USIP Publication: Mozambique’s Crisis Requires a New Playbook to Fight Extremism

Over the past three years, a local Islamist insurgency in the northern Mozambican province of Cabo Delgado has grown in strength and viciousness, developing ties with international terrorist groups and threatening one of the world’s largest natural gas projects. The insurgency is turning Cabo Delgado into a killing field. While many Americans are increasingly wary of overseas counterterrorism commitments, there is increasing consensus among experts that the conventional, militarized counterterrorism responses that have dominated in the post 9-11 era are failing, particularly in Africa. The situation in Mozambique is an opportunity to reorient such efforts through addressing the underlying drivers of conflict and extremism.

Locals call the insurgent group “al-Shabaab”—in part because the group reminds them of the al-Qaida-linked Somali terrorist organization of the same name. This year violence against civilians doubled from 2019 levels. In November 2020, al-Shabaab militants burned the farming community of Muatide to the ground, herded 50 of its residents onto a soccer field and beheaded them. Routine al-Shabaab atrocities and human rights abuses by Mozambican security forces deployed to the region have forced more than 350,000 people to flee their homes.

As ISIS touts al-Shabaab’s exploits and backs the insurgents with increasing levels of operational and tactical support (including formal incorporation into the Islamic State in Central Africa Province in April 2019), counterterrorism analysts and Africa watchers should be deeply concerned about the increasing efficacy and sustainability of ISIS’s franchising efforts across the continent. Without a thoughtfully calibrated international intervention, terrorism may be entrenched in a new theater with equally long-term impacts on human security and regional stability.