Mozambique at the forefront of ISIS expansion goals in Africa

Nahla Abdel Moneim

In recent times, ISIS has been able to expand its influence in Mozambique, taking advantage of the weakness of security and political grip in the country, combined with other social and economic factors, as the terrorist organization seeks to control the natural resources in the region in order to acquire a source of funding and a tool for strategic pressure.

Terrorism grows in Cabo Delgado

With the growth of ISIS in the country’s northern Cabo Delgado province, its control was linked to violent skirmishes with the villagers, which reached the level of beheadings and slaughtering to intimidate the youth to join the ranks of the group. ISIS is stationed next to the gas fields spread throughout the region, which represent a main support in attracting ISIS to Mozambique.

In July, the organization published on its media platforms and the social networking site Telegram a message urging its members to attack the mining and gas areas in Mozambique, as well as targeting those working in them, in order to create a disturbance that allows them to seize the area completely.

Expanision

In light of ISIS’s control, which is becoming sharper, the organization was able, through the use of boats, to impose its control in early September on coastal islands on the outskirts of Palma, where tourist resorts were an important source of income for the state. ISIS gunmen asked residents to leave the islands or else they would kill them.

Moreover, at the end of August, the organization was able to control a strategic port in the city of Mocímboa da Praia in the north, which played a pivotal role in ISIS easily seizing the islands in Palma, meaning that acquiring the islands was planned in depth.

Factors for ISIS’s rapid rise

The most important factor attracting ISIS is the weak security grip, which allowed the organization’s elements to spread throughout the region. In this regard, Ali Bakr, a researcher on terrorist movements at the Al-Ahram Center for Strategic and Political Studies, previously told the Reference that the defense and security systems in these regions in Africa are very fragile. He added that this variable constitutes the first reason for attracting the terrorist group to these areas and the intimidation of their citizens, in addition to the factors of poverty and political and social marginalization.

This is evidenced by the rapid rise of the organization since it announced its presence in the region for the first time in June 2018. Within only two years, it was able to impose its control over the influential northern regions and displace many of its residents.

Attractive wealth

However, ISIS’s control of the tourist islands casts a shadow over the organization’s desire to undermine the vital sources of income for the country in preparation for controlling its joints as a whole, as the offensive operations targeting mining and tourist sites will cause heavy economic losses for the authorities. The control of tourist cities mainly threatens the citizens of foreign countries and imposes a devastating isolation on the country.

It is clear from this that the organization is now using its expansion in the tourist areas as a multi-purpose strategy, whether economically or as a pressure card, as what its threat to the Mozambican islands was also implemented several months ago in the Maldives.

While Mozambique has a peculiarity in this context due to the multiplicity of its wealth that major countries covet, the emergence of ISIS was a facility for Russian oil companies to sign partnership contracts with the government to explore for gas, which raises questions about the possibility of international forces driving the terrorist group to thwart the deal or overburden it, considering that the current extremism is a form of neo-colonialism in a world that is rich in resources but perhaps poor in means.