ISIS regrouping in Mozambique (Southern Africa).

There have been reports of ISIS-connected groups being active in northern Mozambique since at least 2017.

Despite atrocities such as the mass beheading of local children, this seems to have made little impact on global political reporting and interests.
www.bbc.com...

Now, finally a meeting has been set up by the 16 countries of the South African Development Community (SADC) following the insurgency attacks on Palma in Cabo Delgado, nothern Mozambique:

SADC to convene Extraordinary Double Troika Summit to deliberate on measures to address terrorism in Mozambique 6th April, 2021, Gaborone, Botswana - The Southern African Development Community (SADC) will on Thursday, 8th April 2021, convene an Extraordinary Double Troika Summit, in Maputo, Mozambique, to deliberate on measures to address terrorism in the Republic of Mozambique. SADC is deeply concerned about the continued terrorist attacks in Cabo Delgado, especially for the lives and welfare of the residents who continue to suffer from the atrocious, brutal and indiscriminate assaults. Reacting to the recent terrorist attacks on the town of Palma, in Mozambique, H.E. President Dr. Mokgweetsi Eric Keabetswe Masisi, of the Republic of Botswana, and Chairperson of the Organ on Politics, Defence and Security Cooperation said, “that the attacks in Mozambique were an affront to peace and security, not only in Mozambique, but also in the region and the international community as a whole.

www.sadc.int...

So, what happened at Palma, that finally shook "the neighbors" and possibly the world awake?
It's a long story but this is how it began:

The insurgency in Cabo Delgado, Mozambique, began in 2017 and intensified in 2020. Islamist rebels carried out massacres in April and November. From 5–11 August, rebels reportedly associated with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) captured the city of Mocímboa da Praia during an offensive. The Islamic State's Central Africa Province (IS-CAP) declared Mocímboa da Praia its capital, and held it into 2021. By early March 2021, the rebels had begun to besiege the town of Palma. The rebels beheaded civilians from nearby villages, as well as people who were trying to flee the town. On 7 March, the rebels took the border post at Nonje at the border with Tanzania on the Ruvuma River, isolating Palma from the rest of Mozambique. The civilians who remained in Palma faced starvation. ACLED analyst Jasmine Opperman argued that an assault on Palma was expected, and that security experts had warned foreign embassies and the Mozambican government that the militants were planning an attack, only to be ignored. Opperman later tweeted "Why in God's name was no action taken in response to early warning intelligence. It's a disgrace"

en.wikipedia.org...
There's many more articles, please research yourselves, also on how Tanzania first refused the refugees, prompting a UN warning.
www.aljazeera.com...

For more commentary on ISIS, the Battle of Palma in Cabo Delgado and its aftermath, here's US veteran, Africa analyst and vlogger Chris Wyatt.


For those interested specifically in South Africa, and whether this insurgency will be on our doorstep next, thus adding to our already considerable woes:

a reply to: halfoldman

Who didn't see that coming?

Back to the business of war boyz!

I wonder what Mozambique did to annoy the CIA that led to this

I disagree with some opinions in my OP.
The problem lies with a far-left press who are not interested critiquing Islamism, or any "non-Western ideology" unless they can blame it all on colonialism or some notion of "neo-colonialist capitalism".

Even in the last week the insurgency in the leftist SA press is all the fault of economic issues caused by what they essentially believe is "white monopoly capitalism", and not the radical beliefs held by the insurgents.

Maybe the People's Republic of China should be called in to sort it out.
After all they have a great reputation of nipping Islamic insurgency in the bud.
But that's another thing that causes a leftist brain to freeze in silence.
The fact that the communists are persecuting the Muslim Uighurs en masse.
Oh no that's not happening, it's just Western propaganda.

Yeah, so due to a bunch of left-wing idiots in the press and academies, the oppression of millions just doesn't matter.
But we had that before in the 1950's-1980's, when Western lefties refused to acknowledge the atrocities of communism, not even the Killing Fields of Cambodia.

a reply to: halfoldman

ISIS, like communism et al is an opportunistic infection.

They are a disease.

a reply to: halfoldman
Well, ol Joe was tellin me its not Western propaganda, its just silly little cultural differences...dont judge

Thinking conspiracy:

Maybe the People's Republic of China should be called in to sort it out. After all they have a great reputation of nipping Islamic insurgency in the bud.

Well currently that's the only outside army the majority of these socialist-leaning countries would trust.

And what a nice perch in Africa that would be for the People's Liberation Army.

Although I'm sure SADC will first try to clear it up themselves, with the best of old mercenaries and dogs of war.

But if that won't hold it back, I see them approaching China's PLA and "expertise" before any Western army.
Maybe that's the plan all along?
Speculation, but my view at the moment.

thanks for sharing

I have heard nothing of this

needless to say the media isn't reporting this much.

Perhaps a bit dated considering recent proceedings.
The South African investigative program Carte Blanche episode: The Ignored War: Islamic State in Southern Africa?



The YouTube description from September 2020 reads:

A dark shadow has stealthily crept over the dream-holiday destination of Cabo Delgado province in northern Mozambique over the last three years. An estimated 1,500 people have been killed and 200,000 displaced in skirmishes between security forces, civilians and the Islamist militant group Ansar al-Sunna. Carte Blanche investigates whether the insurgency marks the Islamic State gaining a foothold in Southern Africa, or whether it’s just local discontent exploited for extremist propaganda.

LOL, South Africa should use the resources that it has to intervene in Mozambique.
What resources might that be?
The ANC have robbed us virtually bankrupt.
The SANDF? Good luck with that.

Ultimately a bizarre newspeak narrative that a local insurgency has sprung up against the locals.
Yeah, we're not getting a fair piece of the pie, so let's kick our own butts!
Always the excuse for Marxist and Islamic radical apologists.
No, this insurgency is not local, and while there are issues of poverty to be addressed, the insurgency is clearly multi-national (as ISIS operates), while thousands of locals have fled.

It's about as "local" as the Nazi occupation of Paris was "French".
It's not a cult or an ideology that's going to stay geographically contained whatsoever.

Well I see it as the classic push-down pop-up effect.
You push ISIS down over here, and it pops up over there.
Maybe some powers would actually prefer to keep it there.
Because if you push it down there - whoops, who knows where it's gonna pop up next?
At least there you know where it is.

My momma didn't say so, but I always thought geopolitics is like a big whoopee cushion.

originally posted by: halfoldman

mass beheading of local children

:sad noises:

Can't think of any evil that tops that, seriously...

At this point, calling them "monsters" is an insult to monsters...

a reply to: halfoldman

Looking at it from a world away, I can't really blame South Africa for being a tad bit concerned.

They've their own issue to deal with, and have no need for outside agitation making things worse.

MHO, of course.

I've friends in South Africa. I've been urging them to get out...but they're stubborn. Oddly enough, one was ANC, the other Africaaner...

They aren't friends, but they aren't enemies anymore, either. They shed blood for SA, I doubt not that they're willing to do so again.

Not sure I would want to tackle SADF boys and girls...like the IDF, they're bad ass.

a reply to: seagull
Yip, but just a footnote, the previous SADF and the current SANDF are not the same.
Long histories, and don't want to devalue everybody in the SANDF necessarily.

'Nuff said on that for now without going into specific SA politics and issues.

Beheading children?? 😐

FFS I really wish I didn't click here 😠

a reply to: FinallyAwake

Welcome to the wonderful world of ISIS.

They've given a black eye to the Islamic world that will be decades, if not longer, in healing. Not that they give a flyin' hashtag.

originally posted by: seagull
a reply to: FinallyAwake

Welcome to the wonderful world of ISIS.

They've given a black eye to the Islamic world that will be decades, if not longer, in healing. Not that they give a flyin' hashtag.

I'm not sure anything will be healed, ever 😔

a reply to: FinallyAwake

At this point it is very hard to see it happening... Have to agree with that.

But, eventually, a reformation will occur, or so it's to be hoped.

Yeah been reading about this but it's not making the TV news as they purposely ignore anything and I mean anything going on in Southern Africa since 1994 unless a couple of Boers murder a worker which they like to play up big lefty style. Totally prejudiced BBC nonsense.

However this current ISIS stuff has been making big news in the Telegraph who have been reporting on it plenty over the past fortnight.

Sounds like the southern Christian part of Mozambique is the richer part where things have booming over the past decade, while the northern Islamic part has been neglected even though it's diamond and natural gas rich. Now ISIS comes in.

Been considering all and being honest and realistic isn't this just the same old same old in the region?

Was thinking about the Jamieson raid into Transvaal backed by some mining interest and outside powers. Is this not just the same thing 2021 style?

From the Telegraph www.telegraph.co.uk...

"It was the stuff of nightmares. Hundreds of heavily armed terrorists take over an entire town, law and order collapses, and civilians are left to fend for themselves as masked psychopaths slaughter with impunity.

Last week’s assault on the Mozambican town of Palma shocked the world. But Mozambique’s insurgency has been growing in power and violence for nearly four years - to the horror of those charged with combating it.

“These guys are different. What they do to the people they capture and kill I have never seen anywhere in Africa, and I have been in a lot of places in Africa,” said Lionel Dyck, the Zimbabwean mercenary whose private security firm was hired by the Mozambican government last year.



“When you mutilate people after you kill them, you cut their bodies in half, you skin them, you cut their heads off and then you cut their limbs off…the brutality is unbelievable,” he said.

Col Dyck, a gimlet-eyed former Rhodesian army officer who has been in and out of wars in Africa since the 1970s, is not a man given to hyperbole.

His remarks match exactly with videos of the aftermath of recent attacks in Cabo Delgado viewed by The Telegraph.

Who are the people wreaking such terror? And what do they want?

The insurgents in Mozambique’s remote Cabo Delgado province are often referred to simply as “mysterious". ”More ambitious descriptions are “Islamist” or “Islamic State linked”.

But the internal mechanics of the group is opaque.

When the United States designated the movement as a terrorist organisation on March 10, it could only name only one individual as a known member: Abu Yasir Hassan, a Tanzanian cleric thought to lead it.

The truth is, the uprising in Mozambique is not just unlike almost any other African guerrilla war Col Dyck has seen. It is also unlike most other Islamist insurgencies Western militaries have grown accustomed to fighting.

The insurgency in Cabo Delgado is usually dated to 5 October 2017, when 30 youths armed with machetes descended on the police station in the coastal town of Mocimboa da Praia, slaughtered the occupants, and urged the locals to follow sharia law.



But academic researchers believe the movement began at least ten years earlier, with the emergence of an enigmatic sect that clashed with both the established local Sufis and the Gulf-funded Wahabbi Muslim leaders in the area.

Eric Morier-Genoud of Queen’s University Belfast has traced the origins of the sect to a preacher called Sualehe Rafayel, who in 2007 returned home to Cabo Delgado after several years in neighbouring Tanzania.

The group he founded set up mosques across the Cabo Delgado region and gained a reputation for rejecting the secular state, encouraging members to keep children out of school, and following unorthodox religious practices like keeping shoes on inside the mosque.

Some observers believe the group was linked to followers of Aboud Rogo Mohammed, a radical Kenyan cleric who was killed in mysterious circumstances in 2012. For a while, they seemed content to withdraw from what they viewed as an impious society rather than confront it.

But over the next several years, tensions with both established Muslim leaders and the state grew following clumsy attempts to repress the sect.


Mozambique's growing insurgency



In 2016, followers of the group, known to locals as Al Sunnah wa Jama’ah (people of the Sunnah community) or Al Shabaab (“the youth”, no relation to the Somali militant group of the same name) clashed with police during a protest against the sale of alcohol.

Around the same time, it is thought to have extended its access to man power, money and weapons by allying with artisanal miners, illicit traders and organised crime groups who were forced out of business by their controversial eviction from a rich ruby field to make way for a legal mine.

It is that canny exploitation of local economic grievances and existing corruption that is thought to have allowed the terrorists to rapidly expand since their turn to open violence in 2017."

A little more as the Telegraph usually charge.

Even the Russian merc's are legging it!



"Since then, they have steadily expanded their arsenal of weapons through successful raids on Mozambican police and military units. They recently began using RPGs and mortars, to the surprise of Col Dyck’s mercenaries.

The insurgents have also expanded their international links and become markedly more professional soldiers. In 2019, a force of Russian mercenaries from the Wagner group quit the country after suffering deadly ambushes.

There is evidence that some members have been trained in eastern Congo or even Somalia. Col Dyck says he has intelligence about South African extremists, some with military experience, who have travelled to join the group. In 2019, it declared allegiance to Islamic State.

That does not mean the outfit has a great deal of popular support however.

About a 700,000 people have been internally displaced by the conflict as they seek refuge from the barbarity of the insurgents. As the countryside empties, food insecurity has surged; army-escorted supply convoys have come under attack; and a shortage of potable water has fuelled a cholera outbreak.

Last month Amnesty International accused the insurgents, the Mozambican government, and the Dyck Advisory Group of war crimes. DAG strongly denies the allegations and says it is considering legal action.

“Ninety percent of them are probably local recruits, around a very small hard core of real committed Islamists,” said Alex Vines, the head of the Africa program at Chatham House and a veteran Mozambique watcher.

“Why was Palma a target? There are not many rich targets left, and loot and food and redistribution of goodies is important because I am sure religion is not the primary motivation for many of their fighters,” he added. That is especially important when you have alienated so many locals, he added.

Nor should its power be exaggerated. There is no evidence of links with Islamic State's core movement in Syria and Iraq, and unlike Daesh ASJW has not declared jihad on the international order or specifically targeted foreigners. The black banner of IS is most likely a "flag of convenience" meant to intimidate enemies.

Their area of operations is also isolated from other Islamist uprisings in Somalia or the Sahel, and a clampdown last year by Tanzanian security forces has impacted its ability to use that country as a rear area.

And since Col Dyck’s small force of 18 veteran helicopter-borne mercenaries deployed a year ago, the militants have been pushed back from threatening the provincial capital of Pemba."