Independent security analyst Johann Smith warns that 'al-Shabaab
...
an Islamic infestation centering on Somalia...' or 'Ansar al-Sunnah' or 'Ahlu Sunnah Wal Jamo' (no one is sure what to call the attackers) is regrouping and that more assaults could occur soon. He suspects that foreigners could for the first time become targets of what has so far been an assault only on local security forces and citizens.
He also warns that, having failed to respond in a coherent way, including tackling root causes, Mozambique's government is about to hand over responsibility to a private security company. This could aggravate the problem.
One security source said the L6G security company, owned by Erik Prince, founder of the notorious Blackwater US private security company, is promising to flatten al-Shabaab in three months. This is in exchange for a hefty slice of oil and gas revenues when those large reserves come on stream sometime after 2023. The equally controversial Russian private security company Wagner is bidding against L6G for the contract, the source said.
Is Mozambique's apparent Islamist insurgency linked to Tanzania, Kenya and Somalia?
This is all happening against the background of a threat whose nature is not yet fully understood. It manifested itself dramatically on 5 October 2017 when 40 button men attacked the town of Mocímboa da Praia in Cabo Delgado, storming three police posts, killing two coppers and stealing guns. Fourteen of the attackers also died.
There have been 49 attacks to date involving Ahlu Sunnah Wal Jamo, according to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED). Other sources estimate the toll as over 200 deaths, more than half being civilians, and considerable destruction of houses and crops. After initially targeting security forces, the turbans turned on civilians. Several had their heads chopped off.
Jasmine Opperman of the Terrorism Research & Analysis Consortium more conservatively counts 47 attacks and 173 deaths but believes the phenomenon is underreported so the number of attacks could be over 50. Opperman is also cautious in describing the Cabo Delgado attacks as an 'Islamist insurgency' noting the lack of propaganda or claims of responsibility for attacks.
'Extremist religious interpretations ... remain one of several scenarios at play within an environment where organised crime syndicates have a deep-seated footprint as well as socio-economic frustrations,' she says.
There does seem to be a growing consensus that this is an Islamist insurgency. Smith, Mozambican researchers Sheik Saide Habibe, Salvador Forquilha and João Pereira, and Simone Haysom writing for the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime among others, characterise it as such.
Even Mozambique's government may be starting to acknowledge the problem. President Filipe Nyusi told the United Nations
...an organization conceived in the belief that we're just one big happy world, with the sort of results you'd expect from such nonsense...
General Assembly in September that Mozambique was counting on the collaboration of the international community to fight the menace as these 'criminals' were committing 'crimes of a global character', and because non-nationals were involved. This seemed to some like an oblique way of saying 'this is not ordinary crime'.