Rebels besiege town in northern Mozambique for fifth day
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By ANDREW MELDRUM yesterday
Map locates Palma, Mozambique. Fighting raged for the fifth day Sunday in northern Mozambique as rebels fought the army for control of the strategic town of Palma.
JOHANNESBURG (AP) — Rebels fought the Mozambican army Sunday for the fifth straight day for control of the strategic northern town of Palma, as reports came in that dozens of civilians have been killed and bodies were littering the streets. The fate of scores of foreign energy workers was also unknown.
The battle for Palma highlights the military and humanitarian crisis in this Southern African nation on the Indian Ocean. The three-year insurgency of the rebels, who are primarily disaffected young Muslim men, in the northern Cabo Delgado province has taken more than 2,600 lives and displaced an estimated 670,000 people, according to the U.N.
The attacks in Palma started Wednesday just hours after the French energy company Total announced that it would resume work outside the town on its huge natural gas project at Afungi, near Mozambique’s northeastern border with Tanzania. Earlier rebel attacks prompted Total in January to suspend work on the project to extract gas from offshore sites.
The Mozambican army has been fighting the rebels in several locations to regain control of Palma, Col. Omar Saranga, a Ministry of Defense spokesman, said Sunday in the capital of Maputo.
Hundreds of Palma residents, both local and foreign, have been rescued, he said, adding that the defense forces are battling “to contain the criminal attacks of terrorists and restore normality in Palma.”
Most communications in recent days with Palma and the surrounding area have been cut off by the insurgents, although some residents got messages out using satellite phones.
“(They said) they had seen bodies lying on the streets, that the sound of gunfire was ongoing. In fact, gunfire was recorded on the background as we spoke with them. And they were telling us that they were running for safety,” Zenaida Machado, the Human Rights Watch representative in Mozambique, told The Associated Press.
Many Palma residents ran into the dense tropical forest surrounding the town to escape the violence. But a few hundred foreign workers from South Africa, Britain and France clustered at hotels that quickly became targets for the rebel attacks.
An estimated 200 Mozambicans and foreign workers sheltered at the Hotel Amarula. On Friday, a band of them in 17 vehicles drove together to the beach, where they hoped to be rescued, but the convoy came under heavy fire. Only 7 vehicles reached the beach, according to local reports and messages sent by survivors.
Seven people in the convoy had been killed, the military spokesman confirmed Sunday.
The beach remained under insurgent fire, preventing rescue efforts from air or sea, according to the reports. The Hotel Amarula remained under attack and it’s not known what happened to those in the 10 vehicles that did not reach the coast.
A ship that left Palma earlier carrying hundreds of people arrived Sunday in Pemba, the provincial capital about 100 miles south.
The fresh rebel violence brings into question the fate of Total’s gas project, one of Africa’s biggest private investments. Total paid nearly $4 billion for a 26.5% stake in the project in 2019. It had planned to start gas shipments in 2024 but the deteriorating security situation has made that goal unlikely.
Total issued a statement Saturday saying due to the latest rebel attack it had “obviously” suspended all its operations in the Afungi peninsula. It said none of its staff at the Afungi site were victims of the attack.
“Total expresses its sympathy and support to the people of Palma, to the relatives of the victims and those affected by the tragic events of the past days,” said the statement. “Total trusts the government of Mozambique whose public security forces are currently working to take back the control of the area.”
Mozambique’s rebels already hold the port town of Mocimboa da Praia, 50 kilometers (31 miles) south of Palma, which they captured in August.
Mozambique’s insurgents are known locally as al-Shabab,although they do not have any known connection to Somalia’s jihadist rebels of that name. The rebels have been active in Cabo Delgado province since 2017 but their attacks became much more frequent and deadly in the past year.
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AP journalist Tom Bowker in Uzes, France, contributed.
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This story has been corrected to show that the convoy of 17 vehicles left the Hotel Amarula on Friday, not Saturday.
Africa needs more funding for adaptation "'We're Young, But We're Not Dumb': Millions March In Global Climate Strike" [...] “Africa bears a disproportionate burden of the adverse impacts of climate change,” noted Rugamba. “Adaptation is therefore of immediate concern to Africa. It is incomprehensible that of all the issues that are so keenly important to the continent, adaptation would receive such little global attention. The OECD has noted that currently only about 14% of the resources mobilised for climate change is allocated to adaptation. P - “It is also on record that only about 4% of adaptation financing ends up in Africa. To quote AfDB President Akinwumi Adesina, ‘Africa has been short-changed by climate change. It must not be short-changed by climate finance.’” https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=151269397
"Tigray forces claim to have taken back Ethiopian town after Government announces end to military offensive "Anxiety in Australia as conflict ravages Tigray region of Ethiopia"
What led Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed to conduct a military campaign in the Tigray region, and how has the fighting affected Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa?
Flags representing the Tigray region of Ethiopia lining a wall in the Tigrayan city of Mekele. The region has experienced rising conflict with the federal government. Eduardo Soteras/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
By Declan Walsh and Abdi Latif Dahir Published Nov. 5, 2020Updated June 22, 2021
Ethiopians went to the polls on June 21 for an election once billed as a major step toward democracy, but which is taking place against a backdrop of war, an emerging famine and ethnic strife that highlights the country’s widening divisions.
The conflict in the northern Tigray region, where Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed launched an offensive .. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/04/world/africa/ethiopia-abiy-tigray.html .. in November, has led to thousands of deaths, displaced 1.7 million people, and led to charges of atrocities like ethnic cleansing and horrific sexual violence, mostly committed by government forces and their allies.
In June a senior U.N. official declared that parts of Tigray were in the throes of a famine — the world’s worst since 250,000 Somalis died in 2011.
Mr. Abiy’s government has declared its political and military enemy, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, a terrorist group, and there have been reports of thousands of ethnic Tigrayans around Ethiopia, mostly soldiers and police officers but also civilians, being held in detention without charge.
[MAP Show Tigray region in north. Border Sudan (west) with Eritrea (north).] By The New York Times
Ethiopia, Africa’s second-most populous country with about 115 million people, was grappling with daunting economic and social challenges well before a political feud between Mr. Abiy and the T.P.L.F. erupted into violence.
Combined with surging ethnic violence in other parts of Ethiopia, including its most populous region, Oromia, the Tigray war has stoked fears of a wider crisis with the potential to tear apart Ethiopia and spread to neighboring countries, destabilizing the entire Horn of Africa.
Here’s a look at how Tigray became a flash point in Ethiopia and the broader region.
Why did Ethiopia’s prime minister launch an offensive in Tigray? Editors’ Picks
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed of Ethiopia ordered a military offensive against the government of the country’s northern Tigray region, he said in a national address in November. Ethiopia Broadcasting Coporation, via Reuters
Even before the war, Mr. Abiy appeared bent on breaking the power of the T.P.L.F., a political group of rebels turned rulers who had dominated Ethiopia for nearly three decades.
A former intelligence officer, Mr. Abiy had once been part of the T.P.L.F.-dominated government. But after he took office in 2018, Mr. Abiy set about draining the T.P.L.F. of its power and influence in Ethiopia, infuriating the leadership.
The T.P.L.F. retreated to its stronghold in Tigray, in the mountainous north of Ethiopia. Tensions grew. In September, the Tigrayans defied Mr. Abiy by going ahead with regional parliamentary elections .. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/10/world/africa/ethiopia-tigray-elections-abiy-crisis.html .. that had been postponed across Ethiopia because of the coronavirus pandemic. Weeks later, Ethiopian lawmakers cut funding to the region.
On the night of Nov. 3-4, T.P.L.F. forces attacked a federal military base in Tigray and attempted to steal its weapons. The T.P.L.F. has said it had struck preemptively because federal forces were preparing to assault Tigray. Hours later, Mr. Abiy ordered the military offensive into Tigray.
Internet and phone communications were restricted and his cabinet declared a six-month state of emergency in Tigray .. https://twitter.com/PMEthiopia/status/1323901191902822406 . But the Ethiopian military, which was dominated by Tigrayan officers, was divided, and fighting erupted between rival military units inside Tigray, according to American officials.
Mr. Abiy bolstered his forces by deploying militia fighters from Amhara, south of Tigray, who swept into western Tigray amid accusations of attacks .. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/09/world/africa/ethiopia-tigray-sudan.html .. on civilians. Then troops from Eritrea, Ethiopia’s former enemy, flooded across the border into Tigray from the north to fight alongside Mr. Abiy’s forces.
Federal forces and their allies quickly seized control of Tigray’s capital, Mekelle, and other main towns, but the T.P.L.F. and its armed supporters fled to rural and mountainous areas, where sporadic fighting has continued. Aid workers in Tigray say that heavy shelling and gun battles raged in five different parts of Tigray in early May.
The government has restricted journalists in the region, making it hard to gauge the situation.
Who are the T.P.L.F. and the Tigrayans?
A parade marking the 45th anniversary of the establishment of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, in Mekelle, in February. Michael Tewelde/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The T.P.L.F. began in the mid-1970s as a small militia of Tigrayans, a group that was long marginalized by the central government, fighting against Ethiopia’s military dictatorship.
Ethiopia’s two biggest ethnic groups, the Oromo and the Amhara, make up more than 60 percent of the population, while Tigrayans, the third-largest, are just 6 to 7 percent. Yet the T.P.L.F. became the most powerful rebel force in the country, eventually leading an alliance that toppled the government in 1991.
The rebel alliance became Ethiopia’s ruling coalition, with the T.P.L.F. at its head.
In 2019, Mr. Abiy consolidated his power by creating a new party that was effectively the former governing coalition minus the Tigrayans, who refused to join.
In the war, the government has set out to capture or kill T.P.L.F. figures who include some of Ethiopia’s former political and military leaders .. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/22/world/africa/ethiopia-tigray-conflict-abiy.html . In January, the federal government stripped the T.P.L.F. of its status as a legal party and in May it labeled the group as a terrorist organization.
Eritrea was once a part of Ethiopia but became a separate nation in the early 1990s, after a 30-year war of independence. Since then, it has essentially been a one-man regime, ruled with ruthless force by Isaias Afwerki.
International watchdogs consistently rank Eritrea as one of the most repressive nations .. https://www.hrw.org/africa/eritrea . Eritrea drafts all young people into the military, with no limit on how long they might be required to serve. It has no elections, independent news media, opposition parties or civil society groups.
Eritrea and Ethiopia fought a border war from 1998 to 2000, killing tens of thousands of people and leaving a bitter and lasting rift between Mr. Isaias and the T.P.L.F.
Then Mr. Abiy set the relationship on a new course, quickly signing a peace deal with Eritrea that helped him to win the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize.
But now Mr. Abiy and Mr. Isaias have joined forces against the T.P.L.F.
How is this conflict affecting Ethiopia and its neighbors?
Buildings burned by protesters after the killing of Hachalu Hundessa, a prominent Oromo singer. Mr. Abiy is also confronting challenges from his own Oromo ethnic community. Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Despite international demands to end the conflict, Ethiopian and allied military forces remain in control of much of Tigray, and the humanitarian crisis is worsening.
Children are dying of malnutrition, soldiers are looting food aid, and aid workers have been prevented from reaching the hardest-hit areas, according to the United Nations and other aid groups. United Nations officials and other humanitarian agencies warned on June 10 that the conflict had afflicted 350,000 people with famine. American officials privately say that figure has already doubled since then, and is likely to continue rising.
Until recently Ethiopia, an American military ally, was seen as the strategic linchpin of the Horn of Africa. But as the conflict drags on, analysts worry that Ethiopia is becoming a source of instability in a volatile region.
Besides the war’s effects on Eritrea and Sudan, it has forced Ethiopia to shrink its peacekeeping force in Somalia.
Mr. Abiy is also contending with outbreaks of ethnic violence in other parts of Ethiopia.
Hundreds of people have died in ethnically-driven clashes in the Amhara, Oromo, Afar and Benishangul-Gumuz regions this year. An insurgency has erupted in Oromia, the country’s most populous region, where in May the Oromo Liberation Army vowed to wage “total war” against Mr. Abiy’s government.
[Guessing it's as much about individual power games as it is "ethnically-driven."]
Largely because of war and unrest there was no polling in at least 102 of Ethiopia’s 547 constituencies during the June 21 vote, although the government said it would hold some of those votes in September.
Mr. Abiy is pressing ahead with the election and ambitious economic reforms including the planned creation of Ethiopia’s first stock market and privatization of the state-dominated telecommunications sector.
What has Mr. Abiy done since coming to power?
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed of Ethiopia has come under criticism for repressive tactics against opposition leaders. Eduardo Soteras/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
At 44, Mr. Abiy is among the youngest and most closely watched leaders in Africa. After taking power, he excited great hopes for transformational change in Ethiopia. As well as making peace with Eritrea .. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/09/world/africa/ethiopia-eritrea-war.html , he freed thousands of political prisoners, relaxed a repressive security law and helped mediate conflicts abroad.
But his reputation soon took a turn for the worse, and now appears irreparably damaged by the Tigray war and his alliance with Mr. Isaias.
In November, the peace prize committee issued a rare — if tacit — rebuke of one of its honorees. “The Norwegian Nobel Committee follows the developments in Ethiopia closely, and is deeply concerned,” it said in a statement.
The son of a Muslim father and a Christian mother, he promised to heal ethnic divisions. But as criticism of Mr. Abiy mounted, he resorted to old tactics like shutting down the internet, arresting journalists .. https://cpj.org/2020/09/ethiopian-authorities-re-arrest-journalists-and-media-worker-released-on-bail/ .. and detaining protesters and critics by the thousands. The security forces have been accused of killing hundreds of people.
Declan Walsh is the Chief Africa correspondent. He was previously based in Egypt, covering the Middle East, and in Pakistan. He previously worked at the Guardian and is the author of The Nine Lives of Pakistan. @declanwalsh
Abdi Latif Dahir is the East Africa correspondent. He joined The Times in 2019 after covering East Africa for Quartz for three years. He lives in Nairobi, Kenya. @Lattif
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