A non-governmental organization (NGO) called "Aid in Action" warned yesterday that the war in Cabo Delgado is changing the territorial and demographic planning of the province, highlighting the possibility that the violence is linked to "extractive interests".

According to the organization's report, quoted by Lusa, "the war is altering the territorial and demographic order of Cabo Delgado, leading hundreds of thousands of displaced people to abandon their livelihoods".

For the NGO, the causes of the conflict are diverse. The research, produced over a period of one year, considers that one cannot ignore the connections between the displacement of populations, economic interests and the geo-strategic importance of the province, which has strong extractive potential and serves as a legal and illegal trade route due to its privileged location on the Mozambique Channel.

"It cannot be ignored that these new forms of violence, as in many conflicts around the world, are usually linked to extractivist interests [...] The 'realpolitik' of the struggles for control of Africa's energy resources seems to prevail over the ideals of defending human rights, democratic government, human development and peace-building that are mentioned in the declarations and documents of the main international players," it adds.

The NGO also warns of an alleged "militaristic focus" in the efforts to stop the war, in a province with a history of "slow and structural conflicts" over the last 100 years, namely the wars of colonial occupation, of liberation against the Portuguese colonial regime, the civil war and the current conflict.

"This period, just over a century, is extraordinarily short for processes of territorial, social and mental stabilization to occur and be established, making it possible to create resilient alternatives to the use of violence in conflict resolution and social stabilization," reads the NGO document, which adds that "constant violence has weakened the individual and collective capacities of the people of Cabo Delgado."

On the other hand, says Aid in Action, the model of humanitarian support promoted during the conflict has led to dependency on the population and also on the authorities, who have already received millions in international support to deal with the humanitarian crisis that has arisen.

"This humanitarian operation is generating dependencies not only in Mozambique's public authorities, but also in the populations suffering from the conflict, increasing the ways of life where people are conditioned by a distributive economic model instead of models based on encouraging productivity through the generation and use of their capacities," the document states.

Speaking to Lusa, the director-general of Aid in Action in Mozambique, Jesús Perez, said that the priorities now must be to guarantee security in the gradual return of the population to their areas of origin, as a result of the stabilization of the situation, and to ensure that the population has the capacity to produce independently.

"We need to promote people's skills so that they can engage in different aspects of the labor market [...] We mustn't forget that 80% of the population in the province is rural," concluded Jesús Perez.

The province of Cabo Delgado has been facing an armed insurgency for five years, with some attacks claimed by the extremist group Islamic State.