Tag Archives: Islamist fighters

Mozambicans return to uncertain future after Islamists pushed back

By Baz Ratner and Shafiek Tassiem

PALMA, Mozambique (Reuters) – Rwandan forces patrolled burnt-out streets once besieged by Islamist fighters in northern Mozambique, saying it was now safe for civilians to return to the gas-rich region, despite U.N. warnings of a continuing militant threat.

Soldiers laid out rifles and rocket launchers seized from the militants. The Rwandan military’s spokesman said they had already brought 25,000 people back home. “It is very safe for them to go back,” Ronald Rwivanga told Reuters.

In July, allied Rwandan-Mozambican troops moved in to recapture parts of northern Cabo Delgado – an area hosting $60 billion worth of gas projects that the militants have been attacking since 2017.

Mozambique’s government has said the fighters are on the run and some local officials have encouraged civilians to return, according to media reports.

But United Nations officials are not so sure.

A document compiled in September for U.N. agencies and other aid groups, seen by Reuters, said it was not clear whether militant capabilities had been much reduced. “Fighting continues in certain locations and civilian authorities have not been re-established,” it added.

On Thursday, children played in the streets of the town of Palma and vendors sold goods from kiosks, six months after the militants attacked the settlement, killing dozens and forcing tens of thousands to flee.

But 60km south in the port of Mocimboa da Praia – a hub needed for cargo deliveries for the gas projects – the streets were largely deserted, flanked by windowless, rubble-strewn buildings and overturned military vehicles.

Graffiti, using a local name for the militant group, reads: “If you want to make Al-Shabaab laugh, threaten them with death.”

“THE WAR THAT REMAINS IS HUNGER”

Aside from the Rwandans, a contingent of forces from the regional bloc, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) is also patrolling northern Cabo Delgado.

Rwivanga said the Rwandans have been moving civilians back into the area they control – a region around a $20 billion liquefied natural gas (LNG) project run by oil major TotalEnergies, which was forced to a halt by the Palma attack.

Yet security analysts say the Mozambican military deficiencies that allowed the insurgency to take hold in the north – including soldiers that are ill equipped, undisciplined and poorly paid – won’t be easily reversed.

Even with other forces there, they say, security is uncertain outside of small, heavily guarded areas.

Returnees, meanwhile, are more preoccupied with where the next meal is coming from. The World Food Program said this week that the first shipment of aid had reached Palma since the March attack.

“Now the situation is calm, the war that remains is hunger and lack of jobs,” Ibrahimo Suleman, 60, a resident who works for a kitchen-fitting company said.

Many others remain too afraid or unwilling to return, with almost 750,000 people still displaced as of this month, according to the International Organization of Migration.

(Reporting by Baz Ratner and Shafiek Tassiem in Cabo Delgado, Mozambique, Manuel Mucari in Maputo and Emma Rumney in Johannesburg; Writing by Emma Rumney; Editing by Tim Cocks and Andrew Heavens)

‘Brainwashed’ children of Islamist fighters worry Germany-spy chief

Math and English textbooks found in Islamic State facility that trained children

By Andrea Shalal and Sabine Siebold

BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany’s domestic intelligence chief wants the government to review laws restricting the surveillance of minors to guard against the children of Islamist fighters returning to the country as “sleeper agents” who could carry out attacks.

Hans-Georg Maassen, head of the BfV agency, told Reuters that security officials were preparing for the return of Islamic State fighters to Germany along with potentially “brainwashed” children, although no big wave appeared imminent.

Nearly 1,000 people are believed to have left Germany to join up with the Islamist militants. As the group’s presence in the Middle East crumbles, some are returning with family members.

Only a small number of the 290 toddlers and children who left Germany or were born in Syria and Iraq had returned thus far, Maassen said. Many were likely to still be in the region, or perhaps moving to areas such as Afghanistan, where Islamic State remains strong.

He said Germany should review laws restricting surveillance of minors under the age of 14 to prepare for the increased risk of attacks by children as young as nine who grew up in Islamic State schools.

“We see that children who grew up with Islamic State were brainwashed in the schools and the kindergartens of the IS,” he said. “They were confronted early with the IS ideology … learned to fight, and were in some cases forced to participate in the abuse of prisoners, or even the killing of prisoners.”

He said security officials believed such children could later carry out violent attacks in Germany.

“We have to consider that these children could be living time bombs,” he said. “There is a danger that these children come back brainwashed with a mission to carry out attacks.”

Maassen’s comments were the first specific estimate of the number of children affected, following his initial warning in October that such children could pose a threat after being indoctrinated in battlefield areas.

The radicalization of minors has been a big topic in Germany given that three of five Islamist attacks in Germany in 2016 were carried out by minors, and a 12-year-old boy was also detained after trying to bomb a Christmas market in Ludwigshafen.

The German government says it has evidence that more than 960 people left Germany for Iraq and Syria through November 2017 to fight for the Islamic State jihadist group, of which about a third are believed to have returned to Germany. Another 150 likely died in combat, according to government data.

Maassen said Islamic State also continued to target vulnerable youths in Germany through the Internet and social media, often providing slick advertising or age-appropriate propaganda to recruit them to join the jihadist group.

“Islamic State uses headhunters who scour the Internet for children that can be approached and tries to radicalize these children, or recruit these children for terrorist attacks,” he said.

(Reporting by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Angus MacSwan)