JOHANNESBURG—Radical, anti-West religious leaders across East Africa continue to win recruits for extremist entities supported by the terror group ISIS’s international network, negating gains made by a regional peacekeeping force, according to new intelligence into a jihadist insurgency in Mozambique.
A study indicates that hardened terrorists from across Africa enjoy almost unfettered access to the resource-rich southeastern African country, because of porous borders and a coastline that’s largely unpoliced.
This, even as thousands of troops from the region, plus Rwanda, claim notable victories over the insurgents, killing and capturing many, but driving them into previously peaceful areas where they’ve set up new bases.
Soldiers from some of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) bloc and Rwanda, have deployed in northern Mozambique since July 2021, to oppose militants who call themselves Ahlu-Sunnah wal Jama’ah (ASWJ), or “true followers of the Prophet Muhammad” and “the people who will be saved on the Day of Judgment.”
The insurgency flared in October 2017, when ASWJ fighters attacked villages and towns in Cabo Delgado province; men were beheaded and women were raped.
ASWJ declared the government in Maputo its “enemies” and called for Sharia law to be implemented in northern Mozambique. That area has much more in common with Muslim-dominated southern Tanzania than it ever has with the predominantly Christian southern parts of Mozambique, local historian Yussuf Adam told The Epoch Times.
Tensions had been building in Cabo Delgado since 2010, when a massive natural gas field was found off the region’s coast.
Some of the world’s largest energy companies, including France’s TotalEnergies and ExxonMobil in the United States, signed multibillion-dollar contracts with Maputo for oil and gas exploration and production.
The Mozambican government promised the projects would ignite development and “better lives for all” in northern Mozambique, but nothing came of it—sowing the seeds of discontent and providing “fertile ground” for insurrection, Adam says.
The potential for violence rose substantially in early 2017, when state police arrested more than 3,000 people in Cabo Delgado during a crackdown on illegal mining.
Locals had been pursuing the activity almost unabated since the 1990s. But when they began to unearth gem-quality rubies, officials stepped in to award mining contracts to international conglomerates.
Enter ASWJ, backed by ISIS.
The conflict has claimed the lives of at least 4,000 people, while displacing an additional 800,000, human rights monitors say.
Kenyan cleric Aboud Rogo Mohammed played a “key part” in fomenting extremist ideology and “opening the door” for ASWJ to “recruit and radicalize” men across northern Mozambique, according to Maputo-based security analyst Borges Nhamirre, who is one of the authors of the report.
Mohammed, accused by the CIA and others of helping to organize al-Qaeda attacks in East Africa, including the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya, in 1998, was shot dead by Kenyan security forces in 2012.
“Rogo’s messages, including encouraging jihad, live on,” Nhamirre told The Epoch Times.
“Rogo visited towns in northern Mozambique, including Mocimboa de Praia in Cabo Delgado, throughout the late 1990s and into the 2000s. He praised al-Shabaab in Somalia and said it was good for young Muslim men to become martyrs.”
Nhamirre says clerics preaching extremist ideology continue to access northern Mozambique.
“They come from Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya; they’re free to come and go as they please; there are hardly any patrols of borders as the fighting rages on.”
Meanwhile, “another phase” of the conflict had been reached, Martin Ewi, Africa director of the European Union-funded ENACT program to combat transnational organized crime, told The Epoch Times. As Mozambican, South African, and Rwandan troops have attacked terrorist bases in Cabo Delgado, the extremists have targeted neighboring Nampula province, he said.
“Nampula was always at high risk of being attacked because it’s a recruitment hotbed for the insurgents,“ Nhamirre said. ”We need to see if government’s going to manage to stop the attacks.
“But also, we must consider that this might be the strategic move by the group to disperse the forces on the ground so that they can continue operating in northern Cabo Delgado. The risk that their expansion might continue is always there.”
Adam, who teaches at Eduardo Mondlane University in Maputo, and recently spent months in northern Mozambique facilitating the latest research, said the region was “nowhere close to peace.”
“There are pockets of normalization but insecurity’s there and it’s very difficult in this situation to create peace. What’s happening in Nampula at the moment is big groups of people running away from areas where war has erupted.”
He added it was a “big mistake” to conclude that the jihadists were almost defeated just because their recent attacks had been “smaller and simpler.”
“I hear some analysts and even military people saying, ‘The insurgents previously attacked with 400, 300 fighters; now they attack with 20.’ For me, this says nothing about the current strength or weakness of ASWJ, because it is a guerrilla group.
“It’s the nature of guerrilla warfare to sometimes attack in big groups, and to sometimes attack in much smaller groups.”
Nhamirre says jihadists from across East and Central Africa continue to join the battle in Mozambique.
“In jail, we have Tanzanian, Ugandan, Kenyan, and Congolese fighters saying they fight for ‘Islamic State.’ They help recruit young Mozambicans and take them to ISIS bases in Congo and Tanzania to be trained.”
An important figure driving violence in northern Mozambique at the moment is “field commander” Ibn Omar, also known as Bonomade Machude Omar and Abu Sulayfa Muhammad, Ewi said.
In early August, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken branded Omar a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist.”
Blinken described him as “leading the Military and External Affairs Departments for ISIS-Mozambique” and serving as “senior commander and lead coordinator for all attacks conducted by the group in northern Mozambique.”
Ewi said evidence shows that Omar and Abu Yasir Hassan, who Blinken named as leader of IS-Mozambique, led the March 2021 attack on the town of Palma, when dozens of people were murdered, some by beheading.
The incident caused Total to suspend its gas project off the coast, and sparked the entrance of the regional and Rwandan force.
Nhamirre said Omar is a “key operator moving between countries for ISIS.”
“These terrorists obviously have regional, maybe even international, support; otherwise, they would have faded a long time ago. There’s a lot of intelligence talk at the moment of them having helpers in South Africa, where communications and banking systems are very sophisticated and support for IS and other groups are believed to be increasing.”
In his statement in August, Blinken indicated Washington’s commitment to “disrupting the financing methods of ISIS-Mozambique … limiting their abilities to conduct further attacks against civilians and supporting our partners in efforts to disrupt terrorism finance.”
He said the United States would “degrade the capacity” of terror organizations in West, East, and Southern Africa.
But several intelligence analysts in Southern Africa told The Epoch Times that ASWJ so far isn’t following any “formal” ways of channeling funds, and seems to be financing itself by means of “local donations” and, to a limited degree, by smuggling narcotics and selling them in South Africa.
The joint ISS—Judicial Training Institute report found that the “illicit economy, donations, and raids on local sources such as banks are the major sources of (ASWJ) financing.”
It asserts that insurgents stole at least US$1 million from banks and businesses during their attack on Palma alone.
Adam said he’d heard of “contacts” between representatives of the Mozambican government and ASWJ leaders in recent months, but officials in Maputo wouldn’t confirm or deny that to The Epoch Times.
“Events in the past have shown us that meetings are happening between the opposing sides,“ Adam said. ”The road to talks to bring peace has been open for two years, since those two Brazilian nuns were abducted.”
ASWJ fighters seized the Catholic nuns during their siege on the port of Mocimboa de Praia in August 2020, before releasing them a month later unharmed. Details of how their freedom was secured remain unknown, with the Catholic Church declining to confirm or deny payment of a ransom.
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