Late last month, Southern African Development Community (SADC) nations started deploying troops to northern Mozambique to help quell an Islamist insurgency that is threatening the development of gas deposits in that part of the country, which many see as a lifeline that will lift scores of Mozambicans out of grinding poverty.

In March, the insurgents raided the town of Palma, which has become the hub of a burgeoning gas industry, killing dozens of people. In the aftermath of the attack, French energy giant Total announced it would suspend operations at a nearby offshore gasfield where it is developing a $20-billion project. Total’s and other gas projects in the region could earn the country about $100-billion over the next 25 years – six times the current national Budget.

Weeks before the arrival of the SADC troops (the number could not be established at the time of writing), faraway Rwanda had sent a 1 000-strong force consisting of police officers and what it called troops trained “to deal with terrorism and security-related issues”. Why the Mozambican authorities apparently dilly- dallied in approving the deployment of a regional force while welcoming the Rwandans with alacrity is anybody’s guess. Do they secretly share my misgivings about the effectiveness of the SADC as a regional bloc?

I’m no security expert – I only trained as a wordsmith – but I don’t think military intervention alone is the best option. This is common-sensical. For those who have just landed from Mars and are not au fait with the goings-on in our region, the insurgency in Cabo Delgado, one of the country’s northern provinces, has been ongoing since late 2017, and its casualties to date have exceeded 2 600. According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the insurgency had displaced nearly 670 000 people from Cabo Delgado and two other northern provinces – Niassa and Nampula – by the end of last year.

With a population of about 1.3-million, Cabo Delgado is Mozambique’s fourth-poorest province, despite its abundant natural resources. This must be a bitter pill to swallow for a province that bore the brunt of the country’s war against Portuguese colonialism, which ended in 1975. Many in that province feel neglected by the country’s government.

Given this state of affairs, it is not too difficult to understand why it has been easy for jihadists to recruit large numbers of young people in the province.

I see parallels between the Mozambican insurgency and Boko Haram in north-eastern Nigeria. Many would recall that, at its founding around the turn of the millennium, Boko Haram was nothing more than a grouping that articulated local grievances in Maiduguri, the capital of Borno state. With the passage of time, the group became increasingly violent, and its most deplorable act to date was the 2014 abduction of 270 schoolgirls from the remote town of Chibok.

The Nigerian government has chosen to play hardball in its response to Boko Haram. But it is nowhere near crushing it. As the younger ones say, can someone please balance me: Why do we in the SADC region expect a different outcome while using the same approach?

Nigeria provides another proof of the futility of applying a purely military solution to a multidimensional issue – and that is the 1967–1970 civil war triggered by the secession of the Igbo-speaking region of Biafra. The secessionists may have been vanquished, but disaffection lingers. The country’s President is unmoved, however. In a tweet in June, he referred to people expressing such disaffection as “those misbehaving today”, vowing to “treat them in the language they understand”. Twitter subsequently suspended his account.

I hope the Mozambique deployment won’t be a terrible adventure that ends in tears.