Mozambique’s Hidden War: Timber Smuggling and Terrorism

Millions of metric tons of illegally harvested timber smuggled from Mozambique to China are assisting in funding one of Africa’s most lethal insurgencies, according to a recently published report.mChina’s illegal trade in rosewood, calculated to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars a year, is connected to the financing of Mozambique’s Islamic State-linked militants, according to the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), an organization that fights environmental crime.

“In brazen breach of [Mozambique’s] log export ban, Chinese timber dealers purchase logs for a few dollars and sell them in China, where they can be spun into luxury furniture selling for tens of thousands of dollars,” the agency stated on its website. Rosewood has become the most trafficked natural by-product in the world, largely due to the market from China, where it is a prized commodity. While rosewood logging in China is restricted, the country persists in importing huge quantities, including about 20,000 metric tons from Mozambique’s ancient forests in 2023.

For its report, the EIA performed a four-year undercover investigation in Mozambique and China and polled more than 30 sources involved in the Cabo Delgado timber sector. Cabo Delgado is the country’s northernmost region.“For many years, we’ve been looking at the timber sector in Cabo Delgado, Mozambique, and we’ve witnessed massive volumes of illegal timber being exported from the nation, unprocessed in log form, most of it going to China,” EIA analyst Alex Bloom, lead writer of the report, told the BBC. “We discovered that in the province of Cabo Delgado, there is a nexus between this illicit timber trade and the insurgency that has been occupying the north of the country. Since 2017 over 500,000 tons of unprocessed wood has been imported by China from Mozambique annually.”

Since 2017, Islamic State-Mozambique (ISM) soldiers have terrorized Cabo Delgado, killing more than 6,500 and replacing nearly 1 million people. “Timber traders buy wood from different woods around the province of Cabo Delgado, including illegal sources and from insurgency-occupied areas, even places where insurgents have cut down wood themselves and are profiting from the sales,” Bloom stated. “All of that wood is then brought to Montepuez, where most of these traders have their sawmill and containerizing processes. The wood is all mixed together and then trucked to Mozambique ports to be shipped, most of that to China.”

Researcher Piers Pigou of the South Africa-based Institute for Security Studies indicated the militants could be making funds indirectly from the Chinese timber industry.

“Where they could be involved in pulling rents in some way or another,” he pointed to Voice of America. “I think there are some question marks about precisely what the nature of that connectivity to the insurgency would be.” Mozambique has had a log export embargo since 2017, but China continues to import more than 90% of Mozambique’s harvested wood. A Mozambique government information presented to parliament in April said the “illegal trade in species of wild flora and fauna or parts thereof has reached alarming proportions.”

The report also stated ISM insurgents have used the illegal timber trade for a “very high level of fundraising” to “fuel and finance the reproduction of brutality.” It estimated that ISM’s revenue from the criminal logging trade amounted to $1.9 million a month. Bloom encouraged the two countries to make an effort to stem the “conflict timber” industry. “The leaders of Mozambique need to wake up and do more to enforce their own forestry laws, specifically their log export ban,” she stated. “China needs to do more as well. The administration of China unfortunately historically has a no-questions-asked approach when it comes to importing timber with no regard for the legality of the origin.”

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