Cabo Delgado: Army Abuses Are Losing the War, Report Warns

Mozambique's security forces are losing their counter-insurgency war in Cabo Delgado — not for lack of foreign training, but because abuses against civilians are destroying the community trust troops need to win. That warning comes from a new analysis highlighted in The New Humanitarian's briefing on October 9, which says Mozambican troops have repeatedly faced accusations of sexually exploiting displaced women, killing civilians, and committing war crimes against captured insurgents, despite receiving human rights training.

Nine years after jihadist fighters first struck the province's coast, the conflict still grinds on, and the latest reporting suggests the battlefield problem is political as much as military. When the soldiers supposed to protect communities become a source of fear, the analysis argues, residents stop cooperating — and an insurgency that depends on coercing or winning over the population becomes far harder to defeat.

Training without trust

The analysis, written by Institute for Security Studies researcher Borges Nhamirre, traces the army's struggles to the shock of the first attacks. When militants assaulted Cabo Delgado on October 5, 2017, the Mozambique Defence Armed Forces had almost no presence in the province and no preparation for a rural guerrilla campaign waged by local jihadists with external support. The force lacked combat capability, logistics, modern equipment, air combat assets, and military intelligence.

Since then, the FADM has benefited from extensive foreign training: Rwanda's defence force helped recover territory tied to the gas industry and trained troops in counter-terrorism, the Southern African Development Community mission dismantled militant bases, and the European Union, the United States, and Algeria all contributed training and support. But those investments have not translated into results on the ground, where communities still report inadequate protection and human rights violations by state forces — the very communities the army must win over to defeat the insurgency.

A grinding war with civilians caught in the middle

The human cost continues to mount. More than 6.6K people have been killed in the conflict since the insurgency began, and the UN's humanitarian office has warned that conflict-related incidents in the province rose 10 percent in the first half of this year compared with the same period in 2025, with over 400 recorded incidents including killings, home burnings, looting, and abductions. Roughly 1.38M people now live with the consequences of displacement, including some 662K internally displaced people and 722K who have returned to areas of origin.

October has brought fresh reminders of the violence's reach. According to the October 2026 Mozambique Conflict Monitor published on ReliefWeb, Islamic State Mozambique fighters have increasingly targeted civilians across Cabo Delgado's Mocimboa da Praia, Muidumbe, and Macomia districts. On October 4, militants released three hostages — a South African, a Zimbabwean, and a Mozambican — abducted during a September raid on a hunting camp in Niassa province, reportedly in exchange for a ransom of 3.2M meticais, roughly $53K. The monitor warns the payment may embolden the group to target foreigners for abduction, worrying humanitarian organizations and mining companies operating across the region.

Attacks on health care deepen the crisis

Even medical facilities in Cabo Delgado are not spared. Doctors Without Borders reported on October 8 that gunmen looted a health centre it supports in the village of Quelimane, in Mocímboa da Praia district, during a September 21 attack, stealing essential medicines and medical equipment. The organization's general coordinator in Mozambique, Pooja Iyer, warned that the looting endangers people with chronic diseases such as HIV, hypertension, and diabetes by interrupting their treatment.

The damage ripples through an already fragile health system. In Mocímboa da Praia district alone, Doctors Without Borders carried out more than 57K outpatient consultations and treated 12K patients with respiratory infections between January and June, while monitoring 132 people diagnosed with HIV. Every looted pharmacy shelf, the organization says, puts those gains at risk.

What winning would actually take

The uncomfortable conclusion of the new analysis is that military hardware and foreign trainers were never the missing ingredient in Cabo Delgado — accountability was. The seizure of district capitals by insurgents in 2021 forced the suspension of a $20B gas extraction project and brought in waves of external support, yet community trust kept eroding wherever troops behaved like occupiers rather than protectors.

Ending the war, the analysis suggests, requires the FADM to do the harder work of disciplining its own ranks and protecting civilians as visibly as it fights militants. In Cabo Delgado, the front line runs through village trust — and right now, that is the ground the army keeps losing.

Sources: The New Humanitarian; ReliefWeb; Doctors Without Borders via APO Group. Additional reporting by the Institute for Security Studies.