The European Union is pulling its funding of a Rwandan military operation that helps to protect a huge natural gas project in Mozambique. It’s a murky story.
The high price of gas in Cabo Delgado
Rwanda warned last weekend it will withdraw its forces from northern Mozambique, where they have been fighting an insurgency led by Islamic State Mozambique Province (ISMP) unless it receives guaranteed, sustainable funding. The warning came after the European Union indicated it will not renew its financial support for the operation when it expires in May.
The EU is not worried about the money, which amounts to just €20 million, but it fears blowback from Washington, which this month imposed sanctions on the Rwandan Defence Forces (RDF) because of their role in the war in the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo. Renewing support for the Rwandan operation in Mozambique could expose the EU to secondary sanctions, which the Trump administration could use as leverage in its various disputes with Brussels.
The Rwandan troops have been effective in improving security in the province of Cabo Delgado after Mozambican forces, other regional interventions and private military companies including Russia’s Wagner Group and South Africa’s Dyck Advisory Group struggled to combat the insurgency that began in 2017. French oil giant TotalEnergies in January resumed work on a massive $20 billion (€17.4 billion) liquefied natural gas LNG project there, an initiative that has become more important to the EU as it seeks to diversify supply after phasing out the importation of Russian gas.
Rwanda’s foreign minister, Olivier Nduhungirehe, referred explicitly to European energy interests in Cabo Delgado in a message on X last weekend.
“We didn’t pay hundreds of millions of dollars and our RDF soldiers didn’t pay the ultimate sacrifice to stabilize this region, allow internally displaced people to return home, children to go back to school, businesses to reopen and mega investments in liquefied natural gas to resume, just to see our valiant soldiers being constantly questioned, vilified, criticised, blamed or sanctioned by the very countries that greatly benefit from our intervention in Mozambique,” he said.
Although the insurgency in Cabo Delgado is led by Islamic State Mozambique Province, it is driven by local factors including political and economic exclusion by the central government in Maputo and the fact that the discovery of offshore gas reserves has not benefited local people. A report on Cabo Delgado by the United Nations Development Programme last year found widespread poverty, rising unemployment, declining family expenditure and 45 per cent of children chronically malnourished, with more than half never attending school.
Last November, the Berlin-based European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) filed a criminal complaint in France against TotalEnergies, alleging complicity in war crimes, torture and enforced disappearance. It accuses the company of having directly financed and materially supported the Joint Task Force (JTF), made up of Mozambican armed forces, who allegedly detained, tortured and killed dozens of civilians at the TotalEnergies site in Cabo Delgado between July and September 2021.
The so-called “container massacre”, first reported by Politico in 2024, allegedly saw civilians fleeing the Islamist insurgents seek refuge at the TotalEnergies site, only to be detained in windowless, metal containers. Politico reported that JTF troops sexually assaulted some of the women, subjected other detainees to torture and execution, with only 26 out of between 180 and 250 men detained surviving.
“TotalEnergies knew that the Mozambican armed forces had been accused of systemic human rights violations, yet continued to support them, with the only objective to secure its own facility,” the ECCHR’s Clara Gonzales said.
TotalEnergies rejects the allegations, saying it had no knowledge of any of the acts of violence at its site and that all personnel from its subsidiary had been evacuated before the container massacre is said to have occurred.
Mozambique’s president, Daniel Chapo, was in Brussels this week where he asked the EU to continue to support counterterrorism operations in Cabo Delgado. He also met TotalEnergies chief executive Patrick Pouyanné, who said security conditions were good enough to resume work on the LNG project.
“It will not stop, for sure. We are there to make it a reality. Not only for Mozambique, but also for Europe and the world,” he said.
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