Law and security specialist Rodrigues Lapucheque considered that fears of reprisals may be limiting Tanzania's more decisive action in fighting the armed groups terrorizing Cabo Delgado province.

"Tanzania began, at a later moment, to have certain reservations, certain fears that when it entered heavily [in the fight against the armed groups operating in Cabo Delgado], these radical Al-Shebab movements could create reprisals, which could be unpredictable," Lapucheque, a university lecturer and colonel of Motorized Infantry in the Mozambique Armed Defense Forces (FADM), told Lusa news agency in an interview.

The fact that international fighters who have joined the insurgents in Cabo Delgado "regularly" cross into Tanzania and operate in the Mozambican districts near that country can generate fears in the leadership in Dar es Salaam, he explained.

"That's why it was noted that Tanzania was the one that had a lot of reservations about intervening militarily in Mozambique, in Cabo Delgado," under the Southern African Development Community (SADC) military mission.

But the Tanzanian authorities' inaction is not a safe option, because once chaos is installed in northern Mozambique, the armed groups will expand their action into Tanzania as well, emphasized Rodrigues Lapucheque.

This reading and the military intervention by SADC and Rwanda in Cabo Delgado, he continued, convinced Dar-es-Salam to send a military contingent in support of the Mozambican government forces, although without the "weight" that Maputo might expect, given the historical and political ties between the two countries.

"It's not that intervention that we would expect, we expected it to be at the forefront," stressed that academic and FADM officer.

Rodrigues Lapucheque warned that the apparent inertia of the Tanzanian authorities in stopping the flow of fighters to Cabo Delgado may also be a result of an operational and logistical inability to control the extensive border line between the two countries.

Lapucheque pointed out that the expectation of a more active role for Tanzania in the fight against "radical Islamic jihadism" in northern Mozambique is fueled by the fact that the country has supported militarily the Liberation Front of Mozambique (Frelimo) in the fight against Portuguese colonialism, hosting the organization's headquarters and training camps.