Mozambique: PGR orders incineration of over 100 kilos of amphetamine seized in Inhassoro
Mocimboa aerodrome. [Photo via CDD Moçambique]
March 25 2020
The day before yesterday, terrorism returned with all its bloodthirsty cruelty. It broke over Mocimboa da Praia at dawn and, with daggers drawn, smashed into the soul of the village, its public infrastructure and private freedoms.
The bandits seemed to have had as their goal to show that their military power surpasses that of the state and that its readiness is greater. They assaulted the police station, putting our police officers into disarray. Then they faced off against the FDS in their barracks, in a firefight that lasted hours. There are few reports on the true balance of this fight, but weapons and ammunition were stolen, with casualties on both sides.
The terrorism was also a front for looting, and to rob the commercial banks there. The insurgents cut the fibre optic connections with the whole country (something they know how to do), causing a blackout: by 4:00 a.m. on Monday, the banks’ headquarters in Maputo could not visually monitor, in real time, what was happening at each counter. Subsequent still images showed that attempts were made to blow up ATMs and to access banks’ vaults. The safes of the BIM and ABSA banks were not breached.
This attempt to steal money is curious. The testimony of a terrorist captured three weeks ago in Mueda revealed to members of the FDS that they were paid 50,000 meticais each per attack. Who pays? Nobody says! And he gave details of logistics, the way in which supplies are provided, suggesting that the general population were somehow helping terrorism against society and state.
This was the first time in two years that terrorists in Cabo de Delgado had attacked a district headquarters. Its regular target had been unguarded villages and centres of agricultural or fishing production. Later, they chose roads and semi-collective transport as targets. Now, it is a town and its police and military facilities, in an unparalleled declaration of war. They attacked the private sector, burning trucks, with echoes of the armed banditry of the 1980s.
In the attack on Mocimboa da Praia, there was almost no beheading, as has usually been the case. There are reports of two dead and several dozen injured. The terrorists in Mocimboa appeared to be targeting only military and economic targets. They arrived and sent all the people to the mosque or to the beach, claiming that they wanted only to confront the FDS. And this is what happened. In a replay of the attack on Bilibiza, a few weeks ago, they used the same “modus operandi”: to send the teachers and general population away so that they could vandalise infrastructure.
Mocimboa proved a new model of confrontation with the state which does not involve violence against defenceless citizens. The goals behind this change are not yet clear. But the terrorists are certainly taking advantage of one thing: the brutality of the FDS towards local people. And it seems that they are being rewarded for this: in one surreal scene, on leaving Mocimboa after their confrontations with the FDS, the terrorists were acclaimed by the people. As one member of the FDS vented on social media: “We will have to burn down all of Cabo Delgado to defeat the terrorists.”
There was always a suspicion that the terrorists are supported by local people. It has always been this way. Claims that wealthy traders underwrite their logistics have always been there. But now the support is also moral. Popular. A kind of glorification. What’s really going on?
By Marcelo Mosse
Leave a Reply
Be the First to Comment!
You must be logged in to post a comment.
You must be logged in to post a comment.