The smell of gas: insurgency in Mozambique
Economist Podcasts
The Economist
4.3 • 5K Ratings
🗓️ 29 March 2021
⏱️ 21 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In a province that is home to a massive natural-gas project, a long-simmering insurgency has burst into horrific violence; we ask why the government seems to have lost control. Our correspondent visits Minneapolis, where the police officer accused of murdering George Floyd goes on trial today. And the existential threat to a bird that has forgotten how to sing love songs.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to the Intelligence on Economist Radio. I'm your host, Jason Palmer. |
| 0:09.2 | Every weekday, we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. |
| 0:17.3 | Today begins the trial of Derek Chauvin, the Minneapolis police officer accused of murdering George Floyd, whose death sparked protests worldwide last year. |
| 0:27.0 | Our correspondent visits the city as it prepares once again to be in the global spotlight. |
| 0:32.5 | And the female regent honey eater is a bird that will, well, we'll do it for a song, |
| 0:38.5 | but the males of the species are increasingly unable to carry the right tune. |
| 0:43.0 | We look into why they've lost their love song and how the species might be saved. |
| 0:56.0 | But first... Islamist fighters have been laying siege since last week to the town of Palma in northern Mozambique, near Africa's largest ever private investment project. |
| 1:10.0 | Over the weekend, residents and foreign |
| 1:11.8 | workers made desperate escape attempts by land and sea. Hundreds of people have attempted to flee |
| 1:17.5 | the town running into forests and nearby villages. Nearly 200 civilians were sheltering inside the |
| 1:23.4 | hotel in the town of Palmer after militants surrounded the compound. |
| 1:32.9 | A nearby natural gas project from French company Total has been forced to suspend operations. |
| 1:36.7 | Dozens have been killed, and many more still unaccounted for. |
| 1:42.5 | Some described harrowing scenes of streets and beaches littered with decapitated bodies. |
| 1:49.0 | This insurgency has been terrorizing the country's Cabo Delgado province since 2017. Earlier this month, America's government designated the insurgents as an arm of Islamic State. |
| 1:54.0 | ISIS Mozambique's violent extremist insurgency has wreaked havoc in the country's Cabo Delgado province |
| 2:00.0 | and has killed more than 1,300 civilians. |
| 2:02.6 | ISIS-Mozambique's continued attacks have caused the displacement of nearly 670,000 persons within Mozambique. |
| 2:09.6 | This latest crisis suggests that the Mozambican government is losing its ability to combat the violence. |
| 2:15.6 | When we last spoke about Cabo Delgado, about a year ago, |
| 2:19.5 | things were bad then, and now they're much worse. |
... |
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