Mozambique’s al-Shabab insurgency, and local and international responses

For several years, Mozambique’s Cabo Delgado region has been experiencing an intensifying al-Shabab insurgency. With its explicit allusion to a separate al-Shabab terrorist group in Somalia, Mozambique’s al-Shabab also embraces global jihad. Yet local grievances about social and economic exclusion and foreign and elite exploitation of local resources also play a critical role.

On November 9, the Brookings Institution’s Africa Security Initiative and Initiative on Nonstate Armed Actors explored the international and internal drivers of the conflict, the threat it poses regionally, and the policies adopted and available to address it. The panel conversation explored the role of external actors, such as the military forces of Rwanda and of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), which the Mozambican government invited to assist in responding to the insurgency.

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