Mozambique Requests Military Aid from EU Amidst Terrorism

The town of Mueda houses Mozambican troops as they prepare for an offensive to retake Mocímboa da Praia from Al-Shabaab. [Wikiwand]

Foreign Minister of Mozambique Veronica Macamo requested military support from the European Union on September 16 to combat terrorism and insurgency in the country. 

The European Parliament approved a resolution on the following day that indicated the EU’s readiness “to engage with Mozambique to determine effective options for implementing EU assistance.” 

The resolution “stresses the need to work towards the elimination of some of the root causes of terrorism such as insecurity, poverty, human rights violations, inequality, exclusion, unemployment, environmental degradation, corruption and misuse of public funds, impunity, thereby contributing immensely to the eradication of terrorist organizations.”

The European Parliament emphasized the Mozambican government’s duty to respond to the needs of the people to ensure that they are safe from militant activity—such as Al-Shabaab’s fighting in Cabo Delgado—and are less likely to become radicalized by terrorist organizations in the region. 

Commenting on the past offenses of Al-Shabaab in Cabo Delgado, the resolution claims that children comprise more than half of the people affected by the violence, and “there have been complaints regarding the recruitment of children into armed groups, kidnappings and sexual and gender-based violence against women and girls.” 

Cabo Delgado is the site of an increasingly powerful Islamist insurgency launched by Al-Shabaab, in part due to the area’s lack of job opportunities for young people. Additionally, it possesses the ninth largest gas reserves in the world. The resolution states that it expects “at least USD 60 billion will be invested over the next few years to exploit these reserves, the largest investments ever made in sub-Saharan Africa.” The European Parliament is pushing the Mozambican government to utilize these resources to create jobs in the Cabo Delgado region, which has the highest rates of illiteracy, inequality, and child malnutrition in the country.

The European Parliament also suggested launching an investigation on torture and murder in Cabo Delgado. The resolution “recalls that Mozambique is a party to the ICCPR, to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights and to the UN Convention against Torture, which prohibits torture and other ill-treatment and arbitrary deprivation of life.”

The insurgency, along with allegations of torture and ill-treatment, escalated when Mocimboa da Praia, a port town in Mozambique, was captured in August. Since then, “the security forces’ response, reports and videos of beatings or other army abuses have become increasingly common.”

Most recently, footage circulated on September 14, featuring a woman referred to as a member of Al-Shabaab. The video shows her being hit in the head and body with a stick before she is shot 36 times. “The Mozambican army, engaged in a battle with insurgents in the province which is also home to gas projects being developed by oil majors such as Total, said it considered the images shocking and horrifying. However, Amnesty International said that most of the murderers in the video wore Mozambican army uniforms.

In exchange for military aid, Mozambique promised to open a dialogue with the EU on humanitarian issues.