MAPUTO/JOHANNESBURG – (Reuters) – An economic take-off in Mozambique driven by bumper coal and gas discoveries two decades after the end of a civil war is facing disruption from disgruntled former guerrillas who feel they have not benefited from the post-conflict dividend.
A public threat by the ex-rebel Renamo opposition party to paralyze central rail and road links has put the Frelimo government on alert and alarmed diplomats and investors.
A slide back into the kind of all-out war that crippled the former Portuguese southern African colony between 1975 and 1992 looks unlikely. Nevertheless, Mozambique’s rebirth as an attractive tourism and investment destination could lose some of its momentum after armed attacks in the last two months blamed on Renamo.
The raids in central Sofala province killed at least 11 soldiers and police and three civilians and came after Renamo leader Afonso Dhlakama returned with his civil war comrades to the Gorongosa jungle base where they operated in the 1980s.
“It does bring back all those fears of the war,” said Joseph Hanlon, a senior lecturer at Britain’s Open University and an expert on Mozambique.
Renamo, which signed a peace pact in 1992 with its former Marxist foe Frelimo, denied that it carried out a raid on an arms depot on Monday that killed seven soldiers. But on Wednesday it threatened to paralyze the main road through Sofala and the railway carrying coal exports to port.
There was no evidence by late Thursday that it had carried out the threat. Witness reports from Chimoio and Dondo on the Beira corridor railroad link indicated no immediate disruption.
“Everything here is absolutely tranquil. It is a normal day,” Arnaldo Neves, Director of Production for Portuguese construction company Mota-Engil which is rehabilitating the railroad, told Reuters from Dondo railway terminal in Sofala.
Mozambican state railways spokesman Alves Cumbe said operations were continuing as normal on Thursday.
The Sena line to Beira port is used mainly by Brazil’s Vale and London-listed Rio Tinto, which are among companies that have been developing Mozambique’s coal deposits and offshore gas fields.
Vale, which is investing $4 billion in its Moatize coal mines near Tete and is the main user of the Sena line, declined to comment.
President Armando Guebuza’s government said it was taking the Renamo threat seriously but insisted it would keep the country’s strategic transport corridors open. Officials declined to detail specific measures taken to counter Renamo actions.
Renamo had claimed an earlier attack that killed four policemen in Sofala in April.
For the rest of this article, click here: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/20/us-mozambique-threat-idUSBRE95J0XY20130620