Mozambique: Two dead in terrorist attack in Mocímboa da Praia district - AIM
Photo: Lusa
The international headlines on 10 beheadings by allegedly Islamist groups in northern Mozambique are “scaremongering” which fails to match reality, local business people claim.
“The deaths are real and this makes us afraid, not scaremongering,” argues Spanish businessman Benjamim Ojeda, a hotel manager in Palma. There is criminality, but not Islamic extremism, he maintains.
Nonetheless, the Portuguese, United States and United Kingdom embassies have issued notices advising against travelling to or remaining in Cabo Delgado province unnecessarily.
Benjamim believes that the imagery of the Western world, still shocked by ISIS or Al-Qaeda terrorist propaganda, has been led by the verb “behead” to believe in a threat that is yet to be proven in northern Mozambique.
There have been beheadings – although fewer than the number the authorities suggest – but these are crimes, without the ritual of the sacrifices spread over the Internet over the last few years, Benjamin argues.
Just 20 minutes from Palma, already dubbed the future ‘Gas City’, hundreds of men and machines are building a new village on the Afungi peninsula to house the population of isolated villages that will disappear from the map.
This is where the natural gas liquefaction plant, a megaproject that promises to changes Mozambique forever, will be situated.
The works advance on a vast extension of land, where ditches and foundations are being dug on the one side and shipyards with dozens of pavilions and container houses on the other.
Contacted by Lusa , US oil company Anadarko, the main company of the investment consortium, declined to comment on the wave of violence in remote villages, tens of kilometres away from the investment.
Since 2014, several hotel and catering units have opened in Palma, in anticipation of of the arrival of hundreds of people linked to the new projects of the oil companies.
The first two years went well, but 2016 and 2017 were “tough,” says Benjamim, a disappointment due to the postponement of investments due to market issues.
Now, just when works are moving forward, “we find this unexpected factor” which is driving away entrepreneurs, consultants and even subcontractors.
“Bandit killings or assaults in remote villages happen everywhere in Africa – in Tanzania, South Africa, Malawi…” says Benjamim, a former journalist who has been in Mozambique for seven years.
Based on reports of some of his workers who live in affected areas, there have been “brief, sporadic attacks in remote villages, mainly based on revenge” local business and issues connected to the Muslim religion – cases which “nobody could understand properly”.
Associated with the attacks, there has been plundering, with anyone who resisted or attempted to retaliate being killed died, he adds.
In Monjane, one of the villages where five of the initial 10 beheadings claimed by the authorities supposedly took place, there was only one, Benjamim says, a fact corroborated by residents to Lusa on a visit to the village – although new beheadings have been reported in subsequent attacks in other villages.
Regardless of the form, and with the exception of the initial attack on the police of Mocímboa da Praia in October 2017, these are crimes that have always occurred in the bush, which is why Benjamin says that the intimidation is directed at communities, not the government or oil companies.
“Ten people were killed with machetes, and that is dramatic, but we are here to support them, because some are from our workers’ families, but it is not news that paralyses tourism and business trips. Otherwise we would stop travelling to Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa and Mexico – and this is not happening,” Benjamim says.
A delegation of 16 people from Columbia University, New York, was going to go to Palma for two weeks in August, but “cancelled a day after the alert on the US State Department website. They already had proforma invoices, transfers, all taken care of”, he complains.
The attacks have occurred in the northern and central part of Cabo Delgado, but the effects are already reaching the provincial capital in the south, and the Quirimbas islands, to the east.
Jaqueline Alfredo, a tour operator in Pemba, the capital of the province, has a Mozambican mother and a Kenyan father, and has already experienced the terrorism of the Al-Shabaab movement in Somalia in 2013.
“My father was there and managed to escape, and I was close,” but at the time there were messages claiming responsibility for the attacks, unlike the crimes in northern Mozambique.
“I already read that they are a ‘jihadist’ group, but I think the media are giving a lot of credit to this banditry. Al-Shabaab ‘wannabes’, perhaps,” she says, using an English expression to minimise the threat.
Jaqueline spoke to Lusa on the island of Ibo in Quirimbas archipelago, part of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) biosphere reserve and a niche tourism attraction as well as a natural refuge for those fleeing the mainland.
After two villages were torched earlier this month by suspected Islamist groups, at least 1,600 residents fled by boat and sought shelter with friends and family on the island.
Some organisations have left the archipelago as a security measure, but Jorg Salzer, a German and owner of a guesthouse on the island, smiles when asked about the confusion.
“No chaos, no confusion,” he says. All the displaced have found a place to stay, despite the limited housing. One of his workers, for example, has now accommodated 34 people in a precarious house and a tent.
In his eight years on the island, Jorg does not remember such instability in the region.
Despite being far from the troubles, the situation has led to the cancellation of reservations – a common complaint among the business people interviewed by Lusa on the island, who speak of scaremongering.
“We have to deal with this in a positive way,” says Fernando Moreira, a Portuguese living in Mozambique for 16 years as director of one of the hotels in Palma. “We shouldn’t make a drama about something so transient and easy to control.”
He understands that there is “concern” because “clear information” is lacking, but believes that the future of Cabo Delgado and its gas megaprojects is far from being compromised.
“It is only a matter of time, and we have to look at things from a positive perspective,” says Eugénio Farahane, the manager of another hotel built in anticipation of the new businesses coming to the region.
“We are confident, otherwise we would not be here,” he concludes.
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