An Islamist insurgency is spilling danger into a major shipping lane, and countries must decide who they want to fix it.

The waters off Mozambique are becoming a major new security hotspot in the Indian Ocean. An Islamist insurrection in northern Mozambique that the government seems powerless to suppress has also increasingly led to disruption in the Mozambique Channel, a key global shipping route. The Quad countries and European partners must help contain the problem before other actors step into a regional vacuum.

The National Security College (NSC), with the support of the Department of Defence, is leading a two-year research project on Australia’s Indo-Pacific strategy in the Indian Ocean. As a part of this project, this paper analyses the Mosambique Channel as an emerging Indian Ocean security flash point. This paper first appeared on the Lowy Institute’s ‘The Interpreter’ on 19 March 2021.

Image: NASA Visible Earth