South Africa’s Counterinsurgency in Cabo Delgado: Examining the Role of Mozambican Migrants to Establish a People-Centric Approach

Abstract

Most scholarship on terrorism in Cabo Delgado (Mozambique) has focused on the nature and causes of the insurgency, who the insurgents are, where the insurgents come from, their underlying needs, and how the current military operations may be successful from a state-centric perspective. As a result, the role of non-state actors, such as migrants, has been left out. This is a qualitative study that relies on secondary data sources to offer a critical survey of the work done in the context of terrorism in Cabo Delgado. Using the counterinsurgency theory, the paper argues for the inclusion of the voice of Mozambican migrants in South Africa’s involvement in counterinsurgency in Cabo Delgado as one of the ways of developing a population-centric non-military approach. This is founded on direct and indirect ways of securing the population’s support, thereby isolating the insurgents in Mozambique. An awareness of the views of these migrants can shed light on what perpetuates the insurgency in Mozambique. The paper suggests new empirical studies that include the seemingly forgotten role of migrants, in a non-military and people-centered approach in seeking to undermine global terror networks.