Good afternoon. The insurgents who got into the Cabo Delgado town of Mocímboa da Praia on Tuesday evening and spent some time addressing people in a local mosque (see below) caught the authorities with their trousers down. There are conflicting reports about how much time the insurgents spent in Mocímboa (although the mosque itself was on the outskirts of the town, so they do not appear to have got into the town centre), but it looks likely that they were around for over an hour, and they left the mosque unmolested by the security forces, who only showed up later.
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Certainly this is an embarrassment for the security forces, whose strategy for Cabo Delgado includes giving particularly strong protection to the towns of Palma and Mocímboa, which are located close to the forthcoming massive gas projects led by TotalEnergies of France and ExxonMobil of the United States. These towns, both of which insurgents have been able to get into several times recently, do not deserve the term of “fortresses” given to them in the media.
