War / Africa
Ethiopian Civil War
Federal drone strikes on Mekelle and a deadlocked multi-front insurgency push Ethiopia toward renewed full-scale war.
Northern Mozambique
The Mozambique Insurgency began in October 2017, when Ansar al-Sunna Wa-Jama'a, a local Islamist group known as Al-Shabaab, attacked police stations in Cabo Delgado, the country's poorest province and the site of $20 billion in newly discovered offshore gas.
The grievance was local: Muslim communities excluded from a gas boom on their own land. By 2019 the group had pledged allegiance to ISIS, and by 2021 it had seized a strategic port and driven TotalEnergies out of its flagship LNG project. Rwanda sent 3,000 troops to retake the ground the Mozambican army could not hold, and stayed.
The country that secures the gas fields is not the one that owns them.
Cabo Delgado remains in active war with no ceasefire or phase change.
EIM sustains coordinated land assaults, mortar strikes near Macomia, and maritime hijackings of at least 12 vessels off Mocímboa da Praia while expanding into Nampula Province and framing operations in explicit caliphate terms.
It matters because the war continues to tie down the main belligerents, pull in outside backers, and shape the security balance across Africa.
Weekly net escalation pressure, last 90 days
Rwanda's coercive leverage is now structurally entrenched: with RDF at approximately 5,000 troops, SAMIM withdrawn, and Operation Copper expired without renewal in March 2025.
EIM's public caliphate framing, documented propaganda campaigns, and geographic expansion into Nampula Province mark a qualitative shift from insurgent disruption toward parallel governance ambition.
The USAID collapse and a record 23 percent drop in OECD development assistance in 2025 remove the humanitarian and stabilization funding that partially offset displacement pressure on over one million IDPs.
PRO-GOVERNMENT
PRO-INSURGENCY
War / Africa
Federal drone strikes on Mekelle and a deadlocked multi-front insurgency push Ethiopia toward renewed full-scale war.
War / Africa
Sudan's army fights on across Khartoum while a chlorine munitions dossier and a US embargo push reshape the conflict's accountability.
Rwanda Defense Force (RDF) deploys approximately 5,000 troops across five northern districts of Cabo Delgado.
RPF-linked commercial firms embed Rwandan economic interests in LNG concession zones.
Ansar al-Sunna Wa-Jama'a / Islamic State Mozambique Province (EIM) is the primary insurgent node, conducting coordinated land attacks, mortar strikes.
Islamic State Sahel Province functions as a transnational hub routing foreign fighters and diffusing tactics to EIM across the broader IS affiliate network.
ISIS-Somalia operates as a parallel tactics-diffusion and revenue node supporting EIM's operational capacity in the Mozambique Channel.