from ARMANDO DOMINGOS in Maputo, Mozambique
MAPUTO, (CAJ News) – REGIONAL leaders are meeting in Mozambique as part of efforts to counter the Ansar-al-Sunna insurgency in the Southern African country.
It is the second such meeting in as many months following one that was held in Gaborone, Botswana.
The regional leaders are meeting under the auspices of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Organ on Defence and Security.
Among leaders at the meeting in Mozambique are Botswana President Mokwetse Masisi, who chairs the troika, immediate past chairperson of the troika, President Emmerson Mnangagwa of Zimbabwe, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, who is the incoming chairperson, and the host president, Filipe Nyusi.
SADC has in recent months intensified efforts to tackle the banditry by Islamists in the northern Mozambique region of Cabo Delgado, a resources-rich region towards Tanzania.
More than 3 000 people have been killed.
Over 500 000 others have been displaced.
Some attacks carried out in Tanzania by suspected Islamists and threats by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) to attack South Africa if it intervenes in Mozambique indicate that the insurgency is now a regional crisis.
– CAJ News