On March 24, Islamic State-affiliated insurgents launched an attack in Mozambique’s northern Cabo Delgado province, besieging expatriate workers of the nascent gas industry. Dozens, including at least one South African, died.
The attack on Palma, a dormitory town of expats working at the $20bn gas liquefaction plant nearby at Mocímboa da Praia, left the beheaded bodies of residents in the streets, two banks looted and 172 to 180 expats seeking refuge in the Amarula Hotel, while private helicopter gunships exchanged fire with more than 100 black-clad insurgents.
"We are the only game in town at the moment," Lionel Dyck, the head of SA private military company the Dyck Advisory Group (DAG), told the FM two days later. "The Mozambican army and police have gone for tea."
In Dyck’s telling of events, DAG received a report of a "big fight at Palma" at 9.40am on March 24.
That very day, a consortium led by French petrochemical giant Total had attempted to impose a 25km secure perimeter around the site of its gas liquefaction plant, which will process gas from an offshore reserve thought to be worth about $60bn. Yet the rebels penetrated the perimeter in a well-co-ordinated assault.
DAG was ordered to engage, but its choppers only had enough fuel for a one-way trip and just 3,000 rounds of ammunition because supplies were being diverted to the Mozambican air force, says Dyck.
"We managed to get some drums of fuel up to Vamizi Island nearby. We had very little ammunition and fuel, but built up during the day. When we got up overhead [above Palma], we could engage obvious targets: people running around in black pyjamas. Then we became aware of people writing in the sand ‘Help, help, help!’"
The expats trapped in the hotel later made a break for it in a convoy of 17 vehicles, but were ambushed. At least seven were reported killed, with others wounded or escaping into the bush.
Only seven vehicles made it to the beach for rescue by DAG.
But that would come later: Dyck’s Gazelle helicopters, loaded with machine guns and ammunition, had no space to rescue the stranded gas workers. His two search-and-rescue choppers would return to extract 20 people, six at a time. Under fire, his chopper crews suffered light injuries from shrapnel and ricochets.
On Tuesday, Dyck announced that, using a search-and-rescue helicopter covered by a gunship, DAG had rescued more than 230 people who’d fled the violence. DAG was, he said, still engaging insurgents in the area.
An information black hole
Total’s perimeter around Palma and the port, nominally defended by a joint police and military task force, is an information black hole. It’s been designated a "special operational theatre" run by the police — distinct from the rest of the combat theatre, which falls under the military.
But that could undercut the unified command that was promised when the military was put in charge of fighting the insurgency in January, warns US-based nonprofit the Armed Conflict & Event Data Location Project (Acled).
The conflict itself has been running since 2017, claiming the lives of about 2,660 people and displacing 700,000 — though the UN high commissioner for refugees warns this could rise to 1-million by June.
Civilians have borne the brunt of the civil war, accounting for more than 1,300 of those killed. And human rights NGO Amnesty International released a report last month claiming that all parties — insurgents, security forces and DAG — had committed war crimes against civilians.
Amnesty International claims, for example, that "during an attack on the town of Mocímboa in June 2020, DAG helicopters destroyed a hospital as they took aim at fighters hiding inside the facility". In response, Dyck has sent a team of lawyers from SA to investigate; they have yet to report back.
The civil war was given fresh impetus on March 1, when the US declared Ansar al-Sunna, an Islamic State-aligned insurgent group of about 3,500, to be a "foreign terrorist organisation" and its leader, Abu Yasir Hassan, a "specially designated global terrorist".
Much, however, is in doubt — even the identity of Hassan, a Tanzanian about 38-40 years old, also known as Yaseer Hassan or Abu Qasim.
We are the only game in town at the moment. The Mozambican army and police have gone for tea
— Lionel Dyck
According to Tanzanian newspaper The Citizen, Simon Sirro, the inspector-general of police in that country, believes Hassan to be dead.
Acled researcher Jasmine Opperman tells the FM that an Abu Yasir Hassan was operating in Mocímboa da Praia in 2013-2014 – but that he was linked to organised crime and not extremism, and that he hasn’t been seen in years. And the Institute for Security Studies’ Martin Ewi says flatly: "The guy we knew by that name was killed in 2018."
Opperman believes the US blacklisting of Ansar al-Sunna has "given the insurgency oxygen" by raising its status in the eyes of Islamic State, as well as disaffected locals. They’re aggrieved by their forced removal to make way for the gas projects, and their loss of income as apparatchiks from the ruling Frelimo party displace artisanal ruby miners.
It’s a view echoed by Mozambique expert Joseph Hanlon of the London School of Economics, who says the conflict is driven by the state’s killing of miners and the relocation of people to a resettlement camp where they can neither farm nor sell fish.
The insurgency is not at all jihadist, he argues — "though there are freelance foreign jihadis there".
Yet it’s a bone of contention. Veteran Mozambique News Agency journalist Paul Fauvet, for example, tells the FM that Cabo Delgado is far from being the poorest province in Mozambique, undercutting the grievance argument, at the least. He insists, instead, that the insurgency is purely motivated by an extremist ideology that took hold with the rise of Ansar al-Sunna, which was formed in about 2012 and turned to violence years later.
From about 2018, Islamic State became a significant component, says Ewi — hence the black flags DAG saw flying in Palma.
For his part, Joe van der Walt, CEO of risk management company Focus Group, says there is no "single driving force" behind the rebellion, but that neglect, security force brutality and broken promises of the benefits of development have all played a role.
Whatever Ansar al-Sunna’s make-up and motivation, US-based think-tank the Centre for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS) has questioned the wisdom of red-flagging the rebels.
With 840,000 people in desperate need of food aid in the three northern provinces of Mozambique, the US designation will complicate the humanitarian response, it says, "including by restricting the ability of humanitarian aid organisations to engage in essential dialogue with armed groups to receive security assurances".
It could also bedevil attempts to resolve the crisis peacefully, undermining President Filipe Nyusi’s offer of amnesty to repentant guerrillas and forcing neighbours such as SA — involved in tiptoeing de-escalation efforts — to assume a more hawkish attitude, the CSIS cautions.
Contracted out
In the decade since the discovery of offshore gas reserves — one of the world’s biggest finds, at 2.8-trillion to 5-trillion cubic metres — Mozambique has relied on private companies supporting its police for security.
Then Ansar al-Sunna started its offensive in October 2017.
After battling the rebels unsuccessfully for two years, Mozambique hired Russian outfit the Wagner Group — widely believed to be a front for Russia’s military. It started work in September 2019 but, with experience in the vastly different combat zones of eastern Ukraine and Syria, it was out of its depth. After several of its soldiers were killed in action, the company withdrew at the end of November 2019.
It was replaced by SA’s DAG, which boasts better bush war experience. But it, too, ran into difficulties, having to destroy one of its own Gazelle helicopters last April after it went down because of hydraulic failure. And while it successfully defended a wide perimeter around the regional capital of Pemba, rebel ambushes made the sole road to Mocímboa, five-and-a-half hours’ drive to the north, impassable.
DAG’s contract is due to expire on April 6. That means Mozambique’s security forces could be without aerial intelligence, unless DAG’s choppers are swiftly replaced by reconditioned, Ukrainian-crewed Mi-17s and Mi-24s (these briefly saw action at Palma, says Dyck), and Mozambican-crewed Gazelles bought from SA arms firm Paramount Group.
Though the US recently deployed a small team of Green Berets to the area, they’re only there to train Mozambican marines. The FM has, however, been reliably informed that the US state department has been quietly recruiting SA advisers with knowledge of the region to walk foot patrols in the conflict zone. (The department had not responded to queries at the time of going to press.)
With between 30 and 70 expats still missing at the time of going to press, and with Total having suspended operations, the war in Mozambique has become significantly more dangerous.
"Think Niger Delta," says Hanlon, referring to Nigeria’s long-running petrochemical-fuelled insurgency. "This is going to go on for years."
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