Mozambique: Jihadist blueprint for terror state in Cabo Delgado – By Paul Fauvet

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Mozambique: Jihadist blueprint for terror state in Cabo Delgado – By Paul Fauvet

4:08 CAT | 06 Jul 2020

File photo: Lusa

The introduction of a religious police force, bans on alcohol, smoking and even music, cutting the hands off thieves and publicly executing “witches” – this nightmare is not restricted to Afghanistan under the Taliban, but it is also what islamist terrorists are promising for the northern Mozambican province of Cabo Delgado.

Terrorist activities have been under way in Cabo Delgado since October 2017. The islamist group is known locally as “Al-Shabaab”, but seems to have no direct connection with the Somali organisation of that name. The group’s real name seems to be “Ansar Al-Sunna” (meaning “supporters of the tradition”). Nowadays it is closely aligned with the international terrorist organisation known as “Islamic State” (or ISIS, ISIL or Daesh), which has taken to claiming responsibility for attacks in Cabo Delgado.

It has often been said that nobody knows what the terrorists in Cabo Delgado stand for – however, that position is no longer tenable, since what amounts to a manifesto for turning Cabo Delgado into a state where Islamic fundamentalism reigns has just been published on the Mozambican Internet portal “Pinnacle News”.

One or more of the jihadists (names were not given), on 3 July, wrote a contribution to a “Pinnacle News” open discussion group, attempting to explain the group’s activities in Cbio Delgado.

The author states that after a city or territory has been “liberated” from the Mozambican government, “the first task will be to strengthen the defence of the city, the second task is to establish Islamic laws, the third is to establish just Islamic courts, which will solve all internal problems”.

State structures will be created, including “the Sharia police”. The main task of this police force will be “the observance of Islamic religious rules”. The religious police will also “seek out and remove from the residents prohibited things such as cigarettes, drugs, musical instruments, alcohol and everything which is banned under Islam”.

All these forbidden items will then be publicly destroyed, and the shopkeepers who sold them will be punished. There will also be punishments for “adulterers, thieves and criminals who act unjustly against another person”. Theft is divided into two categories – those who steal food for themselves or their family “are not guilty, because the responsibility falls on the state which did not provide people with food and shelter”.

But if the thief steals a car, or luxury items such as jewellery, “he will be punished – that is, the thief will lose a hand”.

“And this type of justice will be done publicly”, the author adds, “so that it is a lesson for the rest of those present”.

The Sharia police shall also “grab witches and they shall be executed publicly without hesitation. Since a witch has no excuse, the only solution is to cut off his head”.

It goes on to praise the state structures that the “Islamic State” set up in Iraq, Syria and Libya, claiming that these were successful – but failing to mention that ISIS/Islamic State has been driven out of Iraq and most of Syria.

To achieve the desired goals, the author say, “it is necessary to smash the enemy forces and push them out of the territory”. The Islamic state “is able to create a state that does not depend on the western or Arab countries, but easily and in a just manner, it will achieve its goal”.

Islamic State, it continues, “is a threat to the western regimes because it destroys all the western cunning, the plans that absorb the natural wealth of muslim countries”.

“The Islamic State will certainly win”, the author declares, “because muslims will not accept the fact that the West imposes its laws on us: on the contrary, we shall live as God told us in the Koran”.

This is the nearest thing to a manifesto that the Mozambican jihadists have published. It makes very clear that their central concerns are not economic, but religious. Poverty is scarcely mentioned, except in a casual phrase about introducing a redistributive tax system. Nothing is said about the natural gas, the rubies, the graphite or other minerals found in Cabo Delgado.

The overwhelming concern of this author is to impose his terrifying vision of Islam on everyone else. This indicates that those who think that religion is just “a smokescreen” in the Cabo Delgado war, as one prominent Mozambican intellectual wrote recently, are sorely mistaken.

By Paul Fauvet

Source: AIM