Analysts say Mozambican forces are overstretched and insufficiently equipped to contain the insurgent campaign, led by the Islamic State Mozambique (ISM), which in late 2025 ramped up attacks on military positions and civilian areas in the Mocímboa da Praia and Palma districts. Terrorists also have attacked some districts in the neighboring Nampula and Niassa provinces, prompting Mozambique’s call for additional external military support. In response, Rwanda has deployed fresh troops, airlift assets and logistics specialists to reinforce front-line Mozambican units. There are now more than 2,000 Rwandan troops in Mozambique.

“What we are doing at this moment is working on two fronts,” the office of Mozambican President Daniel Chapo said. “On the one hand, fighting on the ground to ensure that our populations are not attacked; on the other hand, trying to understand this structure, as we did in the process with Renamo,” a former rebel group that fought the government for 16 years before a 1992 ceasefire.

The forces face attacks from a brutal insurgency. ISM recruits alienated young people among the Mwani and Makua ethnic groups, and typically uses small arms, improvised explosive devices and rocket-propelled grenades and mortars in its attacks. On February 4, suspected ISM terrorists ambushed vehicles on a road connecting the Cabo Delgado towns of Macomia and Mucojo. Although no casualties were reported, the fighters fired shots that forced all traffic to stop.

“After the attack, motorists were forced to drive their cars into the bush, allegedly to avoid attracting the attention of patrols from the Mozambican and Rwandan Defense,” a source told the state-run Agência de Informação de Moçambique. “Once inside the bush, the occupants, including the drivers, were forced to hand over mobile phones and cash.”

ISM also has developed significant new sources of income through kidnapping for ransom, extortion, and by taking over artisanal and small-scale mining operations in Cabo Delgado. Kidnappings for ransom accounted for about 10% of all ISM activity throughout the year, according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data monitoring organization.

In addition to Rwandan troops, about 300 Tanzania People’s Defence Force Soldiers are expected to remain in Cabo Delgado, according to Zitamar News.

“Mozambique and Tanzania share a long border,” Mozambican President Daniel Chapo told The Africa Report magazine. “It is the Tanzanian armed forces that are protecting this border line to prevent terrorists from entering Mozambican territory.”

Tanzania was a part of the Southern African Development Community Mission in Mozambique, which worked with Rwandan and Mozambican forces in 2023 to eliminate an estimated 90% of ISM fighters from northern Cabo Delgado. After the mission withdrew from the province in 2024, the Tanzanian troops remained in the Nangrade district under a separate bilateral agreement. Nangrade is separated from Tanzania by the shallow Rovuma River.

Mozambique wants to continue prioritizing multilateral cooperation to combat terrorism in northern Mozambique, including the Niassa and Nampula provinces, while developing its defense industry, Mozambique’s Defense Minister Cristóvão Chume told Parliament in December 2025.

“In the northern theatre of operations, we are facing external aggression led by an international terrorist syndicate, which makes the scenario quite complex, given that transnational terrorism is a hybrid, diffuse phenomenon with complex motivations, intentions and operational structures,” Chume said in a report by the Club of Mozambique newspaper.

Chume characterized ISM as “analogous to all others operating in the sub-Saharan region of our continent, whose common denominator lies in aspects of volatility, in time and space, especially the exploitation of some local vulnerabilities to establish themselves.”

Both the Rwandan and Tanzanian armed forces have offered training to Mozambican Soldiers, and Chapo said it is important for that to continue so the country can eventually defend itself without external help.

“The time will come when we can say: Thank you very much for the support given, but now we are in a position to defend the homeland on our own, without needing the constant support of our neighbors,” Chapo said in a statement.

The Cabo Delgado insurgency began in 2017. Since then, more than 5,000 people have been killed while 1.3 million others have been displaced, according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data project.

 Source: ADF Magazine