At the end of July, Rwanda launched an offensive against destabilising insurgents in the Macomia district of Mozambique’s northern Cabo Delgado province, where the SA National Defence Force (SANDF) was based until earlier that month as part of the Southern African Development Community Mission in Mozambique (SAMIM).
Already, the Rwandans appear to have seen more battlefield results than SA did in its two-year intervention. The Cabo Ligado project, which monitors the conflict, has reported large westward movements of insurgents away from their strongholds on the coast.
It also appears that fleeing insurgents have so far been largely contained in Macomia. Previous offensives, led by Mozambican and SAMIM forces, allowed Islamic State Mozambique (ISM) to scatter across the province and renew its attacks from other strategic locations.
“In Macomia, it’s questionable whether SAMIM achieved any success, because although they provided some security to the main town, insurgents circulated freely around the coast and had very strong bases in the Catupa forest,” said Tomás Queface, an analyst for Cabo Ligado.
President Cyril Ramaphosa’s decision to dispatch troops to Mozambique — and the Democratic Republic of Congo, where SA has approved the deployment of 2,900 soldiers — has elicited harsh criticism from opposition benches due to the cost to taxpayers but also because the SANDF is ill-equipped for such ventures.
Both SA and Rwanda arrived in Cabo Delgado in the summer of 2021 to relieve Mozambique’s beleaguered army, which had been grappling with the insurgency since 2017.
ISM’s campaign of violence has now displaced more than 1-million people and left at least 5,700 dead in its wake.
While Rwanda quickly distinguished itself, recapturing the port town of Mocímoba da Praia, which insurgents had occupied for a year, SA has fewer accomplishments to its name.
The relative effectiveness of the Rwandans in Macomia, compared with the SANDF can be partly attributed to their superior resources.
Rwanda spearheaded its Macomia offensive with bombing runs by Mi-24 attack helicopters. SA never had any close air support to call on.
Indeed, SAMIM was hamstrung by chronic underfunding. A leaked annotated agenda from a meeting of Southern African Development Community (Sadc) heads of state in July 2023 revealed that several countries were in arrears with their contributions to the mission, forcing SAMIM to draw nearly $5m from its reserve and contingency funds. SAMIM never even had a proper office space for its headquarters and its head of mission had to operate from his hotel room, according to the document.
The lack of funds limited how many boots SAMIM could put on the ground. About 1,900 troops were fielded at any one time, of which SA’s contingent in Macomia numbered about 1,500 at its peak. The Rwandans have recently reinforced their 2,500-strong force in Cabo Delgado with 2,000 additional soldiers and police. They can simply bring more force to bear against the insurgency.
SAMIM exited Cabo Delgado in July to polite fanfare and warm remarks from the Mozambican government. At a farewell ceremony in the provincial capital, Pemba, the country’s national defence minister, Cristóvão Chume, said Sadc forces “made progress that we would not have made on our own”, adding, perhaps pointedly, “at least in the short term”.
Critical tensions
The diplomatic language belied critical tensions between SAMIM and Mozambique that also came to light in the leaked Sadc meeting agenda. The document noted Mozambique’s concern that “during the period from 2022 to 2023 the SAMIM force did not plan any unilateral (autonomous) operation”.
The Mozambican government also said “SAMIM troops do not disembark from vehicles and helicopters. The activities of the SAMIM force are limited to village/district headquarters, as opposed to conducting in-depth operations in areas where terrorists hide, thereby allowing them freedom of action.
“Moreover, the nature of SAMIM operations has been one of stabilisation, while the situation on the ground still requires the use of military capabilities to destroy terrorist strongholds.”
An SANDF spokesperson told Business Day that Sadc troops liberated many villages taken over by the insurgency, allowing people to return to their homes and enabling schools and hospitals to reopen.
The spokesperson also argued that concerns reported in the media that SAMIM’s withdrawal was premature were evidence that it was making a difference on the ground.
Nonetheless, Rwanda’s blitz on Macomia since July has underscored how lethargic and poorly equipped Sadc’s mission was from the start, though it is too soon to say whether this offensive qualifies as a meaningful victory. The insurgency has proved remarkably stubborn in its ability to adapt and recover after catastrophic blows.
A report to the UN Security Council in February 2023 estimated that ISM had just 280 active male fighters, down from between 2,500 and 3,000 before July 2021. And yet by some measures it remains as potent as ever. UN figures show that an estimated 189,000 people were forced to flee their homes due to insurgent violence between December 2023 and April 2024, more than double the number displaced in the same period in the year before.
Already insurgents have changed tack in the face of Rwanda’s withering assault. In August at least three vehicles triggered improvised explosive devices buried by ISM on key roads to Mocímoba da Praia, which is expected to act as a major logistics hub for the TotalEnergies-led offshore liquefied natural gas project.
That project was suspended in April 2021 after the attack on Palma. Export credit agencies, including the US EXIM bank, have been reluctant to release the funds necessary to restart operations while the security situation remains unpredictable.
“Rwanda’s aerial bombardment has resulted in the dislodgement of insurgents, at least from the Macomia coast, but we can’t say for sure if the insurgent threat has been reduced,” Cabo Ligado’s Queface said.
Rwanda has proved itself to be more capable than SA at killing insurgents, but in the end it may get no closer to winning the war.
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