MAPUTO, Mozambique
Security expert Rodrigues Lapucheque thinks that fear of reprisals may be preventing Tanzania taking more decisive action in combating the armed groups terrorising Cabo Delgado province in northern Mozambique.
“Tanzania began, at a later
moment, to have certain reservations, certain fears that when it entered
heavily [in the fight against the armed groups operating in Cabo Delgado],
these radical Al-Shabab movements could create reprisals, which could be
unpredictable,” Lapucheque, a university lecturer and colonel of Motorized
Infantry in the Mozambique Armed Defense Forces (FADM), told Lusa news agency
in an interview.
The fact that international
fighters who joined the insurgents in Cabo Delgado “regularly” cross Tanzania and
operate in Mozambican districts close to that country may raise fears among
leaders in Dar-es-Salam, Lapucheque explained.Rodrigues Lapucheque
“That’s why it was noted that
Tanzania was the one that had a lot of reservations about intervening
militarily in Mozambique, in Cabo Delgado,” under the Southern African
Development Community (SADC) military mission.
But inaction is not a safe
option either, because once chaos takes root in northern Mozambique, the armed
groups will expand their action to Tanzania as well, Lapucheque says.
This reading and the SADC and
Rwandan military intervention in Cabo Delgado, he continued, convinced
Dar-es-Salam to send a military contingent in support of Mozambican government
forces, albeit without the “weight” that Maputo might have expected, given the
historical and political ties between the two countries.
“It is not the intervention
that we would expect, we had hoped that it would be at the forefront,”stressed
that academic and FADM officer.
Rodrigues Lapucheque warned
that the apparent inertia of the Tanzanian authorities in stopping the flow of
fighters to Cabo Delgado may also be a result of an operational and logistical
inability to control the extensive border line between the two countries.
Lapucheque notes that
expectations regarding a more active role for Tanzania in the fight against
“radical Islamic jihadism” in northern Mozambique are fuelled by the fact that
that country has militarily supported the Mozambique Liberation Front (Frelimo)
in the fight against Portuguese colonialism, hosting the organisation’s
headquarters and training camps.
Cabo Delgado province, in
northern Mozambique, is rich in natural gas, but has been terrorized since 2017
by armed rebels, with some attacks claimed by the Islamic State extremist
group.
According to the International
Organisation for Migration (IOM), about 784,000 persons have been internally
displaced by the conflict, which has killed about 4,000, according to the ACLED
conflict registry project.
Since July 2021, an offensive
by government troops, with the support of Rwandan and later Southern African
Development Community (SADC) troops, has recovered a number of areas from rebel
control, but their flight has led to new attacks in districts through which
they have passed or taken up temporary refuge. - Lusa
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