This part of Mozambique was like paradise. Now it is a breeding ground for terrorists.

In October, we traveled to Cabo Delgado province in northern Mozambique to understand how terrorists claiming to be linked to the Islamic State have gained a foothold and wreaked havoc among Muslims and Christians alike.

Officials in the region and in the West say they are deeply concerned that if the Islamic State affiliate known as ISIS-Mozambique is not contained, then the loosely-knit Islamic State network that is expanding in pockets of Africa could become a bigger global threat.

What locals call “the war” has stripped the region of what was largely a peaceful life of fishing and farming.

Almost 6,000 people were killed and up to half of the 2.3 million in the province people are displaced. Finding food and shelter has become a daily struggle in a province rich in natural resources such as rubies, gas and timber.

Since our visit, the country has only become more tense. After contested presidential elections, Mozambique was gripped by the worst electoral violence since a long civil war ended in 1992. Tens of thousands of people took to the streets across the country to protest the results, which many believe were rigged by the ruling party, Frelimo. Nearly 300 people were killed during the protests, according to the Decide Electoral Platform, a civil society organization.

On top of that, Cabo Delgado and Nampula province in the south were directly hit by Cyclone Chido in mid-December, killing as many as 120 peopledisplacing tens of thousands and leaving many without food and clean water.

There is no doubt that the insurgency is at its weakest, diplomats and security analysts say, down to a few hundred fighters out of several thousand. This is mainly because international troops, led by the Rwandan army, have offset the problems of the poorly equipped and trained Mozambican armed forces.

But the rebels have now broken into small groups scattered across the dense forests of a province roughly the size of Austria, turning the conflict into a game of Whac-a-Mole, security experts said. Attacks are less than in the past. But they were more frequent in 2024 than in 2023 and spread to previously unaffected areas.

“The government is doing the best it can,” Valige Tauabo, the governor of the province, said in an interview.

Where the rebellion began

Our Cessna 206 landed on the runway at Mocimboa da Praia, a sleepy fishing village that was the birthplace of the rebellion. A Rwandan soldier in war gear watched over us from the control tower.

Due to the high risk of being ambushed, we chartered a flight from the provincial capital, Pemba, a luxury few residents can afford.

We jumped into a limousine that went around the barricades set up by the Rwandan army and headed into the village.

In October 2017, more than two dozen rebels stormed a police station in Mocimboa da Praia and killed two police officers in the first attack of the insurgents.

At the time, the group called itself Al Shabab (analysts say it is not affiliated with Shabab in Somalia). Researchers say began to form around 2005when the teachings of extremist priests from neighboring Tanzania to the north began to infiltrate the mosques and madrasahs of Cabo Delgado.

In order to gain recruits, the extremists told the locals that their country is rich in natural resources, even though they are struggling in poverty. Lucrative natural gas reserves that have attracted about 24 billion dollars of foreign investmentsincluding almost 5 billion dollars from the United States, were nearby, near the coastal city of Palma.

The indignation of the government grew with multiple reports Mozambican army they attack or kill civilians in Palma.

But the rebels’ first message was quickly lost in their brutality.

In March 2020, Islamist militants gathered villagers at a soccer field in Mocimboa da Praia and warned them not to associate themselves with the government or “we will cut off everyone’s head,” Sanula Issa recalled.

Just a few weeks later, Ms. Issa said, she was awakened early in the morning by gunfire and cries of “Allahu akbar!”

She ran to the beach with her husband and three children, she said, and tried to squeeze into boats with others. But the rebels grabbed her husband and beheaded him with a machete, said Ms. Issa, 33, wiping away tears with a pink scarf.

“They are evil,” said Mrs. Issa, who once cooked rice for the sailors. “They destroyed people’s lives – innocent people.”

But it is not that the locals turned to the government.

“Our dislike goes both ways,” said Rabia Muandimo Issa, who is not related to Sanul Issa. She lost her brother and sister and her home in Mocimboa da Praia in a rebel attack five years ago. “We see nothing good from either the government or the rebels.”

The displacement crisis

For most of his 20 years, Muinde Macassari lived comfortably in a cabin near the ocean, fishing with his family. But since rebels stormed his coastal village of Quiterajo two years ago, he has been sleeping on blankets in his aunt’s yard in Pemba, sharing a tent with two cousins.

The heat in the tattered tent becomes oppressive, and the rain seeps through the torn canvas.

Hundreds of thousands of people returned to their communities, only to find that their jobs, homes and stability were now gone.

Hundreds of thousands of others, like Mr. Macassari, live displaced lives in unknown communities.

More than 80,000 displaced people have now crowded into Pemba, which previously had a population of about 200,000. Aid organizations say the conflict in Mozambique is not getting the help it needs because it is overshadowed by other global crises.

Mothers with children wrapped on their backs crowd clinics for the treatment of child malnutrition. Displaced people are crammed into low-rise homes of family, friends and good Samaritans, using bed sheets as a partition.

Mr. Macassari sleeps outside because his aunt’s two-room concrete house is already full with 10 people.

He was abducted by rebels, he said, forced to wash clothes by guards, but says he was never sent into battle. He slept in the forest on an uncomfortable bed made of coconut palm leaves and ate only occasional portions of rice, corn and cassava.

Mr. Macassari said he understood some of the grievances the extremists were preaching – about the political elite driving around in expensive cars while everyone else was poor. But if the complaints of the rebels were addressed to the government, Mr. Macassari wondered, “then why are they killing innocent people?”

He escaped one night, using a bathroom break as an excuse, he said. He ran through the bushes until he reached a nearby village.

A sour homecoming

When rebels captured Cheia Cassiano during an attack on Mocimbo da Praia in early 2020, they offered him a choice: you can join us or we can kill you.

During the next year, Mr. Cassiano, now 37, said the rebels made him run, lift weights, shoot guns – and attack villages. They loudly preached their message: The war will not end until the end of the world; men should wear trousers and women should wear long skirts; everyone was supposed to swear allegiance to Islam, not the government.

“I was worried,” Mr. Cassiano said. “Within the Rebellion, when you don’t go according to plan, I can kill you.”

Insurgents took control of Mocimboa da Praia in August 2020 and held it for a year, until troops from Rwanda and southern African countries drove them out. It was the longest time the rebels occupied a city during the conflict.

Mocimboa da Praia emptied during the occupation in 2020. But in 2022, residents began to return and life seems to have returned to normal in many ways. The market in the center of the city at night is bustling with street vendors and roaring motorcycle taxis. Fishermen gather around the sandy cove at dawn, prepare nets and wooden boats, and dry fish on tarpaulins. Teams compete on dirt football fields.

But with just a little probing, it’s easy to find deep physical and mental scars.

The tower of the Catholic church in the center of the town is tall, but most of the building has been reduced to rubble. In the neighborhood, the elementary school is mostly destroyed, with faded blackboard signs reminding parents of the years-old deadline to enroll their children. The hospital clinic is just a metal skeleton.

Where the statues of the two Mozambican liberation heroes, Eduardo Mondlane and Samora Machel, once stood, only the foundations are broken.

Many residents returned after the fighting to find empty patches of land where their houses made of red clay and thin logs once stood.

Mr. Cassiano, who joined the fighters after he was kidnapped, said his house was burned. He rebuilt it and now sells fish for a living, but bears the visible scar of the conflict: his right arm is missing. He said he had an argument with his comrades over a bicycle he had taken from the village they raided. They accused him of stealing the group’s leader’s bicycle, he said, and, according to their interpretation of Sharia law, cut off his hand.

I’m trying to get better

In the community center next to the displacement camp in Mocimboa da Praia, children in an art therapy workshop sometimes draw headless figures or carve piles of clay into guns.

Recently, children sat in a circle and sang, keeping rhythm by hitting plastic bottles filled with rocks on the ground.

“Children have the right to play,” they sang, “and live like a child.”

One 12-year-old girl said she was only 8 years old when she was abducted by rebels from Mocimbo da Praia and repeatedly sexually assaulted while in captivity. She was beaten once for not wearing the hijab properly. She fled into the bush with several women, and says she ate sand to stay alive.

She behaved erratically when she returned home, said her aunt and uncle, with whom she lives because her parents were killed in a rebel attack.

“I saw people killed!” she would scream in sudden outbursts. her aunt said.

She is now back at school and said she has begun to recover by spending time with other child survivors who gather at the center, which is run by the Community Development Foundation, a local nonprofit. As we sat on the ground talking, she stared down, tracing the sand with a twig. The terrible things she experienced are now her motivation to continue living, she says.

“I want to be a nurse,” she said, “to help other people in my community.”