Mozambique Needs to Send an International SOS to Fight ISIS
Help is at hand for the country’s fight against an Islamist insurgency, but its president stands in the way.
Displaced people from Palma gather to receive humanitarian aid.
Photographer: Alfredo Zuniga/AFP
Mozambique’s President Filipe Nyusi has finally softened his stiff-necked resistance to foreign assistance in the fight against an Islamist insurgency in the country’s north. Help has been at hand for many months — from other African nations as well as from the U.S. and Europe — but Nyusi would have none of it. Instead, he put his faith in private security firms from Russia and South Africa.
On Thursday, the president finally acknowledged that international assistance would be needed. But the admission comes with a stipulation: Foreign governments must agree their forces will only play a supporting role. Nyusi offered no specifics, saying only: “We know in which areas we need support and which areas are up to us, Mozambicans, to solve.”