Some weeks before July 9, when Rwanda deployed 1,000 troops to Cabo Delgado Province, Mozambique, to help fight armed extremists linked to the Islamic State and restore state authority, the terrorists had pounced on the remote village of Lumbi, in Palma district, rounded up a number of children and taken off with them.
A six-year-old girl, Issa Makina, who was then in the company of her grandmother was among the unfortunate ones. They took the child but spared her grandmother, because she was of no use to them.
When, on September 22, I met 51-year-old Issa Chomar Mbaruco, Makina’s father, in Palma, he said he was happy Rwandan and Mozambican forces had managed to repulse the terrorists and peace is returning to his region, but he cannot forget about his missing daughter.
Mbaruco, like other parents whose children were kidnapped by the terrorists, is constantly worried.
"My daughter of six (years), was kidnapped by the terrorists last year before the Rwandan troops arrived here. Without the Rwandan troops I think we would all be dead now,” says the father of eight.
"We still suffer consequences of this insurgency but we really appreciate the help we got from Rwanda. However, I can’t stop worrying for my lost child. I pray, every day, that we will see her again.”
Mbaruco’s fears are not unfounded, considering the terrorists’ modus operandi.
Earlier, on August 10, a Mozambican police officer in Palma who preferred anonymity because he was not permitted to talk to journalists shared harrowing insights into the manner in which the terrorists operate, or work.
The police officer explained that from his experience, younger girls were also kidnapped but the terrorists mainly preferred to take girls aged between 10 and 14.
Asked why that age bracket for girls was the terrorists’ target, he clarified that they are taken "for forced marriage because most of these younger girls are believed to be virgins.”
Boys between 12 and 18, he explained, are also preferred for forced recruitment.
The armed extremists launched an insurgency in Cabo Delgado in October 2017. On March 24, they seized the port town of Palma, murdered dozens of civilians – mainly by beheading them – and displaced more than 35,000 of its 75,000 residents.
During the initial terrorists’ attacks on Palma, the police said, it was child soldiers who were first sent in to spy and sooner or later surprise and fiercely attack government troops’ positions.
"This was very difficult for us. What could we do other than fight back? Young innocent lives were lost. We couldn’t just sit there and let them overrun and kill us. The children would attack first and then the older fighters follow next,” the officer said.
Last week, soft spoken 18-year-old Yussuf Abdalla who was captured by the joint forces during last month’s battle to capture Mocimboa da Praia, a strategic port city that used to be headquarters of the terrorist group, told journalists how he fidgeted with his rifle and ended up shooting and injuring his left leg.
His colleagues took the gun and left him for dead in the forest until Rwandan soldiers found him, after three days.
"The jungle is unbearable,” the teen said. "But I was lucky they brought me here and a doctor attended to me.”
Abdalla is still undergoing treatment in Mocimboa da Praia. It is estimated that hundreds other children remain in the hands of the extremists, fighting a war they don’t understand.
Women were also abducted and turned into slaves for the terrorists’ families in the forests. These women are also sexually abused.
Two hard choices
While in Pemba, the capital of Cabo Delgado last week, Rwanda’s Defence and Military Spokesperson, Col Ronald Rwivanga, told The New Times that the joint forces "take the protection of civilians especially women and children caught up in conflict very seriously.”
"We have repatriated thousands of women and children from conflict zones back to their homes and offer them assurance of protection against rape and other crimes committed against them,” Rwivanga said.
"Testimonies from captured combatants reveal that insurgents forcefully conscript teenagers into their organization. Those who refuse to join are killed leaving others with no other choice but to join them.”
Women captured during the terrorists’ raids were turned into sex slaves. They do all domestic chores including wandering into the forests to find food while the armed wives of the fighters watch and boss them around.
On September 24, I visited an encampment in the suburbs of Pemba where 14 women escapees, and their eight very young kids, were temporarily accommodated.
They gave testimonies of the terrorists’ barbaric acts and lifestyle. The women were captured in various parts of the region and brought to Mocimboa da Praia, the terrorists’ former stronghold.
The advance of the Rwandan and Mozambican troops forced the terrorists to lose ground, and food supplies from neighboring villages.
This meant the women would often be escorted to villages in the district to collect cassava. Life in the terrorists’ mobile camps became unbearable as "we could go days without food, irregularly eating Ugali and chili or salted water,” Amina, one of the escapees said. When the joint forces advanced, last month, the captives and their masters relocated further into the thick woodlands to avoid detection.
It was during their cassava hunting sorties that the women and their little children planned and escaped.
Defiling a 10-year old girl, Amina said, is not a problem to the terrorists.
A 28-year-old woman told how she was "made a Suria (sex slave) for one year” before she escaped.
"To these Shababs, you cannot dare say that you are tired. They impregnated girls as young as 10.”
Ernestina, a mother of four little children including a four months baby born during captivity, said they got a chance to run for their dear lives when the joint forces surrounded the jungle where terrorists were based.
"My baby, Zeinabu, was born in the forest. I was raped by different men and I don’t know her father,” she said.
Uncertainty of what lies ahead
The women, though free from captivity, are unsettled by the uncertainty of what lies ahead.
For one, they are about to resume their normal lives but "after losing so much time in captivity,” lost everything and "don’t know where to start from.”
Their rehabilitation, evidently, will take much more than provision of basic necessities because a more comprehensive program for re-integration in a society where stigma is, no doubt, awaiting them, will be important.
Worse still, there is a general sense of mistrust by some in the local security apparatus who think they cannot be trusted.
There were cases in the past, a Mozambican officer told me, where escapees deceived and led government forces into terrorists’ ambushes.
Good enough, the arrival of Rwandan forces is gradually bridging the gap between the local population and their security forces.
"We are confident of our safety due to the presence of the Rwandans. They listen to us and are compassionate. They care and are providing medical care to our people. We hope our own soldiers learn from the Rwandans,” said an elderly man in Palma.
Martha, a mother of two, was particularly eager to tell her story because she wants the world to know the plight of people, especially children and women, in Cabo Delgado.
"We have suffered. The Shababs kidnapped little boys as young as eight or 10 for military training and taking them to battle,” Martha said, noting that she was worried for her little child who was in the hands of the terrorists "and is being taught wicked things” in Madrasas – Islamic religious schools which the terrorists abused and turned into institutions for radicalization and promoting Islamic extremism and militancy.
Due to an increasing shortage of fighters, the women noted, the terrorists started deploying younger boys without battle experience to battle.
Instead of being taught things children are normally supposed to learn, Martha said, "boys as young as 12 are given drugs and indoctrinated to become killers.”
"We need help,” Martha said.