Mozambique jihadi violence spreads despite military effort
- Five-year wave of jihadi violence in Cabo Delgado province has killed more than 4,000 people and scuppered international investments worth billions of dollars
- Families seeking safety from the violence say their conditions are bleak and food assistance is scarce, but they are afraid to return home
Fleeing beheadings, shootings, rapes and kidnappings, nearly 1 million people are displaced by the Islamic extremist insurgency in northern Mozambique.
The five-year wave of jihadi violence in Cabo Delgado province has killed more than 4,000 people and scuppered international investments worth billions of dollars.
In a sprawl of dilapidated tents and thatched huts around Nanjua, a small town in the southern part of Cabo Delgado province, several hundred families are seeking safety from the violence. They say their conditions are bleak and food assistance is meagre but they are afraid to return home because of continuing violence by the rebels who are now going by the name Islamic State Mozambique Province.
More than 1.000 miles (1,609.3km) south, however, government officials in the capital Maputo are saying the insurgency is under control and are encouraging the displaced to return to their homes and energy companies to resume their projects.
“The terrorists are on the run permanently,” Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi assured investors at the Mozambique Energy and Gas Summit in Maputo in September. He urged the gathering of international energy executives to resume work on their stalled liquefied natural gas projects.
Mozambique’s army and police forces, backed up by troops from Rwanda and support from a regional force from the Southern African Development Community, have succeeded in containing the extremist rebellion, officials say.
“These places have now normalised and civilians are coming back,” Rwandan Brigadier General Ronald Rwivanga, told the Rwandan newspaper The New Times this month, saying normal life is returning to the Palma district.