On June 25 Mozambique celebrated 45 years of independence from Portugal that came as a result of a combination of factors including the fall of dictatorship in Lisbon through a military coup in 1974 that ended the country’s colonial conquest, and a decade-long liberation struggle led by Front for the Liberation of Mozambique .
Mozambique’s sacrifice for fellow liberation movements had consequences. Soon after independence, the country was plunged into a 16-year civil war that was largely instigated by white minority-ruled Rhodesia and apartheid South Africa.
The Mozambican authorities who had ignored the warning signs from locals for several years described the attack as an isolated incident and claimed to have the security situation under control. However, what began as relatively unsophisticated insurrection in 2017, where militants were primarily armed with machetes, has since transformed into a well-equipped and co-ordinated insurgency that has inflicted multiple casualties on the Mozambican security forces and innocent civilians.
The Mozambican government’s heavy-handed response, which has included mass dragnet arrests, the forced closure of mosques, the banning of media from entering Cabo Delgado and a general crackdown on civil society has done little to stem the violence. Despite operations by the Mozambique Defence Armed Forces, and the contracting of Russian, French and South African private military companies, ASWJ continues to strengthen and expand their operations into neighbouring Nampula and Niassa provinces.
Recently, South Africa’s minister of defence confirmed in a virtual parliamentary session that the intelligence community believes that the Mozambique insurgence is aIn dealing with the evolving peace and security situation in Mozambique, the SADC should deliberately prioritise sovereign security and human security with equal measure in order to combat the rise of violent extremism.
Boko Haram emerged as a local insurgency against the Nigerian state in 2009, has spread into the Lake Chad region and is now a major security threat in Chad, Cameroon and Niger. And in the Sahel, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb was able to take advantage of the 2012 Tuareg rebellion to gain a foothold in northern Mali and has since expanded their operational footprint into Burkina Faso, eastern Niger and other West African states.
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