Mozambique asks EU for military help to fight terrorism and insurgency
Mozambique has asked the EU for support in the area of specialist training for the fight against terrorism and insurgency, according to a news report by Mozambique News Reports And Clippings.
This support could take the form of training, logistics for the forces fighting the insurgency, equipment for medical assistance in combat zones, and technical capacity building.
The request for military support was sent by Foreign Minister, Veronica Macamo to EU Foreign Minister, Josep Borrell on September 16, several months after the EU made a vague offer of support.
The letter was sent a week after a September 8 meeting between Borrell and Portuguese Foreign Minister Augusto Santos Silva. Portugal is pushing Mozambique's case and Silva said that there was a terrorist and jihadist insurgency in Cabo Delgado.
In an interview on September 24, he said, "I am confident that the EU will respond positively to the Mozambican request for military help. In part, this is because Portugal will be president of the Council of the European Union for the first half of 2021."
In exchange, Mozambique has agreed to open a dialogue with the EU on humanitarian issues.
But a highly critical European parliament resolution was overwhelmingly approved on September 17. It admits that the Mozambican army is ill-equipped to deal with the surge in terrorism, but the resolution puts more emphasis on internal causes.
The resolution stresses the need to work towards the elimination of some of the root causes of terrorism such as insecurity, poverty, human rights violations, inequality, exclusion, unemployment, environmental degradation, corruption and misuse of public funds, impunity, thereby contributing immensely to the eradication of terrorist organizations.
Comments