Mozambique

For nearly two years, Mozambique resisted the call for foreign military intervention in Cabo Delgado to help fight the insurgency that started in 2017. But when militants stormed the town of Palma in March 2021, forcing construction on the US$20 billion liquefied natural gas project to stop, Maputo had to accept foreign boots on the ground. 

For the first time, Mozambique's Defense Minister Cristovao Chume has asked foreign military personnel stationed in the country to share their knowledge with Mozambique's security forces to help end violent extremism.

The representative of the U.N. refugee agency in Mozambique said refugees fleeing war-torn parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo are making an already complicated humanitarian crisis in northern Mozambique even worse.

Rwandan President Paul Kagame has pledged the continued support of his country's armed forces for the fight against islamist terrorism in the northern Mozambican province of Cabo Delgado.

The Mozambique parliament has approved a bill that legalizes the involvement of local militias in the fight against jihadists in the northern province of Cabo Delgado. Defense Minister Cristóvão Chume, who presented the bill in parliament, admitted that the Mozambican army alone is not able to deal with the jihadists.

With outside attention focused on violent extremism and gas exports, Mozambique’s democratic backsliding is proceeding apace.

Since 2017, a destabilising Islamist insurgency against Mozambican government forces and the local population has ravaged the gas-rich northern province of Cabo Delgado. … This is an update of an 'at a glance' note published in July 2021.

The European Union will provide additional support for an African military mission in Mozambique as Islamist attacks threaten gas projects designed to reduce the EU's dependence on Russian energy resources.

New field research in Cabo Delgado sheds light on one of Africa’s least understood violent conflicts.

[…] The Islamist militant movement in northern Mozambique is spreading to new territory despite efforts by government and regional forces to contain it. … Nampula is now the third province of northern Mozambique where terrorist attacks have displaced villagers, following Cabo Delgado and Niassa.