Cabo Delgado: Frelimo accepts foreign support in training and logistics, but not troops on the ground

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Cabo Delgado: Frelimo accepts foreign support in training and logistics, but not troops on the ground

3:12 CAT | 21 Apr 2021

Photo: Frelimo Moçambique on Facebook

Roque Silva, Secretary-General of Frelimo, the ruling party in Mozambique, refuses to countenance foreign troops fighting the armed groups terrorizing Cabo Delgado, and would accept external support only in the areas of logistics and training.

“If the solution to the problem of terrorism was foreign troops, Afghanistan would not still be facing the problem of terrorism,” Silva said, referring to “American and other troops” who remain there, “but the war does not end”.

Speaking to journalists on Tuesday (April 20) in Pemba, the provincial capital of Cabo Delgado, the leader of the Mozambique Liberation Front (Frelimo) also cited Libya, where foreign troops are present, but instability persists.

“And in this country of ours, during the war that was undertaken by the Mozambican National Resistance (Renamo, the main opposition party), we had Zimbabwean and Tanzanian troops here, and it was not these troops that ended the war,” he added.

“We have capable men led by a capable commander-in-chief. What we need is that support that which President Filipe Jacinto Nyusi has clearly indicated: training and logistics,” Silva said.

The statements, which are in line with those of the Mozambican head of state and Frelimo president, Filipe Nyusi, came at the end of a four-day working visit by Silva to Cabo Delgado province, including a visit to Palma.

Control of Palma recovered

Regarding the March 24 incursion, the Frelimo secretary general said that the armed groups had every intention of remaining in Palma “The terrorists’ objective was not to attack and leave, it was to attack and stay,” he said. It was therefore “the Defence and Security Forces’ capacity to respond” that made possible regaining control of Palma and creating conditions for the population to return.

Armed groups have terrorised Cabo Delgado since 2017, with some attacks claimed by the jihadist group Islamic State, in a wave of violence that has already caused more than 2,500 deaths, according to the ACLED conflict registration project, and 714,000 people displaced, according to the Mozambican government.

The most recent attack, on March 24, was carried out against the town of Palma, causing dozens of deaths and injuries in numbers yet to be ascertained.

Mozambican authorities regained control of the town, but the attack led oil company Total to indefinitely abandon the main construction site of the gas project scheduled to start production in 2024 and on which many of Mozambique’s expectations for economic growth in the next decade are based.

Source: Deutsche Welle