{"id":3235,"date":"2021-07-27T11:00:36","date_gmt":"2021-07-27T09:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/marxistworkersparty.org.za\/?p=3235"},"modified":"2021-07-27T15:13:37","modified_gmt":"2021-07-27T13:13:37","slug":"mozambique-military-intervention-will-solve-nothing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/?p=3235","title":{"rendered":"MOZAMBIQUE | Military Intervention Will Solve Nothing"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Only the masses organised in socialist mass workers parties can resolve the crisis<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

by Shaun Arendse<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 23 June Summit of the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) agreed to the deployment of a military force to northern Mozambique. This was the belated response of the regional elites to an armed insurgency that has been underway in the Mozambican province of Cabo Delgado since October 2017. On 19 July, South African National Defence Force (SANDF) units, began arriving in Pemba, the provincial capital. These are the \u201cleading elements\u201d of the \u201cSADC Standby Force Mission\u201d. The numbers of troops could rise to 3,000, backed-up by attack helicopters and naval patrol ships, if SADC\u2019s April draft plan is implemented in full.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A disaster is unfolding in Cabo Delgado. In 2020 alone there were 570 \u201cviolent incidents\u201d. Nearly 3,000 have died so far and over 700,000 have been displaced. Atrocities against the local population are being committed by both the insurgents and the Mozambican army and security forces. For many the SADC intervention may seem necessary to put an end to the possibility of the insurgency spreading. There is widespread revulsion at the horrors of the barbaric methods of the insurgents. They include beheadings, as with ISIS in the Middle East, the kidnapping of school children and the enslavement and rape of girls taken as wives of the insurgents, like Boko Haram in Nigeria. But the SADC intervention will not only fail; it will aggravate the crisis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Interests<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although SADC is being positioned as the \u2018public face\u2019 of the military intervention the major imperialist powers are also playing a role. Troops from Rwanda \u2013 a non-SADC country and recipient of United States military aid \u2013 arrived in Mozambique a few days before the SANDF. The United States and Mozambique\u2019s former-colonial power Portugal have both deployed \u201ctrainers\u201d to assist the Mozambican army. Earlier in July, Portugal and France successfully pushed for the European Union to agree to a \u201cmilitary training mission\u201d which will begin in September. Kenya and the UK are also reported to be \u201chelping\u201d the Mozambican army and security forces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The discovery in 2010 of vast natural gas reserves in the seas off of the Cabo Delgado coast are at the heart of both the insurgency and the willingness of so many foreign capitalist governments to assist militarily. There has been an unprecedented inflow of $120 billion of foreign-direct investment into Mozambique to develop extraction. Leading the pack is France\u2019s Total with a $20 billion investment and the US\u2019s ExxonMobil with a $30 billion investment. Also involved is Italy\u2019s Eni, the UK\u2019s BP and the China National Petroleum Corporation. Behind the oil multinationals are institutional investors. South Africa\u2019s Standard Bank has lent $485 million to Total. All are expecting a return on their investments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The southern African economy is in a desperate state. The ruling elites of SADC\u2019s sixteen member countries preside over societies marred by deep poverty and huge inequality. They see foreign investments by the multinationals based in the main imperialist powers as one of the few lifelines available to them. They need to generate sufficient economic growth to both underpin their own wealth while staving-off social revolt. They are, therefore, desperate to prove that they can defend these investments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Accordingly, the political pressure on the Mozambican government to agree to an intervention increased significantly following the attack and capture of Moc\u00edmboa da Praia last August and Palma in March this year. Both towns are strategic hubs for the development of the gas fields. The attack on Palma led to Total temporarily suspending operations linked to ultimatums that unless the security situation was stabilised a full withdrawal of the multinationals \u2013 and their investments \u2013 would be posed. Total was no doubt backed-up by French president Macron who made his first \u2018state visit\u2019 to South Africa at the end of May.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the past 25 years, foreign military interventions in the Sahel, the Horn of Africa and the Great Lakes region have had little success in creating \u201cstability\u201d. The opposite has been the case. Military interventions, leaning on different factions and groupings of local elites, have reinforced, prised-open and inflamed religious, ethnic and tribal tensions. They have propped-up various dictators, \u2018strong-men\u2019 and warlords. Outside of Africa, the US\u2019s incredible twenty year occupation of Afghanistan has achieved nothing with the reactionary Taliban likely to return to power!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now SADC is preparing to embark on its own \u201copen-ended\u201d military intervention. The SADC force will be incapable of resolving the underlying issues driving the insurgency. A drawn-out and unwinnable conflict is all that lies ahead for northern Mozambique.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Corrupt Elite<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mozambique is one of the poorest countries in the world. Its neo-colonial position within the world capitalist system makes the economy and government hugely dependent on foreign aid and \u2018multilateral\u2019 loans. No longer falsely claiming to be \u2018socialist\u2019 this The<\/s> ruling elite plays a parasitic role looting both to enrich itself and build patronage networks to keep it in power. Sovereign-debt has reached 110% of GDP, nearly double the IMF\u2019s 60% \u2018danger\u2019 threshold for \u2018developing\u2019 economies. Much of this debt has been racked-up by the elite awarding themselves state loans. $2 billion has been looted through loans using the future revenue of the as yet undeveloped gas fields as collateral! To put this in context, Mozambique\u2019s entire GDP in 2019 was only $15.2 billion. In 2018, even before the pandemic worsened the situation, Mozambique was forced to restructure its debt. Between the government and so-called investors, creditors and donors in the imperialist countries the people of Mozambique are being bled dry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The SADC military intervention will ultimately prop-up the corrupt Frelimo (Frente de Liberta\u00e7\u00e3o de Mo\u00e7ambique \/ Liberation Front of Mozambique) government in Maputo. That has been its role across southern Africa, helping to prop-up Zimbabwe under Mugabe and now Mnangagwa, the Swazi royal-dictatorship in eSwatini, and the squabbling elite in Lesotho.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This government in turn protects the political and business elite in Cabo Delgado itself. Frelimo-linked business elites, also beneficiaries of state-backed loans, have developed their own business empires exploiting the resources of the north. Often these have links to organised crime syndicates involved in smuggling ivory, gems, timber etc. Mozambique has also developed as a key link in the heroin trade which travels from Afghanistan, through Pakistan and across the Indian Ocean to Mozambique. From there it is smuggled into South Africa for distribution there and in the West. Some commentators have speculated that Mozambican president Filipe Nyusi delayed agreeing to the SADC deployment because of fear that the Frelimo government\u2019s links to these criminal syndicates would be exposed. The near-year of procrastination has likely been used to bury evidence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The huge inequality in Cabo Delgado has only grown as oil and gas investment has poured in. The established elites have positioned themselves to benefit from the sale of land and \u2018concessions\u2019 by-passing the local population entirely. Dangerously, these inequalities have acquired a tribal dimension. The Frelimo-linked business elite is predominantly based on only one of the three main tribal groups in the area. They use their wealth and political position to control jobs and business opportunities and use extortion against rivals. One of the final straws in the months before the insurgency began was the eviction of poor \u2018artisanal\u2019 ruby miners in favour of local business elites with links to mining multinationals. The SADC military intervention will defend this horrific status quo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Insurgency<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anger at the Frelimo government, its local Cabo Delgado puppets and the huge inequality they preside over was key in sparking the insurgency and continues to drive it. The insurgents are overwhelmingly young. The International Crisis Group describes the rank-and-file of the insurgency as \u201cpoor fishermen, frustrated petty traders, former farmers and unemployed youth\u201d. Many fighters are attracted simply by the possibility of pay in a situation of mass unemployment and limited economic opportunities. They are relatively small in number. Estimates range from 1,500 fighters and up to 4,000 when \u2018support\u2019 forces are included.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The insurgents have named themselves al-Shabab, Arabic for \u201cthe youth\u201d, and sought explanations for poverty and inequality in Islamic scripture. They look for social change through a return to \u2018traditional\u2019 religious values. The implied link to the Somali based al-Shabaab has been seized on by the Mozambican government, SADC and the imperialist powers to justify the military response. But there is no evidence that any of the different transnational right-wing political Islamist groups initiated the Mozambican insurgency. All serious commentators agree that it is \u201chome grown\u201d. The ideologues of al-Qaeda, ISIS and al-Shabaab in Somalia and elsewhere in central and east Africa, are now however manoeuvring to hijack it. In the political vacuum that exists they unfortunately appear to be succeeding. The SADC military intervention will only assist this process. It will create a self-fulfilling prophecy as foreign \u2018ideological fighters\u2019 are attracted to the conflict as has been the case elsewhere in the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Guerrillaism\u2019s Legacy<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Southern Africa has been home to several guerrilla movements within living memory. In the 1960s and 1970s the worldwide struggle for national liberation against colonialism was fought in the form of guerrilla wars in southern Africa against colonial rule in Namibia, Angola, Mozambique and Zimbabwe. Supported by the then-Stalinist powers of either the USSR or China, whose very existence were seen as a living demonstration of the limits of the powers of imperialism, and the possibility that it could be defeated. This confidence swelled the ranks of the guerrilla movements particularly with youth who embraced the language of Marxism and socialism as the language of revolt. Southern Africa\u2019s past guerrilla movements fought to throw-off the yoke of colonial or white-minority rule.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The founders of Frelimo in particular declared the liberation struggle as a class struggle. Mozambique was declared a \u2018Marxist-Leninist\u2019 state in 1977, although there were no signs of the workers control and management of society that Marx and Lenin had struggled for. In the areas Frelimo liberated even before the collapse of the Portuguese colonial empire following the uprising of the junior army officers in 1974, attempts were made to establish collectivised farming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unfortunately, without a clear understanding of the central role of the working class in the struggle for socialism, the models of Stalinist bureaucratic and repressive rule proved a dead-end. At the same time, the policies of both the former Soviet Union and China were against the overthrow of capitalism as had occurred in Cuba and in favour of negotiated settlements on a capitalist basis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although Frelimo, following the departure of large swathes of the Portuguese settler population, was compelled to take significant steps in the direction of state control of the economy, this was not on the basis of workers\u2019 control and management. Furthermore event those who genuinely wanted to move towards socialism did not have a clear understanding of the impossibility of constructing a socialist economy on the basis of one country, especially one as economically underdeveloped as Mozambique. The struggle for socialism could succeed only on the basis of an internationalist approach uniting the working class of the entire southern African sub-continent especially with the powerful South African working class.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The limitations of the understanding of Frelimo leadership, combined with the pressures of the former Soviet Union and China, which used the liberation struggles as chess pieces in their own quest for global influence, against each other and the US, doomed the model pursued by Frelimo to failure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Mozambique the intersection of conflicting Soviet and Chinese interests playing themselves out upon southern African soil, reinforced the ideological and political limitations of the Frelimo leadership.  These prepared the way for the disastrous neo-liberal capitalist model Frelimo came to adopt that has brought Mozambique to the catastrophic economic position it finds itself in today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The heroic struggles nonetheless played a critical role in weakening imperialism\u2019s grip in southern Africa, and, despite SA\u2019s direct military intervention and economic sabotage, snapped the cordon of white-minority rule and colonialism that shielded apartheid South Africa, contributing to the fall apartheid itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the more urbanised South Africa despite the ANC\u2019s attempt to emulate the methods of the struggle of all these countries, conditions did not exist for a successful peasant-based guerrilla war. Despite the heroism of the MK combatants, the end of white-minority rule was achieved through the struggle of the working class in the cities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Dead-end<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The southern African liberation movements were fighting to free the population from oppression. Political freedoms were not seen as an end in themselves however. They were to clear the way to raise living standards through development based on the nationalisation of what industry there was and economic planning. Secular education was seen as vital to produce the armies of administrators, teachers, technicians and engineers this would require. The guerrillas were conscious of the need to win the political support of the populations they were attempting to liberate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But nothing is left of this legacy in the region today. Liberation movements degenerated into neo-colonial capitalist governments without exception. It is not possible in this article to analyse in detail the reasons for this. We will return to this in a future article.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tragically, in Cabo Delgado today there is not even a shadow of the relatively progressive features of these past guerrilla movements. The right-wing political Islam that al-Shabab looks to is utterly reactionary. There is not even the pretence of support for democratic rights. The local population is to be subjected to oppression greater than that now faced, and controlled through a brutal regime of terror. They stand for the complete suppression of the rights of women. A medieval \u2018caliphate\u2019 is their model for a future society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the wheel of history cannot be turned back. Even a regional \u2018caliphate\u2019 based on all the areas of East Africa with large Muslim populations would remain trapped in a neo-colonial position within world capitalism. In practice the \u2018best\u2019 that al-Shabab can hope for economically is to take-over the smuggling syndicates and position themselves as new middlemen between the resources of the region and the capitalist multinationals. This was the direction in which the Taliban in Afghanistan and ISIS in Syria developed. The future for northern Mozambique on the basis of the methods and ideas of al-Shabab will be even worse for the local population than that which currently faces them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Alternative<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite the SADC agreement and the support of the big imperialist powers it may take some time for the full \u201cStandby Force\u201d to be deployed. The pandemic continues to have an extremely disruptive effect on the region in new waves of infections and lockdowns. Both South Africa and Angola face deepening economic problems that will make the cost of deploying their militaries politically fraught. The weakness of the regional elites and their incapacity to manage their \u2018own house\u2019 may yet bury the 23 June agreement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The deployment will fuel the very problems that sparked the insurgency. Even if there is some initial success in militarily suppressing it, the ground will be prepared for a more generalised revolt of the region against the Frelimo government in Maputo and its local representatives. The Cabo Delgado elite, the Frelimo government and the regional elites, rather than strengthening their position, will realise too late that they have undermined it even further.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The workers\u2019 movement across the region must take a firm position: NO to the SADC Standby Force Mission! NO to imperialist military interference in the region! Support must be given to the rural population in northern Mozambique to form multi-tribal and multi-religious self-defence groups to protect communities against the insurgents. Emergency aid and aid for economic development must be taken out of the hands of the elites who use its allocation to sow tribal and religious divisions. The vast natural resources of the region must be nationalised. The wealth and resources of Mozambique must be under the democratic control of local communities and used for development of health, education, housing, roads and other infrastructure. The debts of the Frelimo regime must be repudiated. The masses of Mozambique must refuse to pay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Across the southern African region new parties of workers and the rural poor need to be built as the vehicles for such a socialist programme. These parties will need to link-up with the working class of the entire continent and the entire world in the struggle for world socialism. Only this can end the poverty and suffering of Mozambique and offer an alternative to the capitalist dead-end of under-development and armed conflict.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A disaster is unfolding in Cabo Delgado. In 2020 alone there were 570 \u201cviolent incidents\u201d. Nearly 3,000 have died so far and over 700,000 have been displaced. Atrocities against the local population are being committed by both the insurgents and the Mozambican army and security forces. For many the SADC intervention may seem necessary to put an end to the possibility of the insurgency spreading. But it will not only fail; it will aggravate the crisis.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3236,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mozambique"],"aioseo_notices":[],"acf":[],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3235"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3235\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3240,"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3235\/revisions\/3240"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}