8 Apr 21
Battle of Palma, March and April of 2021, Mozambique
You probably didn’t hear much about this!
This “battle” (actually a massacre of at least hundreds, maybe thousands, of unarmed non-Moslems) where the City of Palma was taken-over by a well-organized and heavily-armed murderous Islamist insurgency.
Police stations, banks, and foreign interests, as well as foreigners themselves, were specifically targeted.
“Response” by government troops was agonizingly slow, feeble, uncoordinated, incompetent, and largely unsuccessful. The government spent most of its time in denial, before finally admitting there was “a problem.”
Pretty typical for that part of the world. Pretty typical for governments in general (eg: look at our southern border right now)!
A number of foreign workers owe their lives to a courageous and responsive South African security firm that was able to evacuate many by helicopter.
There was a similar attack in Mozambique in 2017, where thousands were also massacred, so this sort of thing is not unusual on the African Continent.
The real lesson on here is the way clueless foreigners (working mostly in the extraction of oil and minerals) naively go about their business as if they were in Western Europe, oblivious to the target conspicuously painted on their backs, and ignoring danger signs!
Significant risk attaches to living and working anywhere in Africa, but the folly of going unarmed while working in a dangerous and deficient host nation that is unable to field a credible protective force, should be obvious!
Pre-attack photographs of foreigners working in Palma show none bearing arms, not even pistols. Many, unable to flee fast enough, fell to guns and pangas (heavy knives) wielded by Islamist insurgents.
The lesson here is that Westerners working and living anywhere on the African Continent, Mideast, or anywhere else where militant Islamics are organized and active, are in significant personal danger, all the time!
Armed and murderous insurgents are constantly planning attacks on Westerners and Western interests, although inconspicuous much of the time.
Betting your life on local police and government “security forces” is naive in the extreme, as we see!
You’re on your own!
“In the dictionary of those who do not expect anything, there is no expression like ‘shattered expectations.”
Michael Bassey Johnson
/John
