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| - The violent escalation of an insurgency in northern Mozambique last month has whipped up fresh concerns about security in southern Africa, a region that has enjoyed relative stability in recent decades. Islamic State-linked militants raided the coastal town of Palma on March 24, killing dozens and forcing thousands of residents to flee and pushing France's Total to desert a nearby multi-billion-dollar gas project. The deftly planned assault marked a major intensification in an insurgency that has wreaked havoc across Cabo Delgado province for over three years as the jihadists seek to establish a caliphate. Six presidents from the Southern African Development Community (SADC) held emergency talks in the Mozambican capital Maputo. In a concluding statement they said "such heinous attacks cannot be allowed to continue without a proportionate regional response", but gave no details of their planned action. Analysts say the stability of the wider region is at stake, as well as the spin-offs of a liquified natural gas (LNG) project on the Afungi peninsula -- the biggest single investment in Africa, led by Total. "The hope is that Mozambique will open its doors to some practical assistance," said Crisis Group analyst Piers Pigou, noting that the country had so far only sought ad hoc help from other SADC members on a bilateral basis. Convincing President Filipe Nyusi to stop playing "sovereignty politics" and cooperate with the bloc would be key to thwarting the insurgency, Pigou said. "The question is whether it can be nipped in the bud at this juncture without spreading further," he added. On the eve of the SADC talks, Nyusi said his government was "evaluating" its needs for external support, cautioning: "It's not about empty pride, it's about a sense of sovereignty". The president added: "No war is won if it is not clear from the start, (about) what must be done by our country and what must be done by the allies." While Mozambique's jihadists have so far remained relatively contained, their 2018 allegiance to the Islamic State group has raised fears of a more expansive agenda and more sophisticated tactics. Mozambican civil society activist Adriano Nuvunga said the fallout of a worsening insurgency could be momentous. "If Mozambique was to collapse, it could be used by all sorts of groups as a transit point to affect the region," he warned. The southeast African country on the Indian Ocean shares borders with Malawi, South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia, Eswatini and Zimbabwe. "The borders with Mozambique are huge and not easy to manage," said Tanzanian independent analyst Kennedy Mmari, warning that the insurgency could "accelerate" extremism in his country. Mozambique's jihadists have already targeted parts of southern Tanzania, including a deadly raid on the city of Mtwara last October. Most of the group's foreign recruits are thought to come from Tanzania. "It's on our doorstep," said South Africa-based Institute for Security Studies researcher Liesl Louw-Vaudran. "It would be a huge issue if there was a growing insurgency in southern Africa, where we haven't really seen any violent extremism," she said. The most vulnerable countries are those adjacent to Cabo Delgado, Louw-Vaudran said, singling out Malawi alongside Tanzania. But she noted the risk of territorial expansion remained "quite limited" for the time being, as the jihadists seemed more prone to spreading further into Mozambique than crossing borders. Security concerns are compounded by the insurgency's proximity to the LNG project, originally scheduled to go on stream in 2024, before the Palma attack. These "world-class gas reserves" were meant to turn Mozambique into an "energy giant" in a region seeking to boost and diversify its energy supply, Nuvunga said. Analysts fear the unrest could push the international energy companies to fully abandon the LNG site, and deter future investments in the area. Trade corridors are also threatened. Analysts pointed to the corridor linking landlocked Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe to Mozambique's Beira port, and the Cahora Bassa hydroelectric dam -- the largest in southern Africa -- located in northwestern Mozambique. If the insurgency is not tackled, "it can hijack resource development in the region," Nuvunga said. sch-bur/sn/gd
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