The way the Mozambican government handled the vast LNG projects in Cabo Delgado – with its nebulous contracts and lack of community engagement – added fuel to an already volatile situation.
For example, TotalEnergies’ construction of the Afungi onshore LNG (liquified natural gas) park – an 18,000-hectare site twice the size of Paris – forced 557 families into resettlement camps. Crucially, the camps were not only a fraction of the size of displaced civilians’ land, but were situated inland, sealing off access to coasts and croplands.
Daniel Movitel, technical coordinator and founding member of Justica Ambiental, the Mozambican chapter of Friends of the Earth, says that more than 80 per cent of Cabo Delgado residents are subsistence fishers or farmers.
“Access to the sea, to land, is essential to livelihoods,” he tells the Telegraph over an encrypted call. “Any disruptions will cause major social issues. Palma’s gas project, amongst others, led to rampant land grabbing.”
The hasty withdrawal of TotalEnergies after the Palma attack then meant they failed to deliver promised compensation to half of the displaced families.
“Cabo Delgado is a socially volatile situation,” Mr Movitel explains. “The biggest investment in Africa is generating billions for foreigners, but none for the people – of course, this will feed instability.”
The government repeatedly rebuffed opportunities to focus on the needs of their people and prioritised short-term gains, says Mr Movitel.
“They chose to militarise the situation. In the post 9/11 world, it’s very easy to get sympathy and support for ‘extremism’ from Western countries, who have a very embedded narrative of terrorism in East Africa.”
Miners and mercenaries
Targeting impoverished regions is a well-documented strategy of religious extremists, and research has found that those experiencing extreme poverty are more susceptible to radicalisation.
According to the International Institute for Sustainable Development, LNG fails to offer a reliable route to economic development. Huge financial risks are likely to become a liability for the already destitute Mozambican government, while poorly managed community resettlement to develop LNG sites damages natural ecosystems and stifles tourism.
“The government has a bad track record of managing revenues from such projects,” says Tomas Queface, a security consultant at ACLED. “It never translates into wealth for the well-being of the population.”
Mr Queface believes it is the government’s responsibility to negotiate reasonable contracts that benefit the nation, not just foreign investors. “Total is a company, they’re going to want to make money. What we lack now is a proper strategy on how to use this money,” he says.
Filipe Nyusi, the Mozambican President, has refused to acknowledge the socioeconomic drivers of the conflict in Cabo Delgado and has instead doubled down on the extremism narrative.
Mr Nyusi has remained committed to countering the insurgency with force, even though it quickly became clear that the Mozambican army is no match for the highly capable insurgents.
“The army is using either Cold War equipment, or what they can manage to get from the Russians and Chinese,” says Peter Bofin, a senior research coordinator at The Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED).
In September 2019, Mr Nyusi hired 200 mercenaries from the Wagner Group to bolster counter-insurgency operations. But the Russian private Russian military company withdrew after just two months after suffering more than a dozen casualties. Besides lacking the experience to navigate dense jungles, Wagner described local forces as being “too undisciplined”.
