Nic Dawes, Columnist

East Africa Is Backsliding Dangerously

The U.S. is enabling and ignoring the democratic retrenchment along the continent’s Indian Ocean coast.

December 4, 2020 at 7:30 AM UTC

Nic Dawes is a writer and commentator on Africa and the developing world. He is a former deputy executive director of Human Rights Watch and was editor of South Africa's Mail & Guardian.

Keeping up appearances.
Photographer: Marco Longari/AFP

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In Gabarone last week, the Southern African Development Community met to discuss the crisis in Mozambique’s oil-rich north, where Ahlu Sunna Wa Jammu, a brutal insurgent group associated with the Islamic State, has taken over swathes of territory. This month alone, 50 people were beheaded in a series of attacks across Cabo Delgado province, and some 45,000 displaced.

Fighting now threatens to spill over the border with Tanzania, where incursions have already taken place.