Mozambique’s long-simmering insurgency came to the fore in tragic fashion last week when a local ISIS affiliate attacked Palma, a city near the northern border with Tanzania. Though exceptional in its sophistication and brutal outcome, the incident is just the latest in a growing list of targeted killings and attacks on state targets in the northeastern Cabo Delgada province, especially since 2020. The intensity of the violence is fueling concerns that Mozambique could serve as a doorway for Islamic State to establish a new territorial foothold in southeastern Africa.

Analysis

Upping the ante: the Palma attack

On March 24, Palma – a town of around 75,000 people – was attacked by a non-state armed group. The operation was highly sophisticated: it came from three different directions, most of the militants wore fake military uniforms to deceive local security forces, and it culminated in an ambush of foreign workers attempting to escape to their corporate facilities.

Now nearly a week later and the situation remains fluid, with reports of ongoing clashes between militants and security forces in Palma. The death toll is reported to be in the ‘dozens’; anecdotal sightings of corpses lying in the streets were reported by numerous witnesses, suggesting the possibility of a much higher final tally.

Though no local group has claimed responsibility at time of writing, the perpetrator is widely believed to be Ahlu-Sunnah Wa-Jama (ASWJ), or ‘al-Shabaab’ as it’s locally known, which is a local Islamist militant group that was absorbed into Islamic State’s Central Africa Province (ISCAP) in 2019. The Islamic State has claimed responsibility, declaring that 55 were killed in the attack; however, ISIS has been known to lay claim to attacks that it had very little operational impact on in the past. The nature of the relationship between ASWJ and Islamic State remains a matter of intense speculation, namely the degree of material assistance and whether it’s the local or global wing that’s calling the shots.

The attack will also have far-reaching effects in terms of migrant flows. According to the United Nation’s OCHA, some 43,600 residents of Cabo Delgado had already fled to Palma since the insurgency first broke out in 2017. Thousands of these migrants – already displaced and suffering severe deprivations – are now on the move once again as Palma itself has become unsafe.