Johannesburg — Four years ago in October, attacks by a few dozen young men on three police stations in Mocimboa da Praia - a district of Cabo Delgado province in northeastern Mozambique - signalled the beginning of an armed conflict in the area. University researchers, religious leaders and journalists largely agreed that extreme poverty and lack of prospects, especially among jobless young people, fuelled anger and despair.
Multi-billion dollar international investments in off-shore gas, as well as the profits from mining rubies and other gems, had failed to improve living conditions. Analysts and local advocates urged the government to respond by listening to the grievances and presenting plans to address them that would bring hope to communities.
Instead, local and national officials, the police and the military mounted an armed response, which human rights advocates and peace and security researchers say was heavy handed and often brutal - penalizing entire communities for the actions of a minority. In the wake of the government's actions, the conflict attracted Islamic supremacists from outside Mozambique, generally referred to as Ahlu Sunnah Wal Jammah (ASWJ), and the area has seen gruesome attacks, including the beheading of women and children. At least 3000 people have been killed, hundreds of thousands have fled their homes, and the war has this year disrupted operations in the vast gas fields in the province's off-shore waters.
The Southern African Development Community (SADC), a 16-nation economic and security alliance, has intervened by deploying troops to dislodge the insurgents. Recent reports say the efforts of the SADC, the Mozambican government, and Rwandan soldiers stationed in Cabo Delgado province are beginning to reduce the threat. However, the situation remains dangerous for displaced populations, who still live in fear and are unable to return to their homes.
Before hostilities began, Mozambican scholars and local journalists were already sounding alarms about the government's response to growing discontent. In January 2019, community media investigators Amade Abubacar and Germano Daniel Adriano were arrested, while interviewing residents fleeing the violence. for "spreading messages damaging to the Mozambican Armed Forces." Other media have faced intimidation and worse. Scholars and non-governmental organizations have faced increasing difficulties in accessing the conflict zone.
Local grievances, rooted in widening poverty, have led to a a conflict with international participants on both sides
The Brookings Institution's Africa Security Initiative and Initiative on Nonstate Armed Actors, in conversation with panelists from human rights groups, researchers, and political analysts, explored the international and internal drivers of the conflict, the threat it poses regionally, the policies adopted and peacebuilding strategies to address the underlying causes.
"The human rights condition in Mozambique and Cabo Delgado has deteriorated even further this year despite the military gains which are the result of the intervention from international forces, those from Rwanda and SADC. As of September 2021, the UN Refugee Agency and the government of Mozambique were estimating that over 800 000 people were displaced and of that 84% lived in temporary accommodation provided by communities across the country, only 9% were in government camps across Cabo Delgado, Nyasa and Nampula province," says Zenaida Machado, a Mozambican and Senior Researcher for the Africa Division at Human Rights Watch.
In July the UN world food program warned that northern Mozambique could face, in the coming years and months, a hunger crisis, because most farmers that have been displaced have not had access to their land.
Machado says displaced people continue to report a lack of good conditions in the camps that were set up by the government, including lack of privacy, food, medical care, and trauma care, especially for women who have witnessed and endured horrendous acts, including the beheading of their relatives, kidnapping of their children and sexual abuse.
Government's Stance on Human Rights Violations
A number of human rights groups including Amnesty International have alleged that Mozambique troops committed human rights violations by torturing detainees and discarding bodies in mass graves, ill-treatment of displaced people, use of excessive force against civilians, and extortion. They have called for an independent investigations into the alleged abuses.
The government of Mozambique has however not taken any publicly known steps to investigate all the allegations of abuse or punish those implicated.
"It is concerning to us that despite the intervention of the military forces from SADC and Rwanda, which are widely considered to be more disciplined and prepared for this kind of counter-terrorism operations, the narrative continues to be about how many insurgents have been killed rather than how many have been captured, arrested, formally charged and/or waiting for a trail," Machado says.
She says Human Rights Watch has also documented serious abuse by a group called Ahlu Sunnah Wal Jammah or locally called Mashaabaab including war crimes - among those killings of civilians, kidnapping of women and children and destruction of schools, hospitals and other property.
"We also found evidence that Mashabaab fighters are using hundreds of kidnapped women and girls in forced marriages and sex slavery. Some of the women were released after their families paid huge sums of money in ransom. The group is also implicated in the kidnapping of boys and subsequently using them to fight the government, which is a violation of the international prohibition of the use of child soldiers," she says.
Machado says HRW continues to advocate that the U.S. training mission already in Mozambique and the European one that should be arriving in the country in December should include a component of human rights, justice, and accountability. This, she believes, would help Mozambique be better prepared to protect civilians while respecting the rights of detainees and suspected militants during counter-terrorism operations. She also says that it is disappointing to see that the humanitarian and social path of the conflict has not progressed at the same pace as militar action.
"Until last week discussions, about the operationalisation of the SADC disaster and response mechanism were still ongoing." The centre was launched in July, when the military intervention ramped up, but is yet to be fully established. This is problematic, she says, because the rainy season is approaching, which might present challenges for humanitarian organisations attempting to reach displaced people.
Addressing Root Causes
While there are many issues that may have led to the conflict, unemployment, inequality, and lack of opportunities, especially for youth, who feel neglected, are said to be among the root causes of the conflict.
Adriano Nuvunga, Director - Centro para a Centro para a Democracia e Desenvolvimento and a Professor of Political Science and Governance - Universidade Eduardo Mondlane, says the conflict in Cabo Delgado highlights the "elite-centric extractivism" of natural resources. Instead of being used for development, foreign investments in resource extraction has benefited international corporations and their local partners, while disenfranchising young people, a process he describes as a violation of local communities' human rights.
Nuvunga says both the international private sector and the government need to adopt policies of economic development that spread the wealth among local communities. "Cabo Delgado is one of the richest provinces of Mozambique, but it is one of the most neglected, marginalised and unequal", he says, "and that state of affairs has allowed the elites to distribute among themselves the wealth of that province."
He says the country's leadership needs to understand that when the country is involved in deals for billions of dollars, that should be reflected in improved livelihoods of local people, especially young people. The process of utilizing the profits of mining and drilling should be one of inclusivity and transparency, he says.
The government and its international partners cannot just shoot their way out of Mozambique's problems.
Dino Mahtani, Deputy Director, Africa Program at International Crisis Group says military interventions are unlikely going to eradicate this problem, which is essentially a problem of the grass-root level and societal issues that have blown up. "One can not just shoot your way out of that problem. "You have to fix the problem from where it came," he says. He says the country needs economic development, but a political dialogue on how to achieve it is essential, to avoid grave consequences.
"We are not just talking about an armed group that is operating in a vacuum in Mozambique, it is part of a regional conflict system. If the root causes are not treated...if these fighters...feel that their backs are against the wall, they will turn into extremists. From the research, we have done, we know that there was a significant component in the height of the insurgency in 2020/2021 that came from abroad", primarily Tanzanian, with a smaller number of Kenyans and Somalis and other nationalities from the Great Lakes."
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Mahtani says some Mozambicans have traveled to eastern Democratic Republic of Congo for training. He criticizes the government's focus mainly on the military response, although he points to the mobilization from the World Bank and other international partners for the government to begin delivering services and resettle families - but he asks whether those plans are rooted in a political structure. "When you put in development without a conversation of how that money is going to be spent, you inflame the perception that the money is channeled through patronage networks and into projects that don't directly benefit the people", he says.
What Should Happen Next?
"My fear about Cabo Delgado is that when we start talking about amnesty, we seem to forget that this conflict is more than just about the government and the militants. It is also about the people that are affected. Of these 800 000 people that were displaced, a lot of them had their own land. Many of them might not be able to recover their land. Before we talk about amnesty for the police officers or army that might have been involved in crimes and abuses, we need to talk about how to reconcile with the communities, how to make sure that these militant groups do not continue to grow and be able to recruit in the communities, because communities do not trust the state. They are angry at the way they have been treated by security forces, and they are hopeless," Machado says.
She says It is unacceptable that over 80% of the displaced people are not even receiving direct help from the government, because they are staying with host communities. In her view, the government needs to find ways to compensate those affected by the conflict and to ensure that communities feel safe and be given basic resources to recover, such as medical care. The people also need to see justice and accountability for the atrocities that they have witnessed. "It is unacceptable that a country that claims to respect the rule of law has had so many conflicts in its history - but very little accountability and justice for the crimes committed."
AllAfrica's reporting on peacebuilding is supported by a grant from Carnegie Corporation of New York.
