2021-04-01 13:30:24
What's going on in Mozambique?
On the 24th of March an armed group of African Islamist militants, Ansar al-Sunna, invaded the port town of Palma located 25km (15mi) south of the Mozambique/Tanzanian border.
The group has been active in Mozambique for a decade with frequent raids on small towns. Recently, however, the group has been focussing on larger targets like Mozambican military bases and oil supply lines. Due to rampant poverty in northern Mozambique, they've been relatively successful in recruiting soldiers into their group by offering them salaries and other forms of compensation. Mozambique's army is unequipped, underfunded, and not trained to handle a group of this strength.
Speaking of underfunded, the South African National Defence Force and every branch underneath it, has seen numerous funding cuts in the last few years. As a result, the SANDF has not been able to patrol the Mozambican channel (Operation Copper) effectively and still hasn't intervened despite being the only capable force in the larger area. There are several South Africans trapped in Palma and other towns in the Cabo Delgado province that are under siege from the militants. It has been confirmed that at least one South African has been killed.
Several private military companies have stepped in, including the Russian Wagner Group and the South African Dyck Advisory Group (DAG).
Retired Colonel Lionel Dyck, CEO of DAG, noted that the recent attacks from al-Sunna have been more sophisticated with weapons not found in the Mozambican military arsenal (implying that weapons were imported from other neighbouring countries). When Dyck's group first got to Palma “there were bodies lying on the road. There were food trucks …with the drivers lying next to their vehicles without heads. There were any number of people being killed. On the first night, the (insurgents) were going house to house to kill selected people.”
He stated that DAG had evacuated about 300 people from the area since the fighting began, taking people to the Afungi airstrip in TOTAL’s (French gas and oil giant) Mozambique LNG construction site, with commercial aircraft chartered to take them from there.
DAG requested fuel for their helicopters for the evacuation attempts but TOTAL outright declined.
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