Political Violence in Mozambique

On April 4th and 5th of this year, Voice of America and the NY Times posted articles discussing the episode of political violence that occurred earlier that week. The NY Times article was titled Mozambique: Political Violence Rises, giving a brief description of the violent event that left four police officers and one Renamo commander dead, in addition to a dozen wounded. 

Renamo is the opposition party to the currently governing party, Frelimo. The attack was by Renamo members in the town of their party's headquarters  Muxunge. Renamo was attacking in an attempt to free their party members that had been arrested in a Frelimo supported police raid a few days prior. The New York times called it "one of the worst outbreaks of political violence in a decade."

To gain a bit of historical context and details I turned to Voice of America's article titled: Mozambique Faces Rising Political Tensions, Violence. This article helped me understand that Remano and Frelimo are former political war foes, and that this violence is occurring after months of political disputes over local elections at the end of this year. 

I also learned further details on the police raid that occurred prior to Renamo's retaliation and effort to gain back its party members. Police had stormed Renamo's headquarters with tear gas arresting an estimated 15 party supporters. This raid is linked to Renamos threat that "it would disrupt municipal elections set out for November, after its proposals to overhaul electoral laws were not accepted." Renamo has been losing party support, with currently 51 of 250 seats in Parliament, creating angst and hostility toward opposition party, Frelimo. 

Furthermore, hostility has risen due to the move of Renamo's leader to a prior civil war base with a threat to return to war if the government does not reassess terms of a peace deal signed in 1992 after the end of the war. 

This conflict after civil war reminded me of this weeks Collier reading discussing conflict traps. He explained: "The end of a war often is not the end of a conflict; once over a conflict is alarmingly likely to restart. Only half of the countries in which a conflict has ended manage to make it through a decade without relapsing into war." I would hope that a relapse into civil war is not the case for Mozambique. I am interested to see how things turn out in the upcoming November elections.