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The General Commander of the Mozambican police force, Bernadino Rafael, has claimed that traffickers in precious stones are the heads of the shadowy insurgency in the northern province of Cabo Delgado.
Speaking on Saturday, in the Cabo Delgado district of Montepuez, where the largest known deposit of rubies in the world is located, he claimed that the illegal ruby miners had rebelled against the measures taken by the government to protect Mozambique’s mineral wealth, which they were looting.
“Some people who are promoting war in some Cabo Delgado districts were illegal miners right here in Montepuez”, said Rafael, cited by Radio Mozambique. “They headed the gangs of criminals who took our precious stones, rubies and others, and charged young people with taking them to the coast and then out of the country. When we undertook operations against illegal mining, they became our enemies. They began to fight against us”.
Rafael warned that there are still recruiters active in Montepuez, who are enticing young people to join the ranks of the insurgents. He urged the local population to step up their vigilance to prevent Montepuez from becoming a logistical base for the insurgency.
He claimed that the terrorists are using electronic transactions through one of the mobile phone operators to transfer money. “There are those who use the Mpesa services to support the logistics of the criminals”, he said. “There are those who are using these services for criminal purposes”.
Mpesa is the mobile financial service run by Vodacom, one of the three mobile phone operators in the country.
The Mozambican police carried out a major operation against illegal miners in March 2017. They rounded up and expelled a large number of foreign miners of various nationalities. Rafael was suggesting that this operation led to the unleashing of the insurgency in October 2017.
The obvious hole in Rafael’s claim is that insurgent attacks have not been reported from Montepuez district. The insurgency is centred further north in districts such as Mocimboa da Praia, Macomia and Palma.
The police commander paid no attention at all to the ideological side of the insurgency, which is supposedly inspired by islamic fundamentalism. Certainly some of the atrocities practiced, such as the beheading of victims, seem to have been borrowed from the terrorists of the self-styled “Islamic State”, or ISIS.
Rafael did not so much as mention the name of Andre Hanekom, a South African businessman who died in Mozambican police custody in January, and who had previously been accused of financing the insurgency.
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