ISIS beheads 50 people in Mozambique

 

The ruins of a village torched by ISIS affiliated militants. BBC. 

ISIS affiliated militants have beheaded 50 people in Mozambique, the latest atrocity in a country where the terror group is making a resurgence. BBC. The militants also beheaded people in another village in Northern Mozambique. The group has used poverty and unemployment as recruitment tools and have been trying to establish Islamic rule in the gas rich Cabo Delgado province in the north. The gunmen attacked the villages, fired shots and set fires and when they captured people trying to flee the militants they beheaded them. The group also abducted several woman from one of the villages.

My Comment:

Though ISIS has been defeated in the Middle East, they are having a bit of resurgence in Africa. Mozambique is the most notable example and the militants there have committed several major attacks, with this atrocity being the latest. 

This attack was especially brutal, even by the standards of ISIS. Killing 50 people at just one village via beheading seems like some kind of record. ISIS certainly has a record of mass killings like this but I can't remember an incident where they killed 50 people via beheading before. I could be wrong of course, as unfortunately ISIS has committed so many terror attacks and mass killings that it's very hard to keep them all straight. 

I am somewhat worried that ISIS could use Mozambique as a base to launch attacks outside the borders of Africa. The northern province of Cabo Delgado has a lot of natural resources including natural gas and minerals. If these ISIS affiliated militants could take over those industries and use the profits to launch larger scale attacks. 

They have, of course, done this before. During the ISIS apex of the last decade, ISIS was using more conventional industries, most notably oil production, to fund their attacks and even had set up a rudimentary government. And it's not like there will be a shortage of customers for natural gas even if prices are pretty low now. 

On the other hand, it's important to not overstate the threat that ISIS now provides. The terror groups is a shell of what it once was. Even if we do see a resurgence of the terror group operating out of Mozambique, it's very unlikely we will see the monthly and almost weekly attacks we saw in 2015-2016. There may be new attacks but I doubt we will see the kind of horror we saw before. 

I do wonder what people are going to do about ISIS in Africa though. I don't think there is any desire for an international response to ISIS and their attacks there. And it doesn't look like the government of Mozambique is capable of fighting ISIS alone. Perhaps there will be an African response but as far as a European or American one I don't see it happening in a large scale.