Pemba, Mozambique, July 31, 2025 (Lusa) - The governor of Mozambique's northern province of Cabo Delgado, Valige Tauabo, acknowledges the current “turbulent” phase in the province with the resurgence of terrorist attacks, but guarantees that “better days” are not far off and that now is the time to invest.
“Cabo Delgado will be one of the safest provinces in the country (...). It will be one of the experiences of how to conquer a territory and how to consolidate stability. We are in a phase, a turbulent phase, but it does not shake us and it does not make us abandon the province," Tauabo said in an interview with Lusa in Pemba.
The governor of the province, one of the richest in Mozambique, with large reserves of natural gas, minerals and precious stones, among other things, acknowledged that after two years of relative “calm”, which allowed thousands of displaced families to return to their villages of origin, Cabo Delgado has seen a resurgence of terrorist groups in the last three months, especially since the end of June.
Even so, on a smaller scale than previous terrorist attacks, which have been ongoing since 2017 in Cabo Delgado, and thanks to the “resilience” and “efforts of the public and the defence and security forces (FDS), the governor is convinced: “We are very confident and have great faith that better days for Cabo Delgado are not far off”.
“This is the time for investors. For entrepreneurs, this is the best time to come to Cabo Delgado and make your investment (...). The doors are open. If you wait until tomorrow, it will be too late. Then we will have constraints. We will not be able to give you satisfaction,” warned Tauabo, pointing to the province’s potential in virtually all economic areas.
Even so, he did not hide the instability caused by the attacks in recent weeks in various parts of the province, confirming casualties among the people and traditional “naparamas” guerrillas, who are also fighting the insurgent groups.
“We have also learned that there have been casualties, which we regret, and we express our solidarity with the bereaved families,” he said.
He admitted that the resurgence of these groups began to be felt at the beginning of the year: “There was a certain urgency to make their presence felt, but they were not alone because the FDS are always in pursuit of this group”.
He added that 2023 and 2024 were years of “reasonableness, when the population was beginning to hope that better days were just around the corner”.
“In the last three months, once again, they have been appearing here and there, moving around and frightening the population again. And now we have had these latest incursions over the last month or so," said Tauabo.
On the ground, he admits that one of the concerns was to dismantle the terrorist groups' bases and prevent them from using the public as shields in the fighting with the FDS.
“It was necessary to dismantle the bases where they were thinking, planning to do evil, wasn't it? And they couldn't stay that way either. So the FDS managed to recover these bases. And that's what we're seeing now. So they are also looking for quiet areas (...) The FDS are careful not to intervene in any way, because they use the public as a shield, they take the public with them," Valige Tauabo explained about the operations on the ground.
The aim is also "to find them physically, so that they can be arrested and brought to justice. That is the vision," he added.
Members of the Islamic State extremist group claimed responsibility for an attack last Thursday on the village and police station of Chiúre Velho, also in the south of Cabo Delgado province, using automatic weapons and stealing equipment from inside.
The claim, made through propaganda channels, is documented with a video in which the rebels, allegedly belonging to the Ahlu-Sunnah wal Jama`a (ASWJ) group, appear firing bursts of machine-gun fire and entering the police station, claiming to have taken material after burning a vehicle and “freeing Muslim prisoners”, with at least one person reported beheaded in the centre of the town.
In recent days, there have been reports of incidents involving attacks, deaths, the abduction of peasants and the flight of the residents in villages in the Ancuabe region and at the administrative post in Ocua.
Officially, agencies on the ground counted at least 34,000 new displaced persons between 20 and 25 July alone, due to new insurgent attacks in the regions of Chiúre, Ancuabe and Muidumbe.
In Chiúre alone, the wave of displaced persons that has been growing since last Thursday has reached, according to estimates provided to Lusa, 3,500 families, distributed among the homes of relatives, but mainly in two temporary centres in two schools in the town, which are closed this week.
At the Coqueiros school in Chiúre, there are more than 1,900 families who, since Tuesday, have been receiving humanitarian aid from United Nations agencies in the same playground where women cook in makeshift kitchens and hundreds of children play almost normally in a school with no classes.
The gas-rich province of Cabo Delgado, in the north of the country, has been facing an armed rebellion since 2017, which has left thousands dead and caused a humanitarian crisis with more than a million people displaced.
At least 349 people died in attacks by Islamic extremist groups in northern Mozambique in 2024, an increase of 36% over the previous year, according to a study released in February by the Africa Centre for Strategic Studies (ACSS).
According to that academic institution of the US Department of Defense, which studies security issues in Africa, this “resurgence of violence” in Mozambique “reflects the strategy” of the ASWJ group – affiliated with IS, operating in Cabo Delgado province – to “widen the conflict by moving inland and into more rural areas”.
PVJ/AYLS // AYLS
Lusa
