War / Africa
Ethiopian Civil War
Pretoria is dead, Abiy holds a supermajority, and three simultaneous insurgencies now face an Eritrea-Egypt external axis.
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.
EIM is conducting coordinated land assaults, mortar strikes, and coastal hijackings simultaneously while openly declaring caliphate intent and documenting executions for propaganda, marking a qualitative shift from insurgent disruption toward parallel governance ambition.
Rwanda's RDF has consolidated at roughly 5,000 troops and now functions as the sole credible external security guarantor, with SAMIM withdrawn and Operation Copper expired without renewal, creating a structural dependence Maputo cannot substitute.
Weekly net escalation pressure, last 90 days
Rwanda's coercive leverage is now structurally entrenched: with RDF at 5,000 troops, SAMIM withdrawn, and Operation Copper expired without renewal, Maputo has no credible substitute security partner.
EIM's public caliphate framing, documented propaganda campaigns, and expansion into Nampula Province mark a qualitative shift from insurgent disruption toward parallel governance ambition.
The collapse of multilateral funding architecture, including US peacekeeping arrears of $1.8 billion and a proposed 60% congressional cut, is accelerating a structural shift across African security toward fragmented.
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 areas, tying Kigali's military presence to extractive revenue stakes.
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.
PRO-GOVERNMENT
PRO-INSURGENCY
War / Africa
Pretoria is dead, Abiy holds a supermajority, and three simultaneous insurgencies now face an Eritrea-Egypt external axis.
War / Africa
RSF masses on El Obeid as the US warns of imminent massacre and the RSF's parallel state consolidates across western.