This part of Mozambique was like heaven. Now it has become a hotbed for terrorists.

In October, we traveled to Cabo Delgado province in northern Mozambique to understand how terrorists claiming to be affiliated with the Islamic State gained a foothold and wreaked havoc on Muslims and Christians alike.

Officials in the region and in the West say they are deeply concerned that if the Islamic State offshoot known as ISIS Mozambique is not contained, the loosely linked Islamic State network gaining ground in pockets of Africa could become a greater global threat. .

What locals call “war” has deprived the region of a largely peaceful life of fishing and farming.

Nearly 6,000 people were killed And up to half of the governorate’s population of 2.3 million People have been displaced. Finding food and shelter has become a daily struggle in a province rich in natural resources such as rubies, gas and timber.

Since our visit, the country has become more tense. After a disputed presidential election, Mozambique has been plunged into the worst election-related violence since the long civil war ended in 1992. Tens of thousands of people have taken to the streets across the country to protest the result that many believe is rigged. By the ruling party Frelimo. Nearly 300 people were killed during the protests, according to Decide Electoral Platform, a civil society organization.

Furthermore, the province of Cabo Delgado and Nampula in the south took a direct hit from Hurricane Chido in mid-December, killing up to 1,000 people. 120 peopleThis led to the displacement of tens of thousands, leaving many without food and clean water.

Diplomats and security analysts say there is no doubt that the insurgency is at its weakest, with the number of fighters numbering a few hundred out of several thousand. This is mostly because international forces, under the command of the Rwandan military establishment, have been able to compensate for the shortcomings of the poorly equipped and trained Mozambican armed forces.

But security experts said the rebels had now split into small groups spread across dense forests in a territory roughly the size of Austria, turning the conflict into a game of “Whac-a-Mole”. Attacks are fewer than in the past. But they were more frequent in 2024 than in 2023, and spread to previously unaffected areas.

“The government is doing its best,” Faleg Twabo, the province’s governor, said in an interview.

Where the rebellion began

Our Cessna 206 landed on an airstrip in Mocimboa da Praia, a sleepy fishing village that was the birthplace of the rebellion. A Rwandan soldier in combat gear watched us from the watchtower.

Because of the high risk of ambush, we chartered a flight from the provincial capital, Pemba, a luxury that few residents can afford.

We jumped into a sedan that went around the barricades set up by the Rwandan army and made our way to the village.

In October 2017, more than two dozen rebels raided a police station in Mocimboa da Praia and killed two police officers. The first attack of the rebellion.

At the time, the group was calling itself Al-Shabaab (analysts say it was not affiliated with Al-Shabaab in Somalia). Researchers say It began to take shape around 2005when the teachings of extremist clerics from neighboring Tanzania to the north began infiltrating mosques and religious schools in Cabo Delgado.

To gain recruits, the extremists tell locals that while they suffer from poverty, their land is rich in natural resources. Attracted profitable natural gas reserves About $24 billion in foreign investmentsincluded Nearly $5 billion from the United States, It was close to the coastal city of Palma.

Dissatisfaction with the government grew with Multiple reports From the Mozambican army Assaulting or killing civilians In Palma.

But the rebels’ early message was soon lost in their brutality.

In March 2020, Islamist militants gathered villagers on a football field in Mocimboa da Praia and warned them not to associate with the government, otherwise “we will cut off everyone’s heads,” Sanola Issa recalls.

Just two weeks later, Ms. Issa said, she woke up early one morning startled by gunfire and shouts of “Allahu Akbar!”

She said she rushed to shore with her husband and three children, and tried to crowd into the boats with others. But the rebels caught her husband and beheaded him with a machete, said Ms. Issa, 33, wiping her tears with a pink hijab.

“They are evil,” said Ms. Issa, who once cooked rice for the sailors. “They destroyed people’s lives – innocent people.”

But it is not as if the locals have turned to the government.

“Our hatred goes both ways,” said Rabia Mwandimo Issa, who is not related to Sanola Issa. She lost her brother and sister, and her home in Mocimboa da Praia, in a rebel attack five years ago. “We don’t see good coming from either the government or the rebels.”

Displacement crisis

For most of his 20 years, Mwende Makassari lived a comfortable life in a shack near the ocean, fishing with his family. But since rebels stormed his coastal village of Kiterajo two years ago, he has been sleeping on blankets in his aunt’s yard in Pemba, sharing a tent with two relatives.

The heat in the torn tent becomes oppressive, and rain trickles through the torn fabric.

Hundreds of thousands of people have returned to their communities, only to find that their jobs, homes and stability are now gone.

Hundreds of thousands of other people, like Mr. Makassari, live displaced in unfamiliar communities.

More than 80,000 displaced people are now gathered in the Pemba area, which was previously inhabited by about 200,000 people. Aid organizations say the conflict in Mozambique is not getting the help it needs because it has been overshadowed by other global crises.

Mothers carrying their babies on their backs gather at clinics to treat child malnutrition. The displaced crowd into the low-lying homes of their families, friends and good residents, using bedsheets as dividing walls.

Mr. Makassari sleeps outside because his aunt’s two-bedroom concrete house is already crowded with 10 people.

He said the rebels kidnapped him and forced him to wash their clothes and act on guard, but he says he was never sent into battle. He slept in the forest on an uncomfortable bed made of coconut tree leaves and ate only occasional rations of rice, maize, and cassava.

Mr Makassari said he understood some of the grievances preached by extremists – about the political elite driving around in luxury cars while everyone else was poor. But if the rebels’ complaints were directed at the government, Mr. McSary asked: “Then why do they kill innocents?”

He said he ran away one night, using a bathroom break as an excuse. He ran through the jungle until he reached a nearby village.

Homecoming sour

When rebels captured Chea Casiano during an attack on Mocimboa da Praia in early 2020, they offered him a choice: You can join us, or we can kill you.

Over the next year, Cassiano, now 37, said the rebels forced him to run, lift weights, shoot — and attack villages. They preached their message loudly: the war will not end until the end of the world; Men must wear trousers and women long skirts; Everyone had to pledge allegiance to Islam, not the government.

“I was worried,” Mr. Cassiano said. “In the rebellion, when you don’t go according to plan, they can kill you.”

Rebels They took control of Mocimboa da Praia In August 2020, they controlled it for a year, until forces from Rwanda and countries in southern Africa drove them out. This was the longest period that rebels occupied a town throughout the conflict.

Mocimboa da Praia was emptied during the occupation in 2020. But in 2022, residents began to return and life appears to have returned to normal in many ways. The market in the city center is crowded at night with street vendors and motorbike taxis. Fishermen gather around a sandy bay at sunrise, preparing nets and wooden boats, and drying fish on tarps. Teams compete on clay soccer fields.

But with a little examination, it’s easy to find deep physical and mental scars.

The tower of the Catholic church in the city center stands tall, but most of the building is in ruins. Next door was a mostly destroyed primary school, with faded writing on a blackboard reminding parents of the deadline, now a year old, to register their children. The hospital infirmary is just a metal skeleton.

While there were statues of two of Mozambique’s liberation heroes, Eduardo Mondlane and Samora Machel, their foundations have been torn down.

Many residents returned after the fighting to find empty patches of dirt where their homes had been built of red clay and thin tree trunks.

Cassiano, who joined the fighters after his kidnapping, said his house had been burned. He has rebuilt it and now sells fish for a living, but he bears a visible scar of the conflict: he has lost his right hand. He said he got into a dispute with his fellow rebels over a bicycle he took from the village they raided. He said that they accused him of stealing the bike from the group’s leader, and cut off his hand, according to their interpretation of Sharia law.

Trying to heal

At a community center next to a camp for displaced people in Mocimboa da Praia, children in an art therapy workshop sometimes draw stick figures without heads, or sculpt mounds of clay into the shape of rifles.

One day, the children sat in a circle singing, keeping the rhythm by placing plastic bottles filled with stones on the floor.

“Children have the right to play and live like a child,” they sang.

A 12-year-old girl said she was only eight years old when rebels from Mocimboa da Praia abducted her and sexually assaulted her several times while in captivity. She was once beaten because she didn’t wear her hijab properly. She fled into the bush with several women, and says she ate sand to survive.

She behaved erratically when she returned home, said her aunt and uncle, with whom she lived because her parents were killed in a rebel attack.

“I’ve seen people get killed!” Her aunt said she would scream in sudden fits.

Now back in school, she said she has begun to heal by spending time with other child survivors who gather at the centre, which is run by the Community Development Foundation, a local non-profit.. As we sat on the ground talking, I stared down, tracing the sand with a twig. She said the horrific things she went through are now the catalyst for her next life.

“I want to be a nurse, to help others in my community,” she said.