Cabo Delgado, the northernmost province of Mozambique, has been in armed conflict since 2017. It has produced repeated waves of displacement, the most recent large one documented by Médecins Sans Frontières when more than 92,000 people fled their homes within weeks.

It is a conflict most readers have never heard of, in a province sitting on one of the largest natural gas discoveries of the century.

The pattern of the violence

The insurgency is conducted by an armed group known locally as al-Shabaab — no relation to the Somali organisation of that name — which has been linked to the Islamic State. Attacks are typically on villages and small towns rather than on military positions, which is why the displacement figures move so sharply: an attack on one settlement empties several.

Displacement in Cabo Delgado has a distinctive rhythm. People flee, conditions stabilise, some return to plant or harvest, and a subsequent attack displaces them again. Humanitarian agencies describe populations displaced multiple times over several years, which erodes assets in a way a single displacement does not: each move costs tools, seeds, livestock and savings that are not recovered before the next one.

The provincial capital, Pemba, has absorbed large numbers of displaced people into a city without the infrastructure for them.

The gas, and the argument about it

Offshore Cabo Delgado holds very large natural gas reserves, and major international energy projects have been developed there. A significant onshore project was suspended after an attack on the town of Palma in 2021 and has been subject to prolonged uncertainty since.

Two accounts of the relationship between the gas and the conflict are put forward, and both are held by serious analysts.

The first is that the insurgency draws on longstanding local grievance — a province that is among Mozambique’s poorest, with a marginalised Muslim population in a majority-Christian country, watching enormous resource wealth being extracted with little visible local benefit. On this reading the gas is part of the cause.

The second is that the insurgency began before the gas projects reached scale, that its ideology and external links are not reducible to local economics, and that treating resource grievance as the explanation understates the group’s own agency and its links to a wider network.

These are not incompatible. A movement can have local roots that make recruitment possible and external connections that shape what it becomes.

Foreign forces

Mozambique’s army has been supported by Rwandan forces and by a regional deployment from the Southern African Development Community, the latter having since drawn down.

The Rwandan deployment has been credited with recapturing territory including Palma, and with improving security around the gas projects specifically. Critics note that the pattern of protection tracks the location of the investment closely, and that securing an export project is not the same as securing a province.

Supporters of the deployment respond that securing infrastructure is a legitimate objective, that the alternative was the project’s abandonment and the loss of the revenue Mozambique needs, and that territorial gains have benefited civilians regardless of the motive.

A note on what we can verify

The most recent displacement figures we can source with confidence date from documented waves in 2025. We have not been able to verify current numbers for September 2026, and we are not going to present older figures as though they described today.

Access for independent journalists in Cabo Delgado is heavily restricted, and much of what circulates comes from agencies with operational reasons to publish and from a government with reasons to reassure investors. That is the same problem we described in Myanmar and in Balochistan: where reporting is thin, the honest thing is to say what is known, name the date it refers to, and resist filling the gap.

Sources

• Médecins Sans Frontières, reporting on displacement waves in northern Mozambique, including over 92,000 people displaced within weeks
• UN OCHA and IOM displacement tracking for Cabo Delgado
• Published analyses of the Cabo Delgado insurgency, its origins and its external links
• Reporting on the Palma attack of 2021 and the suspension of onshore gas development
• Our reports on Myanmar and Balochistan, September 2026