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Last week, fighters stormed the strategic city of Palma in northern Mozambique in a dramatic escalation of an armed campaign that has wreaked havoc in the gas-rich province of Cabo Delgado since 2017.
The government said on Sunday that “dozens of defenseless people” were killed in the coordinated raid that saw assailants indiscriminately shoot people and buildings in the coastal town. Among the victims, seven people were ambushed during an operation to evacuate them from a hotel where they had taken refuge in order to escape Wednesday’s attack.
Palma – home to some 75,000 people, as well as many who had previously been internally displaced by the increased violence in the province – was deserted on Monday after residents fled by road, boat and on foot “in all directions”, according to aid groups.
Here is what we know about the attackers and the conflict in Cabo Delgado.
When members of the shadow armed group Ahlu Sunnah Wa-Jama, also known locally as al-Shabab (no connection to the armed group of the same name in Somalia), began launching attacks in the northern Mozambique in October 2017, security agencies rejected it. as isolated acts of banditry.
But the fighters, who subsequently pledged allegiance to ISIS (ISIS), continued to stage attacks in Cabo Delgado, burning villages, killing civilians and even targeting military positions.
Last year they took the town of Mocimboa da Praia, which still remains out of government hands. The port of Mocimboa da Praia is strategically important for the liquefied natural gas projects led by Total and ExxonMobil which are being developed on a walled peninsula a short distance from the coast, just off Palma.
The escalating violence has killed more than 2,600 people, half of whom are civilians. It also caused a serious humanitarian crisis, forcing nearly 700,000 people to leave their homes.
Zeinada Machado, a researcher at Human Rights Watch, said that while there are still many questions regarding the strength of the group and the extent of the territory it controls, what is certain is that in the three In recent years, it has grown in size and ability to stage large attacks.
“It started with playing cat and mouse with the security forces, going to villages, attacking civilians, destroying property and running away once the security forces arrived,” Machado told Al Jazeera. “They have become a serious enemy of the security forces and have even targeted military posts.”
Jasmine Opperman, Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, agreed on the growing strength of the group.
“There is a voice of discontent against the government fighting against credibility among specific groups of people,” Opperman told Al Jazeera, estimating that the group’s fighters number at least 2,500 whose ages generally seem to vary. from 20 to 35 years old.
The conflict entered a particularly gruesome new phase last year, prompting UN chief Antonio Guterres to express his shock at reports of massacres, including the beheading and kidnapping of women and of children.
On Monday, ISIL claimed responsibility for the attack on Palma, which hosts several international companies and their staff working on gas projects in the region. In a statement released on its Telegram channel, ISIL said its fighters captured the city after days of fighting.
The raid came two weeks after the US State Department called Al-Shabab a foreign “terrorist” organization for its links to ISIS.
But Fernando Lima, a Maputo-based journalist and political commentator, said there were “serious doubts whether this was really a religious confrontation, or a cover” for social grievances in a region where poverty and unemployment are still endemic despite promises of wealth linked to the development of gas projects worth several billion dollars.
“I think the main problem is actually poverty and inequality,” he said, adding that the government has not been able to communicate to the people of Cabo Delgado “that they are here to reverse the situation”.
“I would like [add] mismanagement of expectations related to oil and gas, as this creates the idea that there are other Mozambicans living in the south who benefit from oil and gas – in fact, there is no oil yet and gas at this point.
Earlier this month, the U.S. Embassy in Mozambique said U.S. military personnel will train Mozambican forces for two months.
The US government has said it will also provide medical and communications equipment to aid the government in its fight against the armed group, which analysts say has steadily increased its military capacity and ability to stage sophisticated attacks.
“[Palma is] a town that was heavily guarded and everyone knew it could be targeted at any time – how was it possible for this group to come into this town, shoot indiscriminately, kill people and scare others away?
“The absence of soldiers to help the population was very clear, and it’s embarrassing[ment] for the government of Mozambique which has been fighting this group for three years. By now they should have learned how to help their people and how to get them to safety in a time of danger, ”she said.
“It’s not just about [the government] giving us a press conference where they’re going to tell us how many people have died – it’s also about explaining what exactly happened, what went wrong and what steps they are taking to make sure ‘a situation like Palma will never happen again.
Some analysts have suggested authorities were warned of an impending attack on Palma but failed to act.
“The question must be asked: why no action has been taken,” Opperman asked.
“Over the past two years we have warned that there were influencers within the insurgency at play. These are people with a clear and deep experience of guerrilla warfare that has been passed on to Cabo Delgado.” , she said. “The occupation of Mocimboa de Praia for an extended period gave them the perfect opportunity not only to train but also to recruit.”
The government has deployed thousands of troops to Cabo Delgado to attack the armed group. But analysts have long warned that the Mozambican military is historically weak, poorly trained and under-equipped.
Mozambique has also hired Dyck Advisory Group (DAG), a private South African military company. Reports indicate that the DAG is quietly aided by Russian mercenaries.
Earlier in March, global rights watchdog Amnesty International accused fighters, government security forces and private military companies of “war crimes”.
“The longer the insurgency continues, the greater the risk to the region,” Opperman said. “The question of weapons, the question of sympathy, the question of the flight of IDPs, the question of the movement of illegal goods; it is an area where there is simply no governance, where there is no capacity to control anything, ”she added.
“What’s interesting about the Palma incident, and that’s the Cabo Delgado tragedy, is when expats are targeted everyone goes crazy. What to say about the [tens of thousands of] people who had to flee and find a home somewhere fast enough, or safety fast enough? I think it’s a sad case, but we can’t overlook it when it comes to Cabo Delgado.
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