By clothing-bag, 09/03/2023

MozambiqueCabo Delgado: those displaced by jihadism

To understand the origin of the conflict that hits Cabo Delgado with fire and bullets, we have to go back some twenty years ago when Islam with a Wahabi interpretation, sponsored with huge amounts of petrodollars and promoted by Saudi Arabia, was gradually being introduced throughout the traditionally Muslim east coast of Africa. This is how Fernando Lima, director of the Savana newspaper and the Mediafax media portal, one of the rare independent publications in Mozambique, explains it. From the garden of his newspaper in Maputo, the capital of Mozambique, while finishing a coffee, the journalist shares his perspective on the origins of the conflict:

“African Islam, more tolerant and open, has always been connected with Sufi traditions and, on the other hand, the Wahhabi faithful do not accept Islamic fraternities, reject and condemn the most spiritual interpretations, and justify the use of violence to achieve their political goals. Little by little, the imposition of his radicalizing ideology will infiltrate the mosques and the Mwaní populations of the north coast of Mozambique under the watchful supervision of ideologues linked to the armed Islamist group ISCA (Islamic State in Central Africa) and the Islamic Congress, a movement religious that is imposing the Wahhabi narrative through intimidation and checkbooks. It benefits from a social reality of extreme poverty”.

According to the UN, Mozambique is in the sad ranking of the ten most impoverished countries in the world and Cabo Delgado is the province with the highest rates in the country. "Despite being the richest in terms of natural resources, the creation of any public policy for the well-being and redistribution of wealth is not in sight, and it visibly leans towards an elitist minority of corrupt people linked to power and managers of the extractive multinationals that operate in the region within the framework of global exclusionary capitalism. Thus, the population is reduced to poverty and young people without a future, being gradually displaced from their fishing communities and productive lands”, Lima values.

Before finishing the interview, the director of Diario Savana expresses his concern for press freedom, whose precarious situation has been denounced by Amnesty International. The government prohibits the media from reporting current political and social conditions in these districts, and in this context has harassed, intimidated, detained, and imprisoned journalists for reporting on the conflict in Cabo Delgado. The organization has also received disturbing reports of human rights abuses committed by the entities charged with protecting communities: the police and the army.

From Pemba, the capital of Cabo Delgado

Pemba, a city where practically the entire population is Muslim, lives mainly from traditional subsistence fishing. In the last ten years, the activity of multi-million dollar macro projects such as the exploration of the LNG liquid gas reserves of the French multinational Total, the largest investment in Africa in this sector with a budget of 20,000 million euros, the extraction of minerals precious stones or large coal reserves, have been implemented in the territory excluding the population, already marginalized, and has sown suspicion and rejection of the industry by failing to see any agreement between corporations, subcontractors and the State in order to promote and promote the integral development of the region.

Father Eduardo Roca receives in his parish in the neighborhood of Mahate. A Spanish diocesan missionary who has lived in Pemba for eleven years, he is one of those silent heroes capable of catalyzing community social work and a very well articulated interreligious dialogue for Peace, with Christian and Muslim volunteers present in all the neighborhoods, who from the humanitarian crisis collaborate and develop various solidarity projects with funding from organizations such as Cáritas, Norwegian Development Aid or the Portuguese Helpo. F6 F8

A great connoisseur of local reality, Roca recounts how in 2012 social peace began to go wrong with the recruitment of young people. “Young people began to disappear and leave the city with scholarships to study the Koran in some madrasa, without even mentioning to their relatives where they were going. And they didn't worry much either, because the situation of so much misery makes it possible to migrate due to the imperative of survival. Even less the governor, who ignored this fact, claiming that they were just a group of young rebels who were upset.

In 2015, fundamentalism experiments in the city with the intention of demanding what it considers to be the “true” Islam, and seeing how the government and society react. “From one day to the next, all the girls and women start coming out dressed in nikabs, with all their faces covered except for their eyes. They stop the activity every Friday. They prohibit children and young people from going to public school so that they can train in their madrasas”.

Father Eduardo remembers that this situation lasts for a few months. “It is heard that there are hundreds of young people training in paramilitary camps further north, in Moçímboa da Praia, and in the jungles of neighboring Tanzania. Nor this time the governor of Cabo Delgado, alerted to this event, gives it any importance. Everything changes at the end of 2015. An anecdote transcends when a woman dressed in a nikab enters the provincial hospital and steals a baby. "They saw her leave but no one knew who she was." This event, together with the reflection that the State itself was having at that time, caused the local government to completely prohibit the use of this garment and began to take measures against the radicalization that was being tested in society. But it was too late.

It is then that many young people from Pemba move to Moçímboa da Praia, some 150 km further north, and become part of the jihadist groups. Little by little, young people without work and no purpose in life find a way there. And in 2017 they began their first attacks. Why in Mocimboa? Because, according to the words of Father Eduardo, they consider it their traditional Caliphate.

And he goes on to narrate how he experienced firsthand one of the most violent episodes unleashed in Pemba. “The government's management was very brutal at the beginning. In 2017 there was a manhunt for anyone with or suspected of having a connection to a terrorist. Whole families, with women and children, were taken away and imprisoned and tortured to see if they could get any information. They searched all the houses looking for weapons. There was a terrible moment and a lot of fear and confusion among the Muslim population. These actions did not stop the attacks but rather they spread more and more. In 2020 they reached Quissanga, just 40 km from Pemba, burning all the villages in the region. It was when the first strong wave of refugees arrived in the city. Hundreds of ships reaching their shores with thousands of people fleeing, especially women and children.

Faced with this expanding phenomenon, the government greased its war machine and reacted by sending police, military and 160 Russian and South African mercenaries. Although they stopped the advance by attacking rebel bases and causing large numbers of casualties among insurgents and civilians used as human shields, even today little is known about the fighting and the reality on the ground. In mid-July the government announced the arrival of a 1,000-strong Rwandan military contingent, and together with the Mozambique armed forces they recaptured the port city of Moçímboa da Praia in early August. To avoid casualties, it appears that many insurgents have retreated to the jungles where they are most effective in carrying out guerrilla attacks against coastal and inland areas.

It is in Pemba that Shaykh Bacar S. is found, a spiritual teacher of the Sufi brotherhood of Moçímboa da Praia who had to flee and seek refuge with his family. Shortly before the violence organized by the jihadists broke out, he and his cousin Sualé M., also an imam, led religious services in three mosques. He lived from within how violent extremism was brewing, how young people entered their mosques with machetes to put pressure on the population present in prayer. He participated in religious debates where both childhood friends and fundamentalist imams, some from foreign countries, tried to influence him in the ideological and rhetorical change that he had to carry out with the purpose of enrolling him in their ranks for indoctrination, aimed at continuing to add members. to his cause.

He says that the debates turned into discussions, and the discussion turned into a threat. His opposition to the demands of members of the Islamic Congress and his refusal to embrace the imposition of Sharia led to his marginalization. Every night, for four long months, he had to spend it hidden in the jungle. Jihadists, the same friends he grew up with, would often show up at his home to intimidate and, he says, execute him. When violence broke out in Moçímboa da Praia, during the second attack on the city, he escaped with his family on a boat until they reached Paquitequete beach in Pemba as yet another internally displaced person. But his personal tragedy does not end here, but worsens when a little over a year ago he is kidnapped by the government intelligence service for three days. Under the magnifying glass of the State, the suspicion of being a member of the terrorist group Al Shabab - as the insurgency is called locally, with no link to the Somali group of the same name - hangs over him. And they pressure you. And they purposefully coerce you into releasing information.

Right now it is one of the main communication bridges between the government and the insurgents to reach a hypothetical peace agreement. On his mobile phone he has the contacts of those former childhood companions that he left behind in Moçímboa, and some of them are leading the terrorist group, acting as interlocutors. To do this, they must travel some 150 km from Moçímboa and thus obtain the services of the telemarketers, with communications now cut off in the occupied territories. For the moment, it seems that the dialogue is not bearing fruit. From Maputo it does not seem that they are willing to give up.

The Sheikh explains that jihadism has currently been subdivided into three armed groups and they are having skirmishes between them. The financing of these groups comes from the control of certain natural resources -gold and ruby ​​deposits, noble woods and coal and hydrocarbon reserves-, from human trafficking -kidnapping of women for forced prostitution, child slaves, child soldiers and trafficking of organs-, and the transit of drug trafficking networks -ephedrine, heroin and designer drugs- through its ports, arriving from the Indian Ocean and following the south coast towards South Africa or towards Mombasa, Kenya. They have also looted all the banks where they have passed. Weapons, uniforms and other military equipment have been obtained from barracks and military bases or police stations after being attacked and abandoned in despair by members of the security forces, the same ones who always arrived late in the places vandalized by the militias.

It is there that hundreds of children between the ages of 7 and 15 are kidnapped and forcibly recruited to take an assault rifle and continue to commit massacres in other towns and villages. “If they refuse, they fast for three days. They become addicted to drugs that distort reality and make them commit atrocities without even questioning the most basic human values”, reports Sheikh Bacar. And he continues: "other young people receive between 4,000 and 8,000 meticals (50 and 100 euros) from the main indigenous extremist faction Ansar al-Sunna and in exchange they are asked to join the insurgency."

The jihadists are now asking, with this dialogue that exists with the government, for control of the Moçímboa region under Sharia, Islamic law, and to obtain part of the profits from the French multinational Total and the gas satellite companies smoothie. In exchange, they will allow government institutions, the ones they decide, to be there.

These are unacceptable and non-negotiable conditions on the part of the State, which little by little, and now with foreign military support, is gaining ground in this war.

Waves of violence, waves of displaced persons

It is known that the population of the city of Pemba has doubled as a result of the massive arrival of displaced persons, from 150 to 300 thousand people. According to the latest UNHCR report, more than 732,000 people have been forced to flee their homes and seek refuge in Cabo Delgado. Regarding fatalities, according to the independent conflict observatory of Mozambique Cabo Ligado -constituted by Mediafax, ACLED and Zitamar News-, from October 2017 to July 2021 there have been 3,218 reported deaths due to organized political violence and 1,471 deaths due to civilian objectives. . Data on hundreds of missing persons are not included.

The parish of San Carlos de Lwanga headed by Father Eduardo in the Mahate neighborhood, was the first mission to respond to the crisis in October 2017 when there was the first large wave of refugees from Moçímboa da Praia and surrounding villages . Then the health commission, Cáritas, UNHCR, the WFP -World Food Program- and the Portuguese NGO Helpo were launched to be able to supply the basic emergency needs of food, blankets and tarpaulins to shelter hundreds of families, made up of mostly by women and children.

Eduardo Roca describes the second large wave of displaced persons, which arrived in March 2020, when the nearby town of Quissanga was attacked by Islamist militiamen and set on fire. “The smoke screens of the city could be seen from here, 40 km away”, leaving it deserted after forcing its people to flee to the islands that caress the coast or to the sea, in traditional sailing boats overcrowded to the brim , in a risky and extended journey in time.

Something similar happened during the attack on the city of Palma in March 2021. “Then the third big wave is unleashed, which once again fills Paquitequete beach with the daily arrival of more than 3,000 displaced people in small boats of fishes after spending days or weeks at sea.

Father Thiago, from the Mary Help of Christians Church in the center of Pemba and coordinator of the Cáritas aid program, tells me how every day, since the beginning of barbarism, boats arrive at this beach and many people die on the way . “Boats for ten people are crowded with fifty. Some sink; others are sunk by terrorists who have maritime control”.

And I can attest to it myself. It's two in the afternoon and from a hill on the Pemba coast I see three boats full of people and their bundles, 157 according to Ilda, a local administration worker linked to the reception of displaced people. With a high police presence, the authorities inspect one by one the passengers who gradually approach the reception and registration facilities. Malnourished, sick, injured and with serious psychological problems, when they arrive at the beach they are greeted with hot food that some women cook on the sand, and three others, one of them with a notebook in her hand, record their names, surnames and place of origin. They are representatives of the authority that each neighborhood has, and this information is later transferred to the request of the local governor so that they can obtain the status of displaced persons and therefore be able to receive humanitarian aid.

In the neighborhood of Paquitequete, located on the beach of the same name, a woman displaced from Macomia welcomed along with her six children by relatives who reside in this enclave —perhaps the poorest in the city of Pemba— desperately tells that her husband He has gone “maluco”, literally crazy, and he doesn't even want to leave his shack. She witnessed how the insurgents killed his parents by burning them alive in their hut made of cane and palm leaves.

Displaced people, when they do not have a family member or cannot find a supportive neighbor in Pemba to give them refuge, are accommodated in the new settlements that the government is creating as villages. And despite the extreme poverty in which the citizens themselves live, more than 150,000 people have found refuge in this city-refuge. In fact, more than a city, from a bird's eye view it looks like a mosaic of ghettos joined together by a main paved road. Walking through its dusty neighborhoods, a priori there is no difference between the natives and those who were able to escape death. Only when you start visiting the neighborhoods and entering their houses is it when you discover the social drama they are going through.

Ibrahim has welcomed twenty-one people into his home, without any relation, and he has had to support them out of pocket for months. Initially, he had the institutional promise that each month he would receive 4,000 meticals, about 50 euros in exchange, to be able to pay for a 25-kg sack of rice, a couple of liters of oil, and a piece of bar soap. You have not yet seen the payment and the situation has become untenable. Like him, many other families live with the uncertainty of their immediate future, and local corruption networks have the answer. The United Nations WFP —World Food Program— is giving food vouchers to displaced families. Subject to the demands of the State, like all international humanitarian aid agencies and organizations, the WFP has left its distribution in the hands of the political leaders of each neighbourhood, which has fostered a spiral of corruption. The authorities themselves, who in turn live in absolute precariousness, manage these vouchers and demand from the displaced, under the threat of not granting them the following month, part of the basic products they are going to buy with them. Father Eduardo, in view of the numerous complaints he received from displaced families, victims of these bribes, publicly denounced two of these leaders, and for this reason he received numerous threats. The amount of these food vouchers is equivalent to about 50 euros, and it is assumed that this budget should be able to cover the basic nutritional needs of large family groups of between 15 and 50 displaced people who live crowded under plastic tents or shacks with zinc roofs. that they have set up in the patios of the property, among the other huts where their hosts stay. Obviously, everyone goes hungry and needs other solidarity aid to survive, which does not always arrive. They eat once a day, a bowl of rice becomes a luxury, and their diet consists of a dish known locally as chima: a pot of water is boiled, and white corn flour is added to form a puree. It becomes a matahambre which leads to acute malnutrition in many children. In addition, as Eduardo Roca tells me, there is a marketing with food vouchers. They can be bought on the black market at half price, for about 2,000 meticales, and citizens of Pemba go to commercial establishments with them to make their purchases, without any control, to the detriment of those to whom it is directed.

Walking around, you can see how many stores have a sign at their entrance announcing that checks are cashed for food, and price inflation is through the roof. Women with buckets of water walk the dusty and filthy roads to the drinking water fountains in their suburbs, which are also paid on the spot to a mayor of the municipal government. This unfortunate reality of shacks, hunger and extreme misery is at odds with the hotels. luxury, once the banner of growing tourism, which are lined up in front of the most well-kept, beautiful and extensive beach on the Pemba peninsula. It is common knowledge that with the influence and corrupt involvement of investing political and military establishments, a few of the party in power are now taking a slice of the lucrative pie that humanitarian aid brings with it. Hundreds of international aid workers and Western military instructors stay in their hotels, paying for one night what a local worker can earn in two months. That is why they have not allowed the avalanches of displaced people who come to their shores to disembark on this strip of coral sand, locating the reception activity on the beach of the adjacent and marginal neighborhood of Paquitequete.

In these tormented lands, life has a meager value and a copious price. A recurring complaint in each family of displaced persons that I visit is that the staff of hospitals and public medical centers give preference to patients with economic capacity to face a visit or medical intervention and, therefore, obtaining medical prescriptions becomes a real problem. calvary. When families cannot afford treatment, whether or not they are displaced, they are subjected to the suffering and, sometimes, the loss of their loved one. If they are lucky, they will be able to confront adversity through the help offered by NGOs, the Church and other organizations that are generally overwhelmed by the magnitude of the need and the insufficient funds they have.

All the families have deceased and forced disappearances as a result of the armed conflict, and have experienced situations of extreme violence. I accompany a group of young university students organized to give psychosocial support to displaced people with traumatic experiences under the umbrella of the Norwegian Cooperation Agency and the Catholic Church in Pemba. In one of its offices, with a presence in each neighborhood, the volunteers form groups arranged in a circle by gender and age. The girls and boys, the largest group, receive encouragement from some motivated entertainers who activate the smile and participation of all with their games and songs. The group of men is currently focused on issues of a more technical nature, advocating to overcome their needs and the barriers they have to break to accept and overcome —them and their families— their condition of vulnerability and exclusion. The one for women, which is divided into two subgroups, is dealing with the grieving process, the anguish marked by recent traumatic memories. The woman who feels brave enough to express her personal experience takes a seat in the center and lets her feelings of pain flow. One of them, already advanced in years, shares her experience within the chaos that occurred in her village. The smoke from the burning huts, the arbitrary executions, shots and machetes, the screams of panic, runs in disarray, and in flight, bumping into dying relatives and neighbors. Her eldest daughter and her elderly husband had been murdered in cold blood by young terrorists, and she continues to fear what might have happened to other loved ones from whom she has received no sign of life.

Learning to live with it is the daily bread of all these victims of jihadist barbarism, of poverty in its maximum expression, of institutional oblivion.

After finishing her testimony, one of the women dares to pick up a drum, and with her hands beats a happy rhythm that the others in the group follow with songs and claps. Some go out to dance with her to encourage her spirits, to make her feel the human warmth and share the implicit feeling of complicity.

Metuge Internally Displaced Persons Camp

Leaving the Pemba peninsula and riding in a pick-up together with a Caritas volunteer, we headed along a paved road towards Metuge. About twenty-five kilometers later we arrive at the Mieze military checkpoint, before continuing the remaining twenty along a dirt road in poor condition that is impassable for road traffic during the rainy season. At the entrance to the village of Metuge we pass through another checkpoint, this one a police one, and further north, where the urban limits end, we come across a couple of military trucks packed with young soldiers arriving from the areas occupied by fundamentalist militiamen. . Shortly after, we are already walking along with Father Joao Gabriel, from the Metuge parish, among hundreds of makeshift shacks mixed together from the four camps for displaced persons that can be seen from the road as far as the eye can see. We arrived at the most populated of the four, the one that presents the greatest humanitarian challenge due to its magnitude. There are 6,717 families that have lived here since the reception was opened on September 12, 2020, after the Quissanga district was decimated by massacres, and the insurgents arrived just 23 kilometers from the place.

The indigenous peasants have given up their agricultural land to set up the camp, without asking for anything in return, and now their adobe houses stand out among the simple huts that the displaced families build around them. It is admirable to see so much solidarity between people who already faced the harsh conditions that life imposes on these lands before their arrival.

Walking around the camp we see a group of men and women carrying bundles of bamboo and brush on their heads. Intended for building huts, they sell each unit for ten meticals —14 euro cents—, they use them to make or rebuild their own, or they are used in barter, a widespread practice in the camps and based on the exchange of products due to lack of currency. They must travel about five kilometers to find and cut, and then walk back the same distance, with the load on their backs, in a strenuous activity that they do every day except for Fridays. It is a risky task, especially for women, as there have been cases of sexual assaults when entering the brush, exposing their security in the fight for survival. And this fight is widespread.

Just past the field medical center, where a Doctors Without Borders flag flies, is a busy market. The cane and log stalls crowd together on the sides of what amounts to a main avenue of the camp. Basically it trades in basic necessities. Cards to recharge mobile phone balance, herbs, spices and salt, tobacco, tiny sun-dried fish covered in flies and caught with mosquito netting in a nearby lagoon, seasonal vegetables, plastic buckets of odd sizes , clothing items, colorful kikoy worn by women as a sarong, head scarf or as a baby carrier. Under the shade of a tree, a man with a wad of bills in his hand and another in front of a cardboard on the ground full of clothes hold an auction. The audience, entirely male, seems to enjoy the circus moment when the dealer puts on a T-shirt as a costume, and then throws the piece to the buyer once the price has been set.

A crowd of women with basins in their hands argue loudly around one of the few wells where water is pumped manually —not suitable for human consumption— because one of them has jumped her tail. This groundwater is intended for cleaning, bathing, and cleaning clothes, pots, and dishes. It has no guarantee. Its health conditions are in doubt since there may be leaks from improvised latrines built by individuals given their scarcity. Of the latrines built by UNHCR, with their relevant septic tank, only half remain in operation. They have outgrown their storage capacity, and have been sealed and covered with earth. Thus, the risks of new cases of cholera and other diseases are unquestionable. That is why, every three days, tanker trucks arrive from Pemba with drinking water to supply the 20-cubic-meter tanks scattered around the camp, which are intended to cover the ratio established by UNHCR of 20 liters per displaced person per day. Women and children queue to access the taps and fill their jugs. It is not unusual that the same day that the water tanks are filled, they end up empty.

Few families have been able to acquire, through humanitarian aid agencies, what here is a privilege and their first necessity: a white tarp with the blue letters of UNICEF and UNHCR —the acronym for UNHCR in English— to cover and waterproof the roofs of their huts. There are families that have obtained plastic awnings in the other Metuge camps through exchange or with money, and there are those that have resigned themselves to the thatched roof, with concern and fear of torrential rains when the rainy season arrives.

Omar received a tarp from UNHCR in September last year and it already has holes in it. “Look where I live. I need another awning for when the rains come. Before, I had my house and my machamba (farm in Portuguese). He worked as a carpenter and had a sewing machine. I have lost everything. Also to four members of my family: my grandson, my brother, my son... and also my uncle. They are all dead."

Others had better luck. Abdul sits on the ground at the entrance to his shelter, like many elderly people he wears a kufi, a traditional short hat that he wears every day as a symbol of authority and social status. At his side, five women and six children listen attentively to the old man who has survived three wars. He tells how they fled when they were suddenly attacked in their village by Al-Shabab. His family was scattered. Two of their children went in another direction during the bewilderment, and then were not heard from for a long time. They were already given up for dead, and one day, happily, they ended up meeting again in the Metuge camp.

Security here is conspicuous by its absence. The camp is not fenced off, nor does it have a police presence.

The first few days —explains Father Joao Gabriel— “when the camp was opened to deal with the avalanche of displaced people who were seeking protection and shelter, many young people ended up being detained and taken into custody when they found ammunition and firearms hidden in their luggage. People do not feel protected and continue to fear for their lives”. Between the traumatic experiences of the recent past and their highly vulnerable situation, they live day to day with anguish, not only because of an uncertain future, but also because of the closeness of their loved ones. executioners, a few kilometers further north, and those who have been able to evade the controls of the camp and cohabit among them.

Nobody wears a mask to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. Despite being aware of the risks of transmission, they do not give it much importance. They have other, more serious concerns, although the Mozambique government has banned school classes to avoid contagion. Currently, the classrooms shelter newly arrived families, the most vulnerable, and the children, when they are not playing, help their families with daily tasks. They are seen playing soccer, rolling hoops with a stick, climbing trees, and the lucky ones taking a bike ride. It is common to see them working to earn a few coins carrying reeds, transporting buckets full of sand, or sewing with a machine.

A nine-year-old boy, sitting at the table of an old Singer sewing machine —one of many donated by Cáritas—, is paradoxically weaving masks. In another house, two girls are busy with a mortar. They share the effort of handling the heavy wooden mallet, taking turns pounding the rice in the container. They are making rice flour, which will later be cooked to make chima. Its time to eat.

Families are gathered, sitting on the ground, waiting for the pots with this scarce and vital commodity that is food to come out from the clay ovens that the women build. The UN World Food Program (WFP) comes monthly to the camp to distribute sacks of cereals and legumes, and jugs of soybean oil. The lack of funds from this international agency makes the diet precarious, and the displaced people do not receive the necessary food rations.

A dozen or so people eat with their hands from the same plate: The meal of the day is based on boiled rice mixed with a handful of tiny, half-decayed fish, the same ones I saw before full of flies in the market and they are the only protein at your fingertips. A man, with a handful of rice in his hand, invites me to eat and laments the scarcity. He comments that they only have about 25 grams of rice per person per day to feed themselves. Far from their land, traversed by trauma, insecurity and scarcity, those displaced by jihadism share the uncertainty with the hope that, one day, they will be able to return without fear to the life that was taken from them.