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The Southern African Development Community (SADC) assessment mission to Mozambique has warned of new attacks by armed groups terrorising Cabo Delgado province after the month of Ramadan.
“The possibility of new attacks is high after Ramadan, but that does not exclude the probability of attacks during the Muslim fasting period,” said a report from the mission, consulted by Lusa.
The report, marked “restricted”, will be submitted to the extraordinary meeting of the Ministerial Committee of the SADC Defence and Security Policy Body, scheduled for Wednesday in Maputo, and to the Extraordinary SADC Troika Summit, scheduled for the following day, also in the Mozambican capital.
The assessment mission notes that the recent attacks in Cabo Delgado occurred just before the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Since then, there has been a considerable lull in the activities of the armed groups.
The document acknowledges that the armed groups terrorising northern Mozambique receive international funding through electronic means of payment.
“The financiers [of the armed groups] are thought to be mainly private individuals and organisations from South Africa, Tanzania, Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, Burundi and other parts of the world,” the report pointed out.
The other source of funding for the armed groups which carry out armed violence in Cabo Delgado is the earnings of the organised crime “syndicates” which exploit the natural resources found in northern Mozambique, such as wood, precious stones, poaching and drug trafficking.
But the terrorists’ main source of supply is the Islamic State Central Africa Province (ISCAP), a terrorist organisation affiliated with the self-proclaimed Islamic State.
The assessment noted no information on the suppliers of weapons used by the armed groups, but in their latest attack, on Palma on March 24, the insurgents are said to have used new ordnance.
Some of these weapons will have been taken from soldiers of the Armed Defence Forces of Mozambique (FADM) killed in combat, but not in large numbers, the text noted.
“The terrorists currently use machetes, AK-47 weapons, RPG-7s and 80-millimetre mortars. There are no indications that the terrorists have surface-to-air missiles in their possession,” the document noted.
The insurgents, it said, communicate via satellite phones and mobile phones and preferably use the Mozambican mobile operator Movitel.
The SADC team of experts that made the assessment noted that the insurgents chose Cabo Delgado province as “their main headquarters” because it has a strategic location, thanks to easy access to the sea, the inability of the FADM to control maritime borders, border porosity and the presence of a linguistic community between Mozambique and Tanzania, through the Swahili language.
The fact that Cabo Delgado is a predominantly Muslim province, the religion used by the insurgents in their war rhetoric, and the ease of mobility of foreign fighters and resupply on the border between Mozambique and Tanzania also weighed on the choice of that province, the document noted.
The experts said the insurgents’ strengths included their ability to gather information, knowledge of the terrain, traditions, beliefs, and religion and enjoy some sympathy from the local population.
In its report, the SADC assessment mission for Mozambique will propose the deployment of 2,916 military personnel to help the country fight the armed groups.
“The assessment team proposes the immediate deployment of a SADC alert force to assist the FADM in combating the threat of terrorism and acts of violent extremism in Cabo Delgado,” the document reads.
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 led to more than 2,500 deaths according to the ACLED conflict registration project and 714,000 displaced people according to the Mozambican government.
The most recent attack on the town of Palma caused dozens of deaths and injuries in a still ongoing assessment.
The Mozambican authorities regained control of the town. Still, the attack led oil company Total to abandon indefinitely the site of the gas project scheduled to start production in 2024 and on which many of Mozambique’s economic growth expectations for the next decade are anchored.
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