Preaching, coercion, and sectarianism: How the Islamic State is building a stronghold in Mozambique

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Key takeaways

• ISM is developing an enclave that stretches along more than 100 kilometers of the Cabo Delgado coast and 50 km inland. Within this area, and despite a military presence, the group has some freedom of movement, maintains its main base, and seeks legitimacy with the population.
• Since 2023, ISM’s approach to communities has been increasingly sectarian and based on religious grounds. The Islamic State has encouraged this approach centrally and reinforced it through its own media channels.
• ISM’s continued targeting of civilians with no effective state response, particularly to the south of this emerging enclave, will further undermine state legitimacy.
• To the north, continued significant investment in maintaining Rwanda’s military presence in order to secure Mozambique LNG, while ISM continues to attack communities elsewhere in the province, may erode the project’s social license to operate.

In March 2026, a coastal villager in the Mocímboa da Praia district told a journalist that “when you come across the military, your heart is in your mouth. It’s better to come across insurgents than soldiers.”¹ Just a few years ago, the villager’s remarks would have been surprising: Prior to 2022, the insurgents were brutal, once beheading up to 50 villagers in a single incident and routinely destroying homes, businesses, and public facilities. But over the past few years, Islamic State Mozambique (ISM) has been taking a less violent approach to coastal communities in Cabo Delgado province, where it is seeking to develop a distinct area of influence, marked by the N380 highway and the sea to the west and east, and between Mocímboa da Praia town in the north and Quissanga district to the south (see map below). 

Within this area of influence, the insurgents have attempted to define a civilian constituency of support for their actions. They have also set out a broad political position that rejects the secular state and advocates for rule based on their interpretation of Islamic law. In this, they have not strayed far from the positions advocated by some of the group’s leaders in the years before the insurgency. However, this attempt to develop a coastal enclave has grown with the insurgents’ affiliation with the Islamic State (IS) in 2022, though their relationship with IS goes back as far as 2018.² 

This report demonstrates how ISM’s approach has become more sectarian as it has sought to build this coastal enclave. We see this in a drop in civilian targeting within its emerging area of influence, and a less violent, though often coercive, engagement with communities. ISM violence toward civilians continues elsewhere. While couched in religious sectarian terms, these patterns are also influenced by long-standing ethnic and political configurations. Consequently, its presence will be hard to undo through military means alone. 

ISM’s strategic repositioning

ISM's strategic shift was likely precipitated by a change in fortunes: The group was nearly defeated in 2021 when Rwanda and the Southern African Development Community Mission in Mozambique (SAMIM) intervened militarily. At that point, ISM insurgents had been close to taking control of Cabo Delgado province. They seized the small port town of Mocímboa da Praia in August 2020 and briefly occupied three other district capitals that year. Their attack on Palma in March 2021, next door to a planned liquefied natural gas (LNG) project, prompted international intervention. Rwandan and SAMIM operations broke up insurgent bases in southern Mocímboa da Praia and drove them away from Mocímboa da Praia town, greatly reducing the group’s numbers and disrupting logistics systems. ISM needed a new approach that could withstand this new military presence. 

Strengthened IS affiliation and new leadership

Two significant developments helped shape the new strategy ISM would adopt. First, IS recognized the Mozambican insurgents as a separate province, with the first IS claim for actions in Mozambique released on 9 May 2022. Prior to that, Mozambique had been part of IS Central Africa Province (ISCAP). 

Second, there was a change in the group’s leadership between 2022 and 2023. ISM’s leadership and its structures have always been opaque. However, we know that IS Central was advocating for a change in the group’s approach, which came with a change in leadership. The insurgents’ most prominent military commander, Bonomade Machude Omar, attended a meeting in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where he faced criticism from IS for the tactics pursued in Mozambique. Omar was advised that “in the areas under their influence, they stop killing civilians and start charging fees to those who want to live in these areas.”³ The contact came at a time when an IS figure with Jordanian nationality, Hytham al-Far, was visiting East Africa. Al-Far likely contributed to IS’ increasing influence on ISM.⁴ The Defense Armed Forces of Mozambique (FADM) killed operational commander Omar in August 2023,⁵ and Farido Sulemani took his place. Farido is from Mocímboa da Praia, as was Omar, and he still has family in the town. 

At some point in 2022 or 2023, the group’s spiritual leader, Sheikh Hassan, also known as Abu Yassir Hassan, a Tanzanian national, was replaced by a figure known as Ulanga, who is also Tanzanian.⁶ When and why Hassan was replaced is not clear. Mozambican authorities claimed he was killed in action in July 2023, though SAMIM listed him as dead in February of that year.⁷ 

By the end of 2023, the group had been established as an IS affiliate, had new leadership in place, and had adopted a new approach to communities. 

A shift in targeting

Under the leadership of Farido and Ulanga, ISM became more sectarian. The group more actively sought support in predominantly Muslim coastal communities, while it continued with an aggressive approach to civilians elsewhere, subjecting them to violence and expropriation. This changed approach is reflected clearly in ACLED data for the rate and distribution of civilian targeting by ISM, and the rate and distribution of its activities that do not include direct violence. 

In 2022, we see ISM civilian targeting fall sharply in the coastal strip between Mocímboa da Praia and Quissanga and shift west as far as Mueda, and south to Namuno and Chiúre. This reflects the immediate impact of international military intervention in breaking up and dispersing the group (see maps below). This pattern has been sustained in the years since. Civilian targeting has remained negligible near the coast, despite ISM’s main base being located there, while civilian targeting elsewhere, particularly in the south, remains a significant element of the conflict.

Prior to 2023, the insurgents had taken a wholly violent approach to civilian communities. Since that year, the reduction in civilian targeting on the coast has been accompanied by a significant increase in other activities such as visits to communities to seek support or urge non-cooperation with state forces, occasional preaching, and the purchase of basic supplies in villages, sometimes dictating the price and value of exchanged goods through coercion. In the enclave, ISM has also sought to control movement through roadblocks. Since 2023, the group has engaged in such activities extensively along the coast, particularly in Macomia and southern Mocímboa da Praia districts (see maps below).

This pattern of behavior illustrates how ISM has been taking steps to carve out its area of influence in parts of Cabo Delgado’s coast. ISM’s targeting of civilians had led to citizens fleeing, and without people, territorial control is of little value. In shifting tactically, the group reveals elements of a political agenda: territorial ambitions and aspirations to assert control based on Islamic principles. 

Islamic State’s global and local messaging converge in Mozambique

IS media channels, as well as local messaging by the insurgents, help assert this shift in approach and seek to embed the group in coastal society. Prior to 2022, public statements by the insurgents were rare but not unheard of. An early example was a video clip recorded after the takeover of Quissanga town in March 2020. Three men were shown before an IS flag, declaring that they do not want the flag of Frelimo, but rather that of IS. From the second half of 2022 and into 2023, messaging became much more frequent. In an August 2022 clip released by IS, a speaker addressing then-President Filipe Nyusi said the fight would continue “until the application of sharia law in Mozambique.”⁸ In October and November 2022, and February 2023, the group distributed handwritten notes stating that they were fighting for the application of sharia, and that Muslims had nothing to fear from them. The options to others — “Christians and Jews” — were to accept Islam; pay jizya, a tax imposed on non-Muslims; or face “endless war,” options that are well-established in Islamic State rhetoric.⁹ 

ISM’s alignment with IS messaging can be seen quite clearly in coverage of Mozambique in IS’ weekly al-Naba newsletter. A feature of its coverage of Mozambique has been reporting on the group’s “dawah,” or mission activities, in Muslim communities. The practice was first mentioned in Mozambique reports in 2023 and has continued every year since. Locations mentioned in al-Naba’s reports are mostly in coastal areas where ISM’s new approach to communities was emerging, but stretch as far south as the Erati district in Nampula in 2025 and deep into the Palma district to the north in January 2026 (see map below). In the same period, there were just two such reports for its closest affiliate, ISCAP, and none for IS Somalia, with which ISM has documented connections.¹⁰ Clearly, IS sees value in positioning itself in this way in Mozambique, targeting primarily Muslim communities where both IS central and the insurgents themselves feel they can gain some traction. IS benefits from demonstrating progress with its political project in at least one of its three East African provinces. In neither Somalia nor the Democratic Republic of Congo are its affiliates as close to controlling a civilian population as they are in Mozambique. 

Al-Naba's descriptions of “preaching” episodes and other encounters with civilians, though plentiful, are quite generic. In most reports, insurgents emphasize “the importance of applying sharia” or “issues of polytheism, loyalty, and disavowal.” Occasionally, al-Naba reports that ISM preachers have reminded people of the “danger of aiding the infidels.”¹¹ 

The clearest statement of ISM’s official message is in clips shot by onlookers when a group of fighters visited a mosque in Mocímboa da Praia town on 7 October 2025. One of the group addressed a mixed crowd of women, men, and children (see pictures below). He first presented ISM as a legitimate authority in opposition to Frelimo. In this, he echoed one of the group’s earliest messages from 2020, from Quissanga. He then told his Muslim audience that it had a duty to support the group in jihad, and that there were now “two governments, one of the non-believers and the other of the Muslims.” He went on to warn them not to collaborate with the authorities and to attend none of their meetings. If they heard anyone was arrested, he warned, “you will meet the fate of the accursed pharaoh,” an allusion to Mozambique’s secular authorities. Finally, in stating that only the “army of Islam” can bring peace, he rhetorically asked if the Rwandan army was around.

A sectarian approach to communities emerges

The land between the N380 and the sea, from Quissanga to Mocímboa da Praia, is primarily, though not exclusively, inhabited by the Mwani people. The ISM speaker in the mosque in October last year used the Mwani language. “You know the language we are speaking,” he said, “you know where we are from,” suggesting that ethnicity is an important element of the conflict. There is a perception among some Mwani that they are the victims of Makonde elites entrenched in the government and public administration of Frelimo, and that this shapes the conflict.¹² Ethnic, religious, and political divisions have in the past sparked political violence in Mocímboa da Praia town between Mwani and Makonde people, in an environment where the predominantly Muslim Mwani are seen as Renamo-supporting and the Christian Makonde further inland as Frelimo-supporting.¹³ ISM’s varied approach to communities reflects these intersecting political, religious, and ethnic identities. The approach ISM took to Muslim Mwani communities on the coast was one of coercive co-option. On the main roads and in southern districts, it has remained more violently extractive. 

ISM attempts to co-opt coastal communities

While couched in IS ideology and promoted by an armed group, the insurgents’ message is not new to people in the area. What is now packaged in IS messaging has its roots in the regional networks of preachers and activists from which ISM came. These advocate a rejection of the modern state and the reshaping of communities on the basis of fundamentalist interpretations of Islam. Ali Mabondo, a current ISM leader, was one of the foremost advocates for this in Mocímboa da Praia as long ago as 2014.¹⁴ Articulated most clearly in recorded speeches of the late Aboud Rogo of Mombasa, this interpretation focused on the rejection of democratic government and its institutions, such as secular schooling and social practices considered un-Islamic. Another insurgency leader, Muamudo Saha, who hails from Macomia and is thought to still be active, has a similar background as a religio-political activist and is known for seeking a ban on alcohol sales in Macomia in 2015.¹⁵ 

Less than a decade later, some of the same activists were back, but armed. Throughout 2023, ISM visited villages along the Macomia and Mocímboa da Praia coast at least 26 times. Most visits, at least 15, were to villages in Mucojo Administrative Post, situated approximately 80 kilometers south of Mocímboa da Praia. In these engagements, they had three things in mind: sourcing food, warning against collaboration, and, at times, imposing their version of sharia. 

One of the first instances took place in March 2023, in Marere village in the south of Mocímboa da Praia district, close to the Messalo river. There, insurgents gave youngsters money to buy them food, but also threatened to kill one for attempting to escape. This combination of opportunity and threat would become typical of ISM’s encounters with communities. At times, these interactions incorporate attempts to enforce their interpretation of sharia. The same month, insurgents visited Pangane fishing village in Mucojo, offering to buy goods on the first day, but coming back the second day to destroy cigarettes and alcohol. In Mocímboa da Praia, they visited two villages, urging an end to secular education and replacing it with Islamic schooling.¹⁶ The coercive approach was sustained into October when at least 20 Pangane residents were kidnapped by the insurgents, likely in forced recruitment.¹⁷ A visit to a mosque in Quissanga district in November 2025, documented in al-Naba, was also marked by insurgents taking food from the village.¹⁸ 

These approaches reflect the message in the first note left by the insurgents during an attack in Nangade district in 2022. In that note, they addressed Muslims to say that their fight was “against the kafirs [non-believers] and the Christian army and those fighting against us,” and that “we have no problem with you, or your property.” Other actions, however, point to how often ISM coerces and intimidates communities in this area, as the May 2026 hijacking of fishing boats off Macomia and Mocímboa da Praia indicates. 

ISM’s approach to communities beyond the N380

IS and ISM have presented the options for Mozambicans in Cabo Delgado in stark sectarian terms. For those who are not Muslim, ISM has presented a choice between submission to Islam, payment of a jizya tax, or “endless war.” We also see this in their behavior along the coast and on the fringes of their area of influence, particularly on the N380 highway, which marks its western boundary. However, communities in Cabo Delgado’s southern districts experience an older, familiar pattern of civilian killings and mass displacement. The insurgents’ approach to those they term as non-Muslims obscures differences of ethnicity and political affiliation. 

ISM seeks to create a hostile environment for non-Muslims and those connected to the state or the security forces. Initially, in 2023, the group sought to establish some level of territorial control through controlling access and movement in and around its area of influence, particularly through roadblocks. Used to identify military personnel, these roadblocks were an assertion of control and a means of intimidation. Between June 2023 and July 2024, the group set up at least nine roadblocks that were not explicitly violent, but sought to control movement in and out of ISM-controlled areas. These included Quissanga town, Mucojo, and spots along the N380, where travelers were questioned specifically on their identity or affiliation with security forces. 

Roadblocks later also became a significant source of finance for ISM, particularly in 2024 and 2025, through ransom for detained vehicles and passengers on the N380 outside their area of influence. Such events are notable for their lack of reported fatalities, suggesting that the money paid by victims might be viewed as jizya paid by non-Muslims. 

There is also fragmentary evidence of extortion of businesses that use the province’s main roads, which could also be viewed as the imposition of jizya. In April 2024, ISM stopped a commercial vehicle from Quissanga and threatened to destroy its cargo unless payment was made. This was in the context of unconfirmed extortion threats to traffic to and from the north.¹⁹ In 2026, ISM fired on passenger buses of one particular company in the Mueda district twice in less than two weeks, suggesting that the company may not have made a requested payment. 

Yet in the province’s southern districts, ISM’s brutal approach to civilians remains, though their focus is more on exercising control over informal mining operations and bringing in recruits from Nampula. They also threaten some of the province’s strategic infrastructure. From April to June 2026, ISM threatened large-scale commercial and informal mining sites in the Ancuabe and Montepuez districts. 

The only locally organized military response to this coastal Islamist insurgency has come from the Local Force. This communal self-defense militia grew out of Frelimo local structures in the absence of an effective state security response. It is seen by some as a “Makonde militia,” as it is strongest in the predominantly Makonde, but also the Christian Mueda district.²⁰ Now officially part of FADM, the Local Force never mobilized in predominantly Muslim coastal areas from which ISM sprang and now seeks to dominate. 

The need to contain and degrade ISM control

The territory in which ISM is now based, but does not control, is relatively small. At roughly 7,000 square km, it is about the same size as the Chicago metropolitan area. Within the territory, ISM can expropriate resources from communities and maintain its headquarters. But it cannot exercise any “government” functions, as, for example, violent jihadist groups have achieved in parts of West Africa.²¹ Extortion rather than taxation is practiced, even if a security promise is given. No Islamic education structures have emerged. Alcohol has likely been successfully banned, but that is not a significant governance outcome in a predominantly Muslim society where alcohol consumption is taboo. 

ISM is engaged in a political project. Set-piece statements place their demands in the frame of wider IS ideology but echo past positions of current leaders of the insurgency that focus on rule by Islamic principles. These dominate discourse and practice, but also mask evidence for the place of ethnicity and political affiliation in the conflict.

The challenge for the state is to ensure that its minimal presence in this area, primarily through Mozambican and Rwandan security forces, is maintained and that ISM cannot develop into any form of quasi-governmental authority. Such a development would greatly ease recruitment and financing. Beyond that, it must itself regain authority and legitimacy, not just in villages such as Mucojo along the coast, but in the principal towns at its edges. Repeated incursions by insurgents into Mocímboa da Praia indicate, at best, some level of popular support and, at worst, tolerance for the insurgents. To the south, Quissanga has little functioning public infrastructure.²² To the west, Macomia's public infrastructure is overwhelmed by displaced people, while relations between the community and security forces are poor. There are military positions along the perimeter and even within ISM’s area of influence, but the reluctance of state forces to respond to insurgent attacks demonstrates that presence alone does not equate to authority. 

Limited state capacity will mean an extended deployment of Rwandan troops in the province and continued support to security sector reform from powers such as the European Union and the United States. Those deployed, and those supporting from afar, will need to see progress against ISM’s emerging enclave in order to maintain support. The Rwandan troops are there to protect the Mozambique LNG project near Palma. The risk the project faces is that resentment that people feel, caused by the project getting better security than they do, erodes the companies’ social license to operate, undermining already weak state legitimacy and ensuring that some will continue to think it “better to come across insurgents than soldiers.” 

This report was produced as part of the Mozambique Conflict Monitor in collaboration with Zitamar News.