Mozambique Military

Mozambique is a country located in Southeast Africa, bordering the Indian Ocean. It has a population of around 29 million people and the official language is Portuguese. The majority of the population are Christians, with some other religious denominations also present.

The military of Mozambique consists of three branches; Army, Navy and Air Force. The total active personnel in the military are around 40,000 people. The Army has around 30,000 personnel with a focus on ground operations and border protection. It also has a Navy with 5,000 personnel for maritime operations as well as 15 combat aircraft for air support operations. The Air Force has 5,000 personnel for air defense missions within Mozambique’s borders.

Mozambique is not a member of any international military or defense organization but does maintain close ties with other countries in the region such as South Africa and Zimbabwe. See naturegnosis to learn more about the country of Mozambique.

Defense

After the 1992 peace settlement, the defense was reorganized. About 140,000 government and guerrilla soldiers were disarmed. The aim was to form a national defense at a level of 15,000 men. This goal has largely been achieved. The defense is based on selective military duty of two years and (2008) amounts to approximately 11,000 men organized in 7 battalions and has 5 patrol vessels and a number of old, non-operational fighter aircraft. The equipment is of old Soviet origin with low reliability.

Land area 799,380 km²
Total population 30,098,197
Population density (per km²) 37.7
Capital Maputo
Official language Portuguese
Income per capita 1,300 USD
Currency Metical
ISO 3166 code MZ
Internet TLD .mz
License plate MOC
Telephone code +258
Time zone UTC + 2
Geographic coordinates 18 15 S, 35 00 O
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Defense costs decreased in 1985-2006 from 8.5% to 0.8% of GDP. To see related acronyms about this country, please check ABBREVIATIONFINDER where you can see that NAK stands for Mozambique. In 1995, the UN withdrew its peacekeeping forces in the country. Mozambique participates in UN peacekeeping operations with observers in Sudan. Portugal and the United States have small military units in Mozambique.

Mozambique Army

History

In Mozambique, unlike Angola, the other large territory of Portuguese Africa, no significant economic transformations have taken place in the last decade.

Until 1972, Mozambique was legally an overseas province, obtaining the qualification of “Mozambique State” on 1 July of that year and a regime of less dependence on the metropolis. Divided into 11 districts, the country was administered by a governor assisted by a Legislative Assembly (50 elected members) and an Advisory Board; the rights granted by Portuguese citizenship, which was definitively extended to all natives in 1961, remained in fact limited to those who had a good knowledge of the Lusitanian language: the small number of black representatives elected in the consultations of March 1973. The reforms however allowed an improvement health and school facilities (in 1972 there were 5152 primary schools with 603.460 pupils; the University of Lourenço Marques had 2396 students). escudos. It is estimated that 80% of the investments were from international groups (especially South Africans): an example is the multinational consortium (Italy withdrew) for the construction of the Cabora-Bassa dam on the Zambezi, the largest in the ‘Africa, which allows the regulation of floods in the river and the production of a few million kWh that can be used by South African industries. In the projects of the Portuguese, South African and Rhodesian governments, this gigantic work would also have the task of creating a settlement area for tens of thousands of white settlers. However, the number of Portuguese immigrants decreased (only 740 units in 1972) in parallel with the extension of the guerrilla warfare of the black independence forces.

After some spontaneous rebellions that ended tragically, in June 1962 we arrived at the merger of three different political-regional organizations and the constitution of FRELIMO (Frente de Libertação de Moçambique) under the guidance of E. Mondlane. The Independents launched a proclamation for a general insurrection on September 25, 1964, starting hostilities in the north of the country from the bases located in Tanzania. The assassination of Mondlane in February 1969 caused a crisis of the movement, from which FRELIMO recovered with difficulty under the direction of Samora Machel and Mozambique dos Santos; the cruelty of the war in progress was highlighted by the revelations of the killings carried out by some Portuguese soldiers in the district of Tete at the end of 1972. In December 1973, the independents controlled a fifth of the territory by mobilizing, according to Portuguese sources, 4000 men against 60,000 soldiers metropolitan, with an expenditure for the Lisbon government, in 1971, of 1145 million escudos. The revolution of 25 April 1974 in Portugal opened a new phase of relations: after an attempt at a compromise solution supported by gen. A. de Spínola, the law of 10 July 1974 sanctioned the right to independence of the overseas territories; under the Lusaka agreements of 6 September between the Portuguese minister Melo Antunes and the president of FRELIMO, S. Machel, Mozambique became independent on 25 June 1975. Serious incidents between the white minority and the black population occurred in the phase transition: thousands of settlers moved to Rhodesia and South Africa, while the attitude of these two countries and the remaining white population of Mozambique was uncertain. Portugal guaranteed the continuation of financial contributions to resolve the budget deficit; S. Machel,

FRELIMO reaffirmed its Marxist option in February 1977 and ratified the party’s prevalence over the government; in the economic field, the need for progressive state control over production and a push towards collectivization and the formation of cooperatives was underlined; the ideology of the party also tends to favor the countryside over the cities. The establishment of the new elite politics appears tiring in the parts of the country where there has not been an armed struggle, and there is no lack of opposition. FRELIMO must deal internally with the problem of the replacement of Portuguese administrative and technical cadres, while externally the declared anti-colonial commitment is held back by the vulnerability of the Mozambican economy. In fact, Mozambique depends on the Republic of South Africa and Rhodesia to continue to enjoy the remittances of its workers in the mines of others, and the payments for the sale of the electricity produced in Cabora-Bassa and for the transit rights of goods. The USSR obtained a coastal base in late 1976; in December 1977 an agreement was signed under which the USA undertakes to supply the Mozambique with wheat, rice and other food products,