Mozambican analysts highlight the advances made by the Southern African Development Community (SADC) to support Mozambique in combating terrorism in Cabo Delgado, but are wary of the scope of the mission due to the scarcity of public information and the budget defined by the regional bloc's Council of Ministers for the Standby Force mission.

SADC, it was announced this week, will dedicate $12 million to the fight against insurgents plaguing Mozambique since 2017.

At a meeting of SADC heads of diplomacy, Angola's Tete Antonio said that contributions must be made by July 9, and that the bloc has "this awareness that the region is under threat, with the crisis in Mozambique and we all have to respond promptly to this threat that we know in southern Africa."

Arduous Mission

Professor Agostinho Zacarias, former deputy representative of the United Nations Organization in Burundi, analyzes, under a magnifying glass, the latest developments around SADC's positions on support to Mozambique. He highlights the step taken by the regional bloc, but stresses that the mission will be arduous.

"I think that SADC is not going there thinking that it is going to solve the issue in a flash; it knows that the mission is going to be arduous, hence the experts themselves have divided the mission into several stages of intervention" says Zacarias, one of the African experts with proven experience in peace, security, and development issues.

Researcher and university lecturer Calton Cadeado, on the other hand, looks at the figures of the approved budget and has no doubt that, for the size that is expected or hoped for, the SADC action is doomed to failure.

Blocking Terrorist Financing

"I think the funding approved ($12 million) is only for part of the operation, but in any case, looking at what an operation of the scale proposed by the experts would cost, the amount approved is so insignificant that it makes one foresee that the SADC operation will be a failure," he said, in contact with VOA's report in Maputo.

Attentive to the phenomenon of terrorism in Cabo Delgado is also the academic Rufino Sitoi. For him, more than military actions, the fight against insurgents will only be more successful by closing the taps on their funding.

"Military actions are important, but they can only succeed effectively if they are accompanied by investigations that lead us to know who these groups are, where their funding comes from, and to be able to completely shut off the sources of supply," says Sitoi.