threat to Tanzania’s control of its domestic narrative about the conflict. In the ongoing jockeying for position that characterizes East African regional politics, the Dadi and Bakhali interviews represent a win for Rwanda at Tanzania’s expense.

New information also came to light last week about earlier events in Cabo Delgado province. On 6 February, Mozambican police arrested a prominent Macomia merchant in Ancuabe district, as he drove from Macomia to Pemba. He is said to be in custody in Macomia town, being held on suspicion of providing food and other supplies to the insurgents. This is hardly the first case of Mozambican authorities targeting informal traders, allegedly because they support the insurgency. Many believe that the real reason merchants are targeted is that they can pay ransom to officials to get themselves out of custody. 

New information came to light about the 12 January insurgent attack on Citate in Meluco district, in which insurgents burned down a number of homes. On 6 February, local civilians discovered three bodies in and around the town of civilians who, it appears, were killed during the attack.

New information also came to light about the 6 February attack on Nambedo in Nangade district, which appears to have been perpetrated by the same insurgents who went on to target nearby Namuembe. Insurgents reportedly killed one civilian and one local militia member in the town and kidnapped six women, in addition to burning homes.

Reports have also come out clarifying the damage caused by the 1 February insurgent attack on Ilha Matemo in Ibo district. There had been confusion about the number of civilians killed in that attack, but later reporting confirms that three were killed, all of them internally displaced people who had been living on the island. According to the most recent reporting, most of the temporary housing on the island was burned in the attack, and many people are sleeping out in the open despite the onset of heavy rains.

Incident Focus: Rwandans in Western Palma

As noted above, a joint force of Rwandan police and military personnel and Mozambican soldiers conducted operations against insurgent positions in western Palma district early last week. These operations are strategically notable both on a theater level and on an international level.

Pundanhar and Nhica de Rovuma have long been centers of insurgent action, as they are both remote enough to make effective government operations difficult and well-placed enough to allow for insurgent operations along the road between Palma and Nangade. Those operations effectively choked off supplies to Palma town in the run up to the insurgent assault on Palma in March 2021, at  a time when the insurgent occupation of Mocimboa da Praia and the closure of the Mozambique-Tanzania border meant that the road to Nangade was the only overland supply route available to Palma. Today, Rwandan and Mozambican forces control Mocimboa da Praia, and Palma is receiving supplies frequently from the south, reducing the importance of the Palma-Nangade route. 

At the theater level, there are two ways to read the recent operations in western Palma. In one view, they represent an expansion of efforts to protect Palma town by Rwandan forces acting to deny insurgents sanctuary in a place that could be used to stage a future strike on Palma. In this view, joint force raids into western Palma are likely to happen periodically, but there will be no long-term effort for Rwandan troops to occupy Pundanhar or Nhica de Rovuma. In the other view, however, they represent an actual expansion of the Rwandan area of responsibility, attempting to end insurgent influence in western Palma district and expand the zone of security that the coastal areas of the district currently enjoy. If the latter is more accurate, the Rwandan deployment in Cabo Delgado will either expand to ensure there are enough personnel to provide security in western Palma or will spread itself further to fill in the extra space. 

This same question of short versus long-term involvement is relevant at the international level. To this point, the Rwandan deployment in Cabo Delgado has focused almost exclusively on securing the corridor running from Mueda to Mocimboa da Praia to Palma. This road is crucial for liquified natural gas (LNG) projects based near Palma, leading many analysts to conclude that the Rwandan deployment is primarily aimed toward protecting gas developments. If the push into western Palma district, which is not a crucial area for gas development, is merely a temporary push to make sure Palma town is more protected, that will be a further indication that Rwanda’s interest in Cabo Delgado is fundamentally about protecting gas development. If, however, Rwandan forces expend resources maintaining long-term security in western Palma district, it could complicate the narrative of Rwandan troops as security providers for TotalEnergies. Instead, it might point toward the kind of expanded cooperation between Rwanda, Mozambique, and SAMIM that SAMIM Deputy Commander Dumisani Ndzinge outlined as a goal in a recent interview. It might also, however, be responsive to TotalEnergies’s demand (see Government Response) that its security enclave be expanded so that its project does not take place in the middle of a military garrison.

Government Response 

The International Organization for Migration published a special report last week on displacement from Meluco district. Following recent attacks in the district, some 3,504 people were recorded fleeing the district between 2 and 8 February. Of those, 2,995 went directly to Pemba, mostly to the neighborhoods of Josina Machel and Natite. The majority of those entering Pemba are children, a common situation in incidents of conflict-driven displacement in Cabo Delgado. This mass arrival of displaced people in Pemba follows an attempt by Mozambican forces to block those fleeing insurgent attacks in Meluco district from reaching nearby Montepuez district.

Even as people from Meluco and elsewhere are becoming newly displaced by the conflict, people displaced from Palma town and the surrounding areas are continuing to return home. A source in the area reports that, while economic activity is increasing in Palma, a lack of active banking branches is becoming a significant problem for returning civilians. Many families around Palma signed compensation agreements with various energy companies when LNG development forced them off their land. The money from those agreements is paid through bank transfers, but without active bank branches, many people in Palma cannot access their accounts, leaving them without the funds they are entitled to. This may become a long-term problem, as personal finance institutions have been wary about involvement in Cabo Delgado following US sanctions against the insurgency.

In Mecula district, Niassa province, displaced former residents of Naulala 1 and Nampequeso have proven reluctant to return to their home villages, despite frequent urgings from government officials. They have chosen to remain in Mecula town, still worried about the potential for future attacks, although no insurgent activity has been registered in the district since the end of 2021. Those attempting to return to Naulala 1 face the further obstacle of the fact that the village was burned nearly entirely to the ground by insurgents, meaning that a substantial rebuilding effort will have to be undertaken before people can return in any sort of numbers.

The International Crisis Group, the influential think tank, released a briefing about the conflict in northern Mozambique last week that urged the Mozambican government to seek a negotiated surrender with insurgents. Noting the diminished scale of the insurgency since the arrival of Rwandan and SAMIM forces in the country, the briefing suggests that the time is ripe for political moves to wrap up the conflict. The briefing claims that what insurgents “really want, according to sources who know them, is a meaningful role in the Cabo Delgado economy, so they can benefit from the opportunities created by major mining and gas projects and perhaps have a stake in the province’s smuggling rackets, many of which are run by political elites.” Therefore, the briefing asserts, Mozambican elites should take this moment of military superiority to examine how insurgents can be given enough of a cut of the province’s resource economy to end the fighting. This claim, that insurgent grievance is rooted in economic deprivation, doesn’t quite match up to what insurgents have said publicly. In their public statements, insurgents have focused on access to political power – the power to make decisions about resource allocations – rather than simply economic gains. It may be a much more difficult task to get Mozambican political elites to give up a measure of political control to local violent actors than to get them to organize what amounts to a payoff.

On the other hand, if they cannot organize a political solution to end the conflict, Mozambican elites run the risk of not having a resource boom in Cabo Delgado at all. That, at least, was the subtext of comments from TotalEnergies CEO Patrick Pouyanné during an earnings call last week. Pouyanné said that he is willing to wait “as much time as necessary” for security to be re-established in Cabo Delgado before his company restarts work on its LNG project in Palma district. If, however, TotalEnergies restarted the project and was forced once again by violence to suspend work, “that [would be] the end of the matter,” Pouyanné said. Indeed, the CEO was expansive in his vision for the level of security he would want to see in Cabo Delgado in order to restart work. “We will not build a plant in a country where we'll be surrounded by soldiers,” he said, and continued on to say “we'll not relaunch the project as long as I see photos from refugee camps around [Palma].”

Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi was in Brussels last week, where he took meetings with EU officials in an attempt to encourage funding from Europe to help cover the costs of Rwandan and SAMIM deployments in Cabo Delgado. The head of the EU military staff has been publicly bullish on the prospect of EU funding for the Rwandan deployment in particular, but sources in EU governments have privately suggested that such funding proposals will not be easily adopted. The EU may not offer a simple path forward for continuing foreign deployments in Mozambique in the long term.

After Brussels, Nyusi headed for Kigali, where he met with Rwandan President Paul Kagame and discussed the conflict. No major new agreements were announced from the meeting.

© 2022 Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED). All rights reserved.

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