Threats posed by terrorists in the islands of the Indian Ocean are escalating as the militant groups expand their coastline and exploit the sea to escape pressure by the states. The area between northern Mozambique and Comoros and Madagascar has ceased being a silent trade route to become a potential security issue. The unresolved insurgency situation in Cabo Delgado and fragmented maritime authority is a good breeding ground to extremists.
The insurgency has been adaptive, as evidenced by incessant attacks in northern Mozambique by 2025. Through high-level military attacks and the support of international bodies, militant groups are still using the coastline to reorganize, retrieve supplies and propagate their messages. These trends are increasingly worrying the African defence pundits that maritime space within the Mozambique Channel and Indian Ocean archipelagos are now being put into effect as an extension of conflict dynamics on land.
The maritime routes of the Indian Ocean increase the stakes. As the energy investments increase, so do the regional migration flows, and offshore operation of resources, even the low-scale extremist presence threatens the situation of making the diplomatic and commercial interests more complex. As one of the defense officials in South Africa pointed out in the early years of this year, counterterrorism systems in the region are scampering with geographic aspects of the maritime and the military expertise that favors the rebels over the state.
Mozambique’s Fractured Coastline And Lasting Insurgency
The mangrove networks, complex coastline, and scattered islands of Northern Mozambique continue to play an important role in the guerrilla survival tactics. The topography provides an opportunity to move boats undetected in the North of Pemba, where thousands of artisans are fishermen. There are also small landing points and informal trade routes that lead to southern Tanzania forming a cross border route where security forces are unable to control uniformly.
Human Displacement And Coastal Vulnerability
By the middle of 2025, the humanitarian agencies have estimated that nearly 800,000 people are still displaced by the Cabo Delgado conflict. A large number have taken hold in areas of poorly patrolled coastlines without an intensive police presence. Such communities are considered to be buffer communities at times, which provide militants with the short-term anonymity in civilian movement patterns. According to the local authorities, there is also occasional intimidation of campaigns where insurgent groups temporarily enter fishing hamlets to extant their dominance and loot.
Insurgent Adaptation And The Regional Security Dilemma
Militants are becoming more and more inclined to use hybrid strategies in Mozambique, alternating land raids, ambushes, and short-range attacks on the sea. The low-profile mobility is aided by fishing ships, cargo dhows, and modified skiffs, which are used after being targeted by surveillance planes in inland waters. This has made it harder to fight insurgency in a traditional counterinsurgency campaign and has put pressure on the Mozambican military and the state forces of the energy companies.
Transnational Ideological Flows
Intelligence evaluations of the region point to the existence of durable associations between Cabo Delgado units and the larger jihadist systems, such as participants in Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Online messaging platforms which are allied to the Islamic State Central Africa Province boast about the Mozambican coast as a frontier of entry, attracting sympathizers in various parts of East Africa, and at times with the Comorian diaspora communities. The footprint of foreign fighters is still small, but even the insignificant external inflows help to increase the durability and morale of operations.
Adjusting Regional Forces And Strategic Gaps
By 2025, the military mission of the Southern African Development Community will be reduced due to the lack of funds and other regional priorities. Rwanda has a high level of security but with the decline in multinational aid, tactical gaps were created and filled by remnants of the insurgency. This cyclic pressure rhythm enables militants to withdraw into littoral safe havens in times of increased inland operations to maintain a war of attrition and not disintegration.
Comoros And Madagascar: Peripheral But Exposed
Comoros and Madagascar are bordering waters of conflict but they do not possess a high capacity of naval and intelligence. Their coast guards have chronic shortages of resources, which include ageing equipment and large maritime areas that have a larger area than the surveillance capacity. These obstacles increase the exposure to shabby militant transit and cross-channel smuggling.
Economic Informality And Trafficking Links
The Mozambique Channel is home to the informal trade networks that have existed since time immemorial transferring fuel, timber, wildlife products, and narcotics. According to recent case studies of regional security briefs, part of the smuggling transactions are now indirectly funding the finance chains of extremists, especially the gemstone trade that is related to the disrupted mining zones in northern Mozambique. The criminal-terror mixtures make it difficult to intervene since the economic welfare of the remote communities relies on unregulated maritime trade.
Intermittent International Support
Although France still has its military bases in Mayotte and Reunion, the bases are mostly used to monitor migration, enforce the law and respond to crises, but not to patrol any area on a permanent basis to counterterrorism. Analysts warn that without long-term trilateral engagement between Madagascar, Comoros and mainland partners, the threats of extremist infiltration will be high.
Maritime Smuggling And Jihadist Logistics Links
The several ports of the Mozambique-Tanzania-Comoros trading route act as logistical areas of contraband goods, which at times overlap with insurgent funding. The exchange of goods (smaller dhows) of goods is done offshore and there is no necessity to dock at all, so the formal checks at a port are avoided. Jihadist networks tend to ride on the backs of existing criminal networks, security officials emphasize, avoiding publicity.
Surveillance Weaknesses And Technical Deficits
The European Union and Indian Ocean Commission are also involved in international monitoring programs to enhance the domain awareness of the maritime domain, but still there is gradual development. Radar blank areas, scarcity of aerial resources and reliance on manual coastal reports allow the non-state actors to capitalize on the time/geographic gap. Storm seasons also reduce detection ability and provide predictable periods of smuggling vessels to pass without detection.
Diplomatic Coordination Challenges
Other regional blocs like the Indian Ocean Rim Association have recently started to conceptualize maritime terrorism as a matter of security priority in addition to piracy. Nonetheless, integration is still in its infancy and local authorities tend to focus more on the development of blue-economies and fisheries security as opposed to intelligence integration or combined interdiction. According to analysts, strategic declarations can be short of practical deterrence without operational forces of the task forces associated with the coast policing.
Regional Implications And Strategic Outlook
The overlap of the threat of terrorism in the islands of the Indian Ocean, weak governance, and the increased sea-trade routes highlights a more general continental predicament: how to ensure the emergent blue-economy pathways without repeating the governance failures through which inland insurgencies could make gains.
The case of Mozambique shows how the non-existent care of the coastline, together with the geopolitical diffusion and the economic susceptibility of the country, enables the militant forces to establish informal footholds at sea. Comoros and Madagascar exemplify that peripheral island systems, when under-resourced, would become facilitators that, by chance, would provide stepping stones of logistical bases instead of basing active extremist groups.
Due to increasing populations in the coastal areas, and competition in offshore energy and fisheries, the pressures that are creating maritime insecurity are bound to be intensified. The Indian Ocean rim that was previously viewed as remote to the major conflict areas of Africa has been turned into a continuation of continental security dynamics where insurgency is confronted by oceanic mobility and sovereignty of state is challenged by the transnational flow of the ocean. The pace at which such risks are managed by the regional initiatives can form the next stage of the maritime stability situation in Africa and define whether the ocean frontier will remain the zone of peace or the route of future insecurity.
