The rise of Mozambican Daesh branch

From 2017, in northern Mozambique began the rise of a new branch of Daesh.

Since that year the live of millions of Mozambican citizens changed forever. The insurgents are very brutal and they don’t take into account the fact that they kill innocent people and native population, those who don’t joined them are killed. Women are kidnapped and kept as sex slaves, boys are forced to become child soldiers, beheadings are weapons of terror and the main motivational reason for the others to join the organization.

 At this moment millions of people have fled their homes, separating countless families and over 4.000 lives were claimed by the violence from Cabo Delgado district.

In recent years, Africa is the new play ground for the Islamist groups as Daesh and Al-Qaida, which have captured land and resources from African countries, taking advantage of the increased level of poverty and the shortage that the native have.

All across the African continent there are a lot of militias and criminal group that are engaged in violent conflicts. part of these are declaring their adherence to the terrorist groups, and are fighting on their name, without religious ideology being relevant. Although, the militants justified their violence by the need to establish a religious government, based on sharia law, few of them are practitioners and really believe in Islam.

In 2021, the USA State Department Last year, designated the Islamic State of Mozambique, or ISIS-Mozambique, as a foreign terrorist organization, though the group is believed to have fewer than 500 fighters. There are also imposed sanctions on the group’s leader, Abu Yasir Hassan, though it’s unclear whether he is still in charge, or is even still alive.

The branch has always been small in relative terms, but the weakness of the Mozambican armed forces allowed the group to make rapid gains in recent years, seizing towns and cities, and exacting a terrible toll on communities across the north.