The Rwandan government has announced that it is sending 1,000 troops to Mozambique, to help the country deal with jihadist groups in the northeastern province of Campos Delgadu.
The decision follows a decision taken in June by the Community for the Development of Southern Africa (KAMA) to deploy a military mission.
Armed groups generally known in the area as “al-Shebab” (“the youth” in Arabic) have intensified their attacks in the impoverished province of hydrocarbons, bordering Tanzania, where the majority of the population is Muslim. . They set fire to villages, behead men and underage boys, and kidnap to recruit new members or abduct sex slaves.
The attacks have forced some 800,000 people to flee their homes, according to the United Nations, and have claimed the lives of more than 2,900 others, according to the non-governmental organization ACLED, which regularly monitors armed conflict.
“The government of Rwanda, at the request of Mozambique, is today beginning to deploy a force of 1,000 members of the armed forces and police,” she said in a press release.
Its military Rwanda will “support efforts to restore the power of the Mozambican state by conducting battles and security operations,” the text said.
This force will cooperate with the Mozambican army and with the KAMA mission “in the areas of responsibility to be determined”, according to the government announcement.
The government of Mozambique, where President Filipe News has promised to eliminate the jihadists, has not yet reacted to the Kigali government’s announcement.
The decision “is a surprising development,” Adrianou Nouvouga, director of a research center in Maputo, told AFP. “It will further militarize the north of Campo Delgado and could lead the conflict in the wrong direction.”
The Rwandan army has a reputation for being “extremely powerful in battle” and its men can be used to protect the French gas extraction and liquefaction project in cooperation with a consortium of companies in the region, according to Alexandre Reimakers. analyst at the British consulting firm Verisk Maplecroft.
However, “the presence of different military missions”, of Rwanda and KAMA, may cause “conflicts over priorities and frictions at the level of military administration”, he believes.
The former Mozambican president, a former defense minister, seemed reluctant to accept any foreign aid, insisting on defending Mozambique’s national sovereignty, which gained independence in 1975.
Rwanda is among the countries contributing the most troops to the UN peacekeeping force in the Central African Republic, sending hundreds of additional troops to the country in December to support opposition President Fostan Arkanz Tuandera.
According to a spokesman for the Rwandan Ministry of Defense, the force will be fully deployed in Mozambique today.
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