Mozambique, a Sahel-like conflict

Last week, we dedicated this space to a topic that is rarely covered in other media: the persecution of Christians around the world. And, by chance, or as an example of the reality we reflected in our previous article, just over a week ago another massacre of Catholics was carried out by jihadists, this time in Mozambique, which, given the significance of its geographical location, leads us to look at the situation in this African country.
 
The epicentre of this crisis can be located in the north of the country, more specifically in the province of Cabo Delgado. In the beginning, groups of radicalised Muslims carried out isolated violent actions, leading to instability. However, the situation deteriorated until it led to a large-scale insurgency led by the Ahlu Sunna Wal Jama'a (ASWJ) group, and more recently by the group known as ISCAP (Islamic State in the Central African Province) or Islamic State in Mozambique (ISIS-M).

This relentless evolution has resulted in more than one million displaced persons and nearly 7,000 deaths, in one of the most serious humanitarian crises on the continent.

At the root of this situation, we find common factors that facilitate the establishment of these groups wherever we look: endemic poverty, skyrocketing unemployment rates, especially among young people, endemic corruption in the state administration... In short, situations of helplessness and despair. And, as is often the case, disputes over natural resources and historical ethnic and tribal conflicts serve as catalysts for this violence. 

The tactics and techniques employed by these jihadist groups are not dissimilar to those we have seen elsewhere. Kidnappings, beheadings, mutilations and sexual violence have been the hallmarks of insurgent activity.

All this has had consequences not only for the local population, but also a major economic impact, as numerous companies, especially energy companies, have withdrawn their investments from the country.

The Mozambican government, lacking resources and politically weak, initially sought the solution to the problem in private military contractors, known today as PMCs (Private Military Companies). However, this did not have the expected success. As a result, its response has evolved towards a joint military deployment of forces from the Southern African Development Community (SADC), supported by troops from Rwanda. 

This combination of actions has achieved tactical successes, but the problem persists and the humanitarian situation is critical, as the root causes have not been adequately addressed.

In our initial presentation, we mentioned the province of Cabo Delgado as the epicentre of the crisis in Mozambique.

In the far north of the country, the situation has deteriorated over the last few decades to such an extent that, without fear of contradiction, it is the most violent, critical and unstable part of southern Africa. With an area of almost 80,000 square kilometres and a population of nearly 2.5 million, of whom more than 40% are illiterate and have an average life expectancy of 50 years, the region's inhabitants have traditionally been strongly linked to the Swahili world that predominates in the area. In addition, its geographical location has historically allowed for intense commercial and cultural exchange with the Persian Gulf and Southeast Asia. 

However, despite its enormous cultural wealth and potential, due to its privileged geographical location and abundance of natural resources, especially gas, Cabo Delgado has traditionally been known as the ‘Forgotten Cape’ (Forgotten Cape), which gives us an idea of the state of the region, characterised by limited development and an endemic lack of all kinds of infrastructure, creating the ideal breeding ground for the expansion of radical movements of any ideology that know how to exploit these deficiencies, something we have already seen in other African scenarios.

Cabo Delgado's gas reserves are the third largest in Africa, but at the same time, along with gas, the province is rich in rubies, precious woods, coal, phosphates and sapphires, which has attracted considerable foreign investment to exploit all these resources.

And it is precisely this indigenous wealth and the investments to exploit it that have been the main accelerators of instability, as the expectations of employment, income and progress that they created soon vanished, keeping the population in the same precarious condition while they watched others benefit from the riches of their lands, which led to the birth of the insurgent movement that has been exploited, as on so many other occasions, by jihadism.

While armed violence is not a new phenomenon in Cabo Delgado, as the province has been marked by recurrent conflicts throughout its history, even since pre-colonial times, the current insurgency, although it has historical roots, began in 2017.

Its evolution has been complex, marked by the radicalisation of local groups and their subsequent affiliation with international jihadist networks.

The conflict in Cabo Delgado is led by a group known locally as Ahlu Sunna Wal Jama'a (ASWJ), also known as al-Shabab in Mozambique, although it has no links to the Somali group of the same name. ASWJ was founded in 2007 by Salafist students dissatisfied with the Islamic authorities established in Mozambique. Its local fundamentalist preachers promised that sharia, or Islamic law, would bring equality and a fair distribution of wealth, a pattern we have seen in regions such as the Sahel and which inevitably resonated with a population marked by exclusion.

The motivations behind the formation of ASWJ and support for the insurgency are as diverse as they are familiar: land disputes and displacement due to the expansion of mineral extraction companies, endemic corruption, which led to the freezing of funds by donors and the cancellation of IMF programmes, directly affecting the living conditions of the population, lack of prospects and poverty, youth unemployment, which stands at 88% according to UNICEF, illicit trafficking with all that it entails... All the elements that we have so often seen converge and that facilitate the recruitment of young people who are ultimately only looking for a role model and some hope. In this case, it was the ASWJ that presented itself as an alternative promising justice and equality through Islamic law.

The current escalation of violence began in October 2017, when radicalised young Muslims, identified as ASWJ, launched their first successful attack on a local police station and army post in Mocímboa da Praia, a port city in Cabo Delgado.

During the first few years, the attacks spread to the coastal districts of Macomia and Palma, mainly inhabited by Kimwani or Makua ethnic groups. Ambushes on vehicles and beheadings quickly became an integral part of their tactics, expanding their territorial reach and attacking new cities.

The 2020-2021 period is considered the most intense period of terrorist activity. However, from June 2020 onwards, a new factor emerged: ASWJ attacks began to be claimed by the Islamic State franchise ISCAP (Islamic State Province of Central Africa), the same regional franchise that claimed attacks in the north-east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. A UN report from January 2020 already pointed out that the Somali branch of the Islamic State was conducting operations in both the DRC and Mozambique.

Although the operational relationship and direct material support of the ‘central Islamic State’ to the Mozambican insurgents are not fully proven, there is a clear ideological and declarative link, with ASWJ attacks regularly appearing in the Islamic State's propaganda bulletin, Al Naba. Around May 2022, jihadists in Cabo Delgado began referring to themselves as the Islamic State of Mozambique, nominally differentiating their activity from that of ISCAP and seeking to establish themselves as a province within the Islamic State structure. Since then, the brutality of the actions has only increased, a clear example being the campaign carried out between 2023 and 2024, dubbed by the jihadists themselves, ‘kill them wherever you find them,’ which surpassed the number of attacks carried out in the first months of 2024 to all those documented in 2023.

Since the beginning of July this year, a new wave of violence has displaced almost 60,000 people in two weeks, mainly in the district of Chiúre, the worst affected.

The violence in Cabo Delgado has triggered one of the most severe refugee crises in Africa. Since 2017, more than one million people have been forced to flee their homes. By June 2022, 946,508 people had been displaced to the southern region of the province and other areas of the country. Recurring waves of violence have forced some families to flee several times, seeking refuge in safer areas such as Pemba, Metuge and Montepuez. Recently, between 20 and 28 July 2025, attacks by armed groups displaced at least 46,667 people in the districts of Chiúre, Ancuabe and Muidumbe, with Chiúre being the most affected with more than 42,000 people uprooted, more than half of them children. The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) reported that almost 60,000 people fled Cabo Delgado in just two weeks in July 2025.

As we pointed out at the beginning of this article, this violence is mainly targeting Catholic communities in a clear attempt at ethnic/religious cleansing. However, the evolution of the situation and the succession of events should set off alarm bells, as what we might call the ‘Sahelisation’ of conflicts is also taking place in southern Africa, both in terms of the causes and the actors and tactics employed. If we do not find a way to stop this evolution, much sooner than we think, the situation in Africa will become unsustainable and we will have a major player whose ultimate aspiration is the disappearance of Europe as we know it today, with control over a continent that is key to our future. Time is running out.