By Andrew Field
In northern Mozambique, the drama of conflict now takes on a deeper dimension than simply insurgents versus government troops. It is an allegory of Africa’s perennial dilemma: the extraction of wealth under foreign auspices, the promise of transformation, and the lingering reality of neglected societies and fragile ecosystems. The province of Cabo Delgado has become Mozambique’s focal point of these contradictions.
Foreign soldiers are now in the field. Rwanda sent troops at Maputo’s invitation in 2021. Their arrival was greeted by weary relief; local forces and private military contractors (PMC) had been outgunned and poorly organised as the insurgency advanced. The Rwandan contingent filled a vacuum, bringing with them logistics, discipline and the political will to act. They helped reclaim towns, reopen roads, and provide a semblance of security in some pockets. By 2025, their strength had grown to between 2,500 and 3,000 troops. This presence, however, clearly underlines the weakness of Mozambican state institutions.
Equally telling is the role of regional mechanisms. The Southern African Development Community launched a multilateral intervention, the Southern African Development Community Mission in Mozambique (SAMIM), to assist Mozambique. The theory was promising, as it always is in Africa: southern African countries pooling efforts against a threat that endangered regional stability. But from the beginning, the commitment seemed just so faltering. By late 2023 and into 2024, SADC began a phased drawdown of its mission, citing, yawn, limited resources and divergent national priorities.
The result was a vacuum. Into that void pressed bilateral actors and PMCs. The once multilateral architecture of regional peacekeeping proved brittle. On 5 January 2025, SADC leaders met at an Organ Troika summit chaired by Tanzania’s now-dictator, Islamist-leaning[1] President Samia Hassan, but resources did not match the rhetoric of solidarity. By contrast, on 29 August 2025, Rwanda and Mozambique signed a Status of Forces Agreement in Kigali, formalising Kigali’s continued deployment. The agreement followed a two-day summit between President Daniel Chapo and Paul Kagame, but offered no sign of a fresh counter-insurgency strategy.
Through this lens, the insurgency must be seen not only as a security crisis but also as a symptomatic unravelling of governance, environmental stewardship, and the social contract. The militants, linked to the Islamic State, roam in and out of control. At certain moments, they held towns, set up checkpoints, and exerted rule. In others, they dispersed into the bush, carried out hit-and-run attacks, abducted children, and harvested ransom.
The insurgents remain neither vanquished nor dominant; their capacity for violence persists because the underlying terrain… both physical and political… remains permissive. Figures such as Abu Yasir Hassan, the Tanzanian cleric long identified as the movement’s ideological head, and Bonomade Machude Omar, better known as Ibn Omar, its operational commander, continue to give the insurgency shape and direction. Even when senior figures like Mustafa al-Tanzani were reported killed, the network adapted and endured.
The blood spilling and destruction have not abated. In September 2025, death-cult Islamic State-Mozambique launched coordinated attacks across six districts, from Balama to Mocímboa da Praia, forcing tens of thousands to flee. On 7 September, insurgents mounted a brutal raid on Mocímboa da Praia, going door to door to identify victims; this was the second such major incursion since September 2021. From mid-September through the month-end, the group targeted Chiúre District, killing at least 11 Christians, burning four churches, and displacing thousands.
In Palma, another town to the north, near the Tanzanian frontier, deadly attacks in August belied government claims that the area was pacified. In July, around 60 fighters moved south from the Catupa forest in Macomia, splitting into two groups and sowing chaos in Ancuabe and Chiúre. One group reportedly continued into Nampula’s Erati district to recruit before circling back north. Despite the warning, Mozambican and Rwandan forces failed to respond for nearly two weeks. The result was a clumsy, scattershot attempt to stamp out flare-ups.
In this region, the extraction of minerals, the pursuit of offshore gas, timber concessions and the host of external development promises matter. Foreign companies ride into these zones with prospectus documents in hand, believing the riches of Africa are there to be tapped. But the local populations remain marginalised. While the profits flow offshore, local fields are trampled, their rivers diverted, their forests felled. By intensifying the movement for dissent, the insurgency thrives, nourished by grievances, displacement, and the emptiness of state presence.
TotalEnergies, the French oil major, is now poised to restart its $20 billion LNG project on the Afungi peninsula. Construction now centres on a fortified ‘green zone’ defended by drones, CCTV and high-tech perimeter systems. Land transport routes have been abandoned; all supplies and personnel now move within the enclave. The company signed a secretive security memorandum with Maputo, drawing sharp criticism from local business owners who are now excluded from economic benefit. The return of hundreds of thousands of displaced persons, hailed by the government as proof of stability, has instead created new openings for insurgent taxation, smuggling and recruitment.
The insurgents themselves are most adaptive. They lose ground in one district, reappear in another. The fact that they have been displaced from major towns does not mean that they have vanished. Instead, they operate more fluidly, using remote terrain, exploiting weak governance, appearing to accept abandonment then striking again. They are not merely an external jihadi threat; they are rooted in local grievances, in marginalisation, in the sense of forgotten people in forgotten places. That feels familiar across southern Africa: communities left behind while capital flows in.
Private military contractors have also left their mark. The Russian-linked Wagner Group briefly operated in 2019 but, embarrassingly, withdrew after heavy losses. South African firm Dyck Advisory Group provided helicopter support until 2021 (operating under the auspices of a conservation contract further south), when its contract ended. By 2025 there is no evidence of large-scale mercenary combat operations, but private security contractors remain active in protecting LNG infrastructure and logistics corridors. Their presence is another reminder that foreign interests are prioritised. The gas must flow, even if the people of Cabo Delgado remain displaced and traumatised.
The Rwandan troops have done their part militarily. They cleared areas, reopened supply lines, and disrupted insurgent logistics. This was a valuable intervention. But military success does not equate to peace. When the guns fall silent, the question is: what comes next? In Cabo Delgado, the “next” has often been absent. Schools do not reopen. Landmines remain embedded, awaiting the wheels or feet of the innocent. Water systems stay broken. And while foreign soldiers may one day depart, the foreign companies often remain, extracting whatever resources are left. The people see their land bartered away, and the threat returns.
Rwanda’s reputation as a security anchor is beginning to fade. Its forces continue to patrol major roads and provide static security, but their counter-insurgency capacity is sporadic. After dislodging insurgents from a mini-caliphate on the Macomia coast in late 2024, Rwanda withdrew its helicopter gunships. Community groups report a sharp drop in reaction speed. Mozambique’s own forces have taken a more active role, but their impact remains questionable. Brigadier-General Luís Barros, commander of the EU’s Assistance Mission, claims that EU-trained Quick Reaction Force units are a “game changer”; but even he admits that the deeper drivers of alienation will take years to address.
Allegations of abuse also dog Maputo. In August, the navy was accused of murdering civilians along the Palma and Macomia coastlines. Coastal security remains a serious vulnerability. Local militias continue to defend some communities, but their presence complicates the security landscape. In late July, two police officers suspected of being insurgents were tortured to death in Nvenevene village. The lines between state, militia and insurgent are increasingly blurred.
And for SADC, the challenge is existential; its raison d’être. If a regional bloc cannot sustain a mission to halt a once-small insurgency in its neighbourhood then what message does that send? It signals that African problems will increasingly be managed by external powers or by ad-hoc alliances rather than by African institutions acting in concert. The withdrawal of SAMIM illustrates the mismatch between rhetoric and capacity. The end-state for Cabo Delgado cannot be simply a military defeat of the militants. It must be a comprehensive strategy of rebuilding, inclusion, accountability, and ecological protection. Yet we see little of that.
In that sense, the crisis in Mozambique is a cautionary tale. Africa’s promise of resource-led transformation continues to be undermined by weak governance, environmental indifference, and external actors with short time horizons. The presence of foreign troops might stabilise the battlefield for a while. Still, if mining and extraction companies move in, carve out concessions, repatriate profits, and leave little investment in local society, then the next spark is inevitable. Security discounts the land, the ecosystem, and the very people who should benefit.
These are the real stakes. The guns are part of the story, but not the whole story. The deeper narrative is one of power and extraction, of resources flowing out and blame flowing in, of Africa’s potential being harnessed not for its people but for distant shareholders.
The story in Cabo Delgado is not one of doom or inevitability. It is one of the choices. And Africa must choose differently. It must demand that the land be protected, that the people be included, that the profits stay longer than the drill-bit. Otherwise, the conflict will shift on, the minerals will still vanish, and the ecosystem will still pay the price.
[1] President Samia Suluhu Hassan, a practising Muslim, has welcomed closer ties with Iran and governs a country with significant Muslim constituencies. While she has not made overtly Islamist declarations, her foreign policy gestures — including support for Iranian engagement — have drawn scrutiny from regional analysts concerned about ideological leanings and strategic alignments. This may be problematic for Mozambique.
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