The Islamic State in Mozambique is Evolving

In October 2017, a group of 30 armed men attacked three police stations in the town of Massimboa de Praia in northern Mozambique, marking the beginning of an armed insurgency that has led to the deaths of more than 6,000 people and displaced hundreds of thousands. Since 2017, the insurgency has gone through multiple evolutions.

They were initially called al-Shabaab, despite having no relation to the Somali group of the very same name, before they aligned themselves with the Islamic State and styled themselves as the Islamic State, Mozambique Province, or ISM.

In that time, their methods evolved from small-scale attacks targeting police stations and villages, to major attacks targeting a natural gas plant in Palma, and finally back to small-scale attacks targeting villages after the Mozambican government and allied forces from Rwanda and the Southern African Development Community, or SADC, weakened them