AFRICA –The Heads of State of Mozambique and Tanzania stated earlier this week that they had signed defence and security deals aimed at fighting terrorism and crime along their shared border.
No details have been released about the agreements, which were signed during a visit to Maputo by Tanzania’s President Samia Suluhu Hassan. This is because a deadly insurgency erupted in northern Mozambique, near the Tanzanian border, five years ago.
The insurgency itself has killed more than a thousand people and displaced hundreds of thousands more. But again, the African countries came together and deployed their own troops to handle this situation and now things are coming back to some kind of normalcy.
Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi stated that “The enemy is now operating in small groups trying to descend into the southern districts,”
President Hassan said as the two neighbours share a “very long” boundary, “we need a good security system in which we can protect our border. We have been seeing… cross-border crimes (and) terrorism,”
Nyusi toured the recovered port of Mocimboa da Praia earlier this week which was previously the de-facto headquarters of the jihadists.
In October 2017, about 30 armed men launched a dawn raid on three police stations in Mocimboa da Praia — marking the start of the insurgency.
Since then, more than 4,258 people have been killed according to conflict tracker ACLED, and 820,000 have fled their homes.
Mozambican forces, backed by Rwandan troops, said in August last year that they had driven out the militants occupying the port.
The African nations must come together to eliminate such threats before it goes too far and there is war amongst nations. Globally this should be discussed so that countries can avoid this kind of thing from taking place and lives having to be lost.
