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SOUTH CHINA, Mozambique (AP) — In northern Mozambique, nearly 1 million people have been displaced as they fled beheadings, shootings, rapes and kidnappings.
A five-year wave of jihadist violence in Cabo Delgado province has killed more than 4,000 people and destroyed billions of dollars worth of international investment.
Dilapidated tents and thatched huts are scattered around Nanhua, a town in southern Cabo Delgado province, as hundreds of families seek safety from the violence. They say their conditions are bleak and food aid is meager, but they are afraid to go home because of the continued violence by rebels in Mozambique province now known as the Islamic State.
More than 1,000 miles to the south, however, government officials in the capital, Maputo, said the insurgency was under control and encouraged displaced people to return home and energy companies to resume their projects.
“Terrorists are always on the run,” Mozambican President Felipe Nyusi assured investors at the Mozambican Energy and Gas Summit in Maputo in September. He urged international energy executives to come together and resume work on their stalled LNG projects.
The Mozambican army and police force, with the support of Rwandan troops and the Southern African Development Community regional force, have succeeded in containing the extremist insurgency, officials said.
“These places are now normalized and civilians are coming back,” Rwanda Brig. General Ronald Rwivanga told Rwandan newspaper The New Times this month that normal life was returning to the Parma region.
Energy companies say they want to see displaced people return to the area. The $60 billion LNG project led by France-based TotalEnergies and Exxon Mobil was suspended after rebels briefly seized the neighboring town of Palma last March.
Speaking at the Maputo summit, Stéphane Le Galles, head of the Mozambique gas project at TotalEnergies, said that “the direction is very good”, but the company still wants to see a “sustainable economic situation, not only in Parma, but … throughout Cabo del Add more.”
Despite the large numbers of Mozambican and Rwandan soldiers, extremist attacks continued. Earlier this month, rebels first spread violence to the neighboring province of Nampula, targeting the Catholic Church, where an elderly Italian nun was among the dead.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said in a statement released earlier this month that it “considered that the security conditions in Cabo Delgado were too precarious to facilitate or facilitate the return of people to the province”.
“Those who have lost everything are returning to areas where services and humanitarian assistance are largely unavailable,” UNHCR said.
Those who returned had a complicated situation. Economic life is beginning to recover, but basic infrastructure and public services are still lacking. Few schools are open and medical services are scarce.
On the provincial capital of Pemba, where more than 100,000 displaced people sought refuge, an elderly woman sat outside a hut where her family of 15 lived two years ago after fleeing an insurgent attack. They live on cornmeal and white rice. She said they couldn’t find jobs and had no money to buy clothes or other necessities.
“Of course, we want to go back. This is not a home,” said the grandmother, speaking on condition of anonymity for her safety.
With their villages to the north destroyed, it will be more difficult to return to normal life, she said.
Weighing the risks and costs of returning, many have decided to stay put despite the deprivation they face in displacement camps.
“There is war and hunger there,” said another displaced person in the Nanhua camp. “We’re not going anywhere better.”
The threat of extremist violence remains a concern, said a mother who was sitting on a straw mat holding her small child. She said many were still haunted by their experiences at the hands of the insurgents: “It’s hard to sleep where you’ve seen snakes.”
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