The establishment of the terrorist groups al-Shabab and the Islamic State with claims to establish the Islamic Law, the corporate interests of the oil industry and the lobby of Erik Prince, a former operative of the American military elite, now at the head of a private business proposal to pacify Cabo Delgado, are considered so far by academics, press and the civil society as the motivations explaining the armed insurgency in the potentially richest province of Mozambique.
By far, extensive drug trafficking and illegal resource extraction are components of the equation. However, as foreign reports and common police seizures show, the coast of Cape Delgado has been a drug trafficking center in East Africa since the 1990s, a newly expanded position after Tanzania and Kenya took strong action against trafficking networks, pushing them into Mozambique’s waters.
One of the largest drug seizures in the country’s history took a position in that province in 1997, when 12 tons of cannabis were seized, adding components on the beach and containers on the way to Nacala. In December last year, in the midst of the rebel war, two ships with two tons of heroin were intercepted by military and defense and security forces after they searched the sea, leading to the arrest of 25 foreigners.
Cabo Delgado, on its more than thirty islands, is a transit point, but also uses cabotage and land transport system to drain drugs to Nampula, the distribution hub for strategic destinations.
The Mozambique Financial Information Office (GIFIM) uses calculations from independent studies that estimate that the drug transiting Mozambique is worth $600 million depending on the year, savings greater than the amount paid through coherent cooperation partners, as well as the revenues of some of the major exports of this amount, with $100 million left on the Internet of corruption in Mozambique , composed of influential politicians linked to Frelimo, local drug traffickers and police, migration officials and customs.
More than religious fundamentalism and the dispute of oil multinationals, it is quite obvious that today drug cartels are the ones who profit most from the war in Cabo Delgado, as the already weak sea surveillance has become practically non- -existent, with all the forces focused on halting the increasingly concerted and regular advance of the Islamic state and al-Shabab terrorists.
For several years now, the Navy, for lack of means, has been the branch of the armed forces with more men on land than at sea. That is why, for three years, armed gangs have been entering the sea, destroying and plundering the districts along the coast of the province, with the state unable to stop them.
While trying to resolve the war on the battlefield, the area of the Indian Ocean along Cabo Delgado has strengthened its role as a viaduct for the smuggling of narcotics and the consequent illicit enrichment of mafia elites and networks of traffickers. In addition to drugs, the war has diverted attention from the illegal extraction of natural resources, a criminal practice associated with illegal immigration in the north of the country.
Smuggling paradise
Cabo Delgado province is located in the northern region of Mozambique and corresponds to 10.34% of the national surface with about 4,760 km² of inland waters. Its limits are, to the north, the Rovuma River which serves as the natural border with the United Republic of Tanzania, with a territorial extension of about 250 Km; to the south the Lúrio River; to the west the Lugenda, Luambeze, Ruaca and Mewo Rivers separate it from Niassa Province and to the east it has the Indian Ocean, which bathes its entire eastern coast with a length of 430 km.
The border with Tanzania is the gateway for illegal immigrants from Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Nigeria, who are attracted by the illegal extraction of timber and precious stones, especially gold and ruby. The illegal mining network enters Cabo Delgado from the Inamoto area, in the administrative post of Quionga, in Palma district, a depopulated piece of land, with several entry and exit areas that are uncontrolled by Migration and Customs authorities.
Illegal immigrants cross the Rovuma River through small boats. On the ground, they use public transport or rent cars, basically Toyota Land Cruiser, and to Palma-headquarters, about forty-five kilometers away. From there, the teams were divided according to the interests, going basically to Montepuez and Nampula, gems and informal industry spaces, respectively.
Another window of access to Mozambique from Tanzania is the historic Mueda District, but poor access roads, long-distance mining spaces and narrow borders discourage illegal immigration, and consider Inamoto the preferred direction of foreigners in search of simple wealth.
Used through networks that facilitate the sending of foreigners fleeing war and famine on their lands in search of protection and work, Cape Delgado province is also a gateway to South Africa. The migration government neutralizes illegal immigrant teams and it is estimated that more than six thousand were deported last year to Cabo Delgado.
Military instability in the province has facilitated access to illegal immigrants and illegal extraction of herbal resources, as the attention of the authorities, the press and society at large focuses on armed conflict. The United Nations estimates that the war has displaced 211,000 more people and there are reports of insurgents and illegal immigrants disguised as victims of war.
The Indian Ocean: the drug viaduct
If the new waters of the Rovuma River are marked, even if the infiltration of immigrants is not controlled, the same cannot be said of the dozens of problems that the Indian Ocean provides to the province of Cabo Delgado. These problems have become through drug cartels in warehouses that connect the manufacturer to the consumer.
The province is divided into seventeen districts: Ancuabe, Balama, Chire, Ibo, Macomia, Mec-fi, Meluco, Metuge, Moc-mboa da Praia, Montepuez, Mueda, Muidumbe, Namuno, Nangade, Palma, Pemba and Quissanga. Some of these districts cross the sea, constituting the Quirimbas archipelago with more than thirty islands, which serve as cabotage ports to disembark.
The coastal dominance of Cabo Delgado is long and has no state control. The beaches are quiet and cross across the dunes, allowing them to hide and drain the drugs through small boats. Larger seizures occur on Ibo Island, The beaches of Quissanga and Pemba, however, the inability to monitor does not measure whether the seized drug is more than the drug that passes in disguise.
The port of Nacala is reportedly one of the outlet centers, and heroin is the most important drug in Mozambique from Afghanistan and Pakistan. Usually, the drug travels in boxes combined with products.
The southern route of the drug produced in Afghanistan and Pakistan seems a very long and expensive diversion, but 10 kilos of heroin can cost five dollars at production sites and yield up to 20 000 dollars when sold in a modern world capital.
The drug is also transported to South Africa, from where it is directed to customer destinations, namely Europe and the United States of America. The South African government has seized its borders after drug smuggling at the Ressano Garcia border crossing in Maputo.
One of the main seizures occurred in May 2019, when 3 Mozambicans were arrested on the N4 road in Kaapmuiden, near Nelspruit, the capital of Mpumalanga. They owned heroin worth 60 million rand, or about $4 million.
In June this year, two Mozambican truckers who had crossed the border with Ressano García were intercepted shortly thereafter in the South African aspect with more than two hundred kilograms of heroin.
The regularity with which seizures take place indicates that drug trafficking is an unusual activity in Mozambique, but it does not discover any coverage in the neighbouring country.
Nampula: the habitat of drug kingpins
Various publications on drug trafficking note that from Cabo Delgado the goods follow, by small boats or vehicles, to the province of Nampula, the real centre of the heavy drug business in Mozambique and home to drug lords and drug traffickers.
The United States of America and England, according to GIFIM, have drawn the attention of the Mozambican authorities to the distortions of the economy in the north of the country, mainly in Pemba and Nampula, mentioning that organized crime introduces “dirty money” into the national financial system.
The hustle and bustle at Pemba Airport, the connections to rich districts such as Montepuez and Palma and the dynamics in Nacala and Nampula City seem to find no justification in their basic economic structures, namely agriculture, fishing and trade.
Mozambique is a drug-rich market because it is a low-income country. The annual drug report, published last week through the United Nations, publishes that heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine are used in evolving, high-income countries with purchasing capacity.
Drugs and insurrection
Mozambique’s influence on organized crime and drug trafficking led the United Nations to open its Maputo in 2019 at the request of the Government of Mozambique. César Guedes, a Peruvian-Canadian with 20 years of paintings at the United Nations, was appointed head of the Maputo Matrix. He led in Pakistan and Bolivia, two major industry unions for heroin and hashish production.
The opening of the United Nations Office as opposed to organized crime and drug trafficking in Mozambique is a sign that the dynamics of drug trafficking, institutional promiscuity and cash laundering are and lack a more structural and foreign approach.
This confirms the view that heroin trafficking from Afghanistan to Europe is one of the main reasons for the clash in Cape Delgado. Information received through the organization indicates that drug production has nearly tripled in the following decade and that Mozambique is a component of one of the traffic corridors that crosses the east coast of Africa.
Let’s take a look at the recent statements made to the Lusa Agency through the United Nations Office on Organized Crime and Drug Trafficking in Mozambique: “Here they supposedly place a country that has a unique strategic location to facilitate drug trafficking. What these countries are offering is ease of passage. It’s not a complicated thing, yet they have massive borders and the government isn’t complicated at all times. And the smugglers know it … It is an external setting with covert teams that need to harm countries that have lived in combination peacefully. They have a damaging agenda, which does not correspond to the truth of countries; is an illegal and illegal program to do your own business in a complicated scenario. It is in times of crisis that traffickers and those connected to the illegal economy are more productive and ready to expand their illegal activities. Giant and small boats, outdoors in the cyclone season, arrive little by little. ng still safe vacation where you make a lot of money. »»
Uncontrolled borders
The statements of the representative of the UN Office on Organized Crime and Drug Trafficking show weaknesses in controlling Mozambique sea space, a situation that makes it (sea space) permeable not only to drug trafficking, but also to the development of piracy actions and plunder of its sea resources.
There are many conditions that show the void in which the coast of Cabo Delgado is located. In 2010, a national flag called “Vega 5” was hijacked on the Coast of Sofala, six hundred miles off the coast of Inhassouro in Inhambane province, and for days sailed in waters from Mozambique to Somalia without the state being able to avoid it. The shipment was reconditioned but recovered through the Indian army government a year after taking over the pirates.
Domestic and international illegal fishing is another factor revealing lack of surveillance capacity. The Ministry of Fisheries estimates that illegal fishing on the Mozambican coast causes an annual loss of US$ 60 million to the public purse. There are often reports of international vessels invading Mozambican waters for fishing and waste disposal.
Major sea surveillance has been carried out irregularly through joint military missions with several partner countries, but the flimsiness of the action does not allow an intervention capable of containing the disorder in Mozambican waters.
The seizures that have occurred are fortuitous, resulting from inadvertent traces along the drug value chain in Mozambique. For example, the two boats seized in December last year ran aground at sea in Pemba – a situation that awakened the authorities. In Nampula, there are cases of drugs found in homes and with local fishermen.
This points to lack of responses capable of identifying traffic routes at their origin, which would allow more effective combat and dismantling of groups that facilitate the movement of drugs.
Covid-19 transfers to Cabo Delgado
The annual drug report warns that Covid-19 has increased use of shipping for heroin trafficking, restrictions from countries to save the disease, adding flight suspension and closure of land borders, and more on migration.
These points have displaced drugs from the air and land to the sea, and the sea acts as a bridge between the spaces of production, passage and consumption. As a result of the pandemic, more farmers in Pakistan and Afghanistan have continued to farm illegally, either because the state government could not train or because more people would have to resort to illegal activities due to the economic crisis.
The UN document highlights the southern direction and the Indian Ocean Mozambique as spaces for which drug cartels have been targeted. The direction of traffic is explained according to the porous borders and the inability of the government of the country to monitor them.
This replacement may also mean that drug trafficking flows along the coast of Cape Delgado may have increased, which is demonstrated in part through the two seizures in a week in December last year of two vessels containing two tons of hashish.
Conclusion
Lack of means for sea surveillance, as described above, leaves an important part of the Mozambican coast bare, which is used as a highway by drug trafficking networks. Coming from Afghanistan and Pakistan, drug bypasses the countries with the tightest control and searches for empty routes even if the distances are long.
This is an established pattern in the Mozambican coastal area, which has made it a drug corridor since the 1990s. It is a public concern that there is not a strategic intervention to prevent and fight sea and land border fragilities.
With the escalation of the war in Cape Delgado, which acquired the guise of guerrilla warfare and has become more difficult to contain, border migration and control and surveillance have become more fragile. This opened an area for traffickers to its action, especially as Covid-19 led to the disruption of air transport and limited the movement of people, pushing drugs on sea routes.
Like drugs, the illegal extraction of herbal resources, i.e. stones and wood, is now unrestricted, which encourages illegal immigration and the deterioration of state force in the country.
The pharmaceutical industry in Mozambique operates because there is a state coverage power, which mandates free passage and has no interest in consolidating defense and security institutions.
Reissued with the permission of the Center for Democracy and Development (CDD). The article can be discovered here.
More Columns
326 Rivonia BoulevardRivonia, JohannesburgGauteng2128 South African Public Republic
+27 (0)11 807 3294 +27 (0)11 807 2020
Editorial requests: [email protected]
Sales Enquiries: [email protected]