The war in Mozambique from the late 1970s until 1992 placed a heavy burden on the Mozambican population, resulting in an estimated one million deaths and almost five million displaced. Though much research on the war has focused on the origins and behaviour of the rebel group Renamo (see the Introduction to this volume), others, including civilians, also played an active role. The suffering caused by the war brought about several popular armed and unarmed self-defence movements to stop the violence. One such armed movement was the Naparama, a peasant militia created by a traditional healer, Manuel António, in 1988, based on the belief in a vaccine to make people invulnerable to bullets. Within a year, the movement grew from a couple of hundred to several thousand members and spread across the country's central and northern provinces. The people embraced this new force and, after being co-opted by the government, it played a strong part in fighting back the rebel group, Renamo. By 1991, the Naparama was present in two thirds of the northern territory and its success led to an until-then unknown stability during wartime, at least for a certain amount of time.

The formation and diffusion of the Naparama goes against the common depiction of the war as a ‘dichotomous’ conflict between Frelimo, the party in power, and Renamo. It draws attention to a phenomenon common to many civil wars in which the population is actively involved in various local arrangements to curb violence and provide security. These security arrangements include militias, self-defence forces and paramilitaries, who all become significant actors as instruments for counterinsurgent operations and/or protectors of specific communities, thereby challenging neat distinctions between insurgents and the state. While many of these armed groups emerge as grassroots projects, they are often co-opted by the state as part of its counterinsurgency strategy. This also occurred in the case of the Naparama, as Frelimo soon realized the potential of the Naparama's power against Renamo and tolerated and at times even actively supported the Naparama's activities.