Mtwara Gas Project Conflict: Causes of Arising and Ways of Stabilization (Part 2)

Conflict about the natural resources has been arising at the end of 2012 in the Mtwara Municipality in Tanzania. Mtwara residents started to show opposition to the extraction of natural gas. During the period of violence more than 12 residents were murdered, property was destroyed, woman were raped and others tortured. Causes of the Mtwara Gas Project conflict till now have not been documented. The study assessed the reasons of local community participation and role of the government in the gas conflict in Mtwara in 2012-2013. The total sample size was 137 respondents included; 98 households who were affected by the conflict, 9 key informants who were experienced and knowledgeable enough to provide relevant information about the conflict and 2 focus group discussion with 15 members each. Pre-designed questionnaire and semi-structured interviews were used to obtain primary data from households and key informants and checklist was used to guide the interviews. Among the reasons of the local resident’s participation in the conflict were identified over-expectations from the local community, false promises from the government, poor stakeholders’ involvement before and after the implementation of the project, political interference, and low benefits sharing from the project benefit. Community expectations were not fulfilled and thus created a conflict between community members and the government. The majority of the respondents reported that strikes foster the implementation of promises and draw an attention to local community needs. The Government implemented some promises after the conflict was stabilized and maintained peace and harmony to the local community in Mtwara. Despite of that, majority of respondents not being satisfied with the benefits received from the Government in 2013. Some of the main reasons for the dissatisfaction were low compensation paid for the land taken, low implementation of job promises, few constructions of industries and other false promises.


Introduction
About fifty armed conflicts in 2001 had a strong link to natural resource exploitation, in which either licit or illicit exploitation helped to trigger, intensify, or sustain violence [1]. In Pakistan and Bolivia, for example, violent protests have broken out over the distribution of water. In the Middle East, disputes over oil fields in Kuwait, among other issues, led to the first Gulf War. In another example, the rebel groups Revolutionary United Front (RUF) in Sierra Leone and National Union for the Total Independence of Angola used revenues derived from diamond mining to fund their rebellions against their respective governments. Those wars appear to be lasting longer: the expected duration of conflict is now more than double that of conflicts that started prior to 1980 [1]. In the current global context of increasing consumption, growing populations, and declining availability of many natural resources, numerous analysts have predicted that disputes over natural resources such as oil, water and timber will become more common. Conflicts over natural resources are likely to occur in various contexts, from local disputes to international disputes. Theories from social science over the last two centuries provide insight and explanation regarding the sociological, political, and economic factors that can be used to understand or predict the contexts in which conflict over natural resources is likely [2].
The management of land and natural resources is one of the most critical challenges facing developing countries today. The exploitation of high-value natural resources, including oil, gas, minerals and timber has often been cited as a key factor in triggering, escalating or sustaining violent conflicts around the globe [3]. Conflict itself is not a negative phenomenon; indeed, well-managed conflict can be an essential component of social change, democracy and development. However, where local and national institutions lack the capacity to resolve disputes over the degradation or depletion of natural resources, violent conflicts can and do emerge [3]. Conflicts such as the wars in Sierra Leone, Angola, and the Democratic Republic of Congo have raised growing concerns that natural resources such as diamonds, oil, gold, tantalum, tin and tungsten either cause conflict or shape the strategies of armed actors. These concerns have encouraged policymakers to design new frameworks of intervention, aimed at cutting the assumed links between armed groups and resources and at promoting transparent models of resource governance [4].
Latin America is among the regions where such conflicts are most widespread. The region's economies are particularly reliant on commodities exports. Fuels and mining products were equivalent to 40% of South and Central American exports in 2013, compared to a global average of 22% [5]. The commodities boom over the past decade has coincided with a spike in conflicts over natural resources in Latin America, some of which have turned violent. Peaceful protests allow citizens to exercise democracy and voice concerns about projects that may directly affect their communities. However, they also create a challenge for governments in a region where domestic demand for energy and natural resources is on the rise due to population growth and expanding middle classes and where government budgets are particularly dependent on taxes and royalties from these sectors due to a low income tax take [6].
Africa is a vast, diverse and exotic continent rich in minerals and natural resources [7]. It continues to experience environmental degradation, poverty, underdevelopment, corruption and violence. Incidents of civil war have increased considerably, particularly in Africa [8]. With the increasing number of these conflicts in Africa, there has been a remarkable increase in the number of these studies as well, including articles in the newspapers of countries affected by these conflicts. According to [9] some studies in this category take a holistic view and address issues that are common to several countries in particular regions. These include land ownership disputes in West Africa; agro-pastoral conflicts in East Africa; water, land aridity, and conflict in the Horn of Africa and its immediate environs; as well as ethno-racial land distribution controversies and potential water crisis in southern Africa [9]. Apart from specific problems peculiar to some areas, conflict-prone regions and countries have received particular attention. On the Horn of Africa, a major study by Markakis [10] looks at conflicts over natural resources in the region. Studies on Nigeria, Angola, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and other countries have concentrated interest on resources peculiar to each country, such as oil in Nigeria [11,12] oil and diamonds in Angola [13,14], rubber and timber in Liberia [15], diamonds in Sierra Leone [16,17], and land in Zimbabwe [18]. In most cases, interests have been on the causal role of resources in the conflict and how resources have fueled and sustained wars. However, some of the studies have considered efforts at resolving the conflicts. An example of the latter is Ben Cousins' essay [19], "Conflict Management for Multiple Resource Uses in Pastoralists and Agro-Pastoralists Contexts." The World Bank project on the role of economic considerations in conflicts [20] has also cut across both causal and resolution factors in the relationship between natural resources and conflict [9].
Tanzania is a low-income country, with a population of about 51.8 million in 2016. Poverty reduction has been slow, with approximately 12 million of citizens living in dire poverty while a significant portion of the non-poor population lives just above the poverty line and risks falling into poverty unless proper measures are in place [21]. Although there has been recent growth that has helped Tanzania's poorest, the report emphasizes that approximately 70% of Tanzanians continue to live with less than $2 per day. Basic needs poverty, which refers to the minimum resources needed for physical wellbeing, declined from 34.4% in 2006, to 28.2% by 2012. During the same time period, extreme poverty also decreased from 11.7% to 9.7% [21]. Despite all of this almost half (48%) of Tanzania's population of 36 million people are unable to meet basic food and non-food needs [22].
In Tanzania the presence of gas resources raised the expectations of the government and gave hope to local communities. The government expected to have more revenues which would support their budget. Local communities expected to improve their living standards and have an increased level of job opportunities and as a result should significantly reduce the poverty [23,24]. Some promises to satisfy the people were made by the government in Mtwara region during the presidential campaign [25]. Particularly the construction of industries was planned for Mtwara as well was expected improvement of social services. But later the government announced that the resources would be mined in Mtwara and then piped directly to Dar-es-Salaam. Mtwara residents then realized that their need wouldn't be satisfied and they then started to show opposition to the extraction of gas at the end of 2012 [23,24]. During the period of violence more than 12 residents were murdered, property was destroyed, woman were raped and others tortured.
Similar conflict could arise in any place with abundant natural resources within Tanzania or elsewhere. Causes of the conflict between the local community and the government in Mtwara Region till now have not been documented. Due to that this article assesses the reasons for the local community's participation and the roles of the government in the conflict. It was thought that identification of the reasons for the conflict would help improve the government strategy on the initiation of other natural resource projects and help harmonize community awareness and involvement.

The Study Area
Mtwara Municipality is located in the southernmost Mtwara Region which is one of twenty regions of Tanzania Mainland. It lies between longitudes 38 o and 40 o 30" East of Greenwich. It is also situated between latitudes 10 o 05" and 11 o 25" South of the Equator. It borders Lindi Region to the North, the Indian Ocean to the East and separated by the Ruvuma River from Mozambique in the South. To the West, it borders Ruvuma Region the Region occupies 16,720 km 2 or 1.9% of Tanzania Mainland land area of 885,987 sq. km [26]. This study was conducted in Mtwara Municipality. Two villages within the Municipality, namely Kagera and Magengeni were used for the study. The criterion for the selection of these villages was size of the conflict. The selected villages were chosen as they had a higher level of conflict than in other areas within the Municipality and which became the starting point of the violence.

Target Population
The targeted population in this study was the local community who were affected by the conflict; hence, they were provided sufficient information about the reasons of conflict. It included households from the two selected villages and key informants. Among the key informants were village executive officers, villages chairpersons, regional gas project coordinator, and gas officers from the Tanzania Petroleum Development Company. Households with age 22 years old and above were interviewed because at the time of conflict eruption in 2012-2013, they were 18 years old and above. At age of 18 years respondents were regarded to be mature enough for providing proper explanations about the conflict as that age considered the starting age of the working class in Tanzania [26].

Data Collection
Household questionnaire surveys. A pre-designed questionnaire was used to obtain information concerning the reasons of local community participation in the conflict and role of the government in the conflict. This questionnaire comprised of both open and closed-ended questions. The authors covered a sample size of 98 households (at sampling error 10%) as part of the population to be studied from the two villages (Kagera and Mangengeni). The sample size distribution among villages was computed proportionally to the population presented in villages and covered 66 households in Kagera and 32 households in Magengeni villages. The strategy of household selection within each village was based on the skip interval. Random interval was identified for both villages and equal to 16 households in Kagera and Magengeni. Simple random sampling was conducted by using the list of the households affected by the conflict provided by the village executive officers of each village. The selection of households was done randomly to meet the target of constituting the sample. Questionnaire pre-testing was done to test the question wording, response rates and survey time. Following the pre-testing results, some ambiguous questions were removed and others were rephrased. Questionnaire had three major sections. The first section contained the demographic data, including age, sex, education and economic activities of the respondents. The second section covered the reasons of local community's participation in conflict. The last section comprised the role of the Government in the conflict.
Interviews. Purposive sampling was used to select individuals who were conversant with the research problem. These were people who were experienced and knowledgeable enough to provide relevant information for the study. The key informants who participated in the study included the 2 ward executive officers, 2 village executive officers, 2 village chair persons, 1 regional gas project coordinator, and 2 Tanzania Petroleum Development Company (TPDC) gas officers. The semi-structured interviews were used to obtain primary data from the key informants and the checklist was used to guide the interviews.
Focus group discussions. The number of the group members varied from village to village but it ranged from 10 to 15 members. The groups were formed by different categories of people including youth and women. Participants of focus group discussions did not participate in the household survey. The group discussions aimed to get in depth information from the local community members who were affected and participated in the conflict in 2012-2013.

Characteristics of the Respondents
This study targeted households who were involved and affected during the conflict and had experience with the conflict which occurred in 2012-2013. The respondent's age was established to ensure that in 2012 (the time when the conflict started) they were at least 18 years old. As a result data collection in 2016 accrued only with respondent's age 22 years and above. The majority of respondents (67.4%) were aged 22-32 (32.7%) and 33-42 (34.7%). This implies that the youth (15-35 years old) are more energetic and productive but also are more affected by the challenges of unemployment and poverty and hence were more active participants in the conflict. Amidst them 72.4% of respondents interviewed were males whereas 27.6 % of respondents were females. According to this study, the targeted respondents were the households who participated in the gas conflict from 2012-13. It was noted that interested participants of conflict were more dominated by male compared to female counterparts.
Analysis of the respondent's occupational characteristics reveals that 24.5% of the respondents were farmers, 19.4% of the respondents were fishers, 39.8% of respondents were involved in small business such as operating of small kiosks, bricks making, petty business i.e. selling clothes, food and other small community needs, whereas 16.3% of respondents were employed in government and private sectors. Among them 48.0% of respondents had attained primary school education, which is the basic education for all Tanzanians, 30.6% had secondary level of education, 17.3% had attained college education and above, and 4.1% had not attended formal education. This reveals that the research target of the age 22 and above shows that almost all (95.9%) of the respondents had attained primary level of education.

Expectations of the Local Community
Results show that the whole of the local community expected to have improved services i.e. health, education, trading, security services as well as water and power supply services. This justifies that the local community had high expectations regarding the improvement of social services from the government. The low implementation of the expectation of the local community increased hostility between the local community and the Government, which future resulted in the conflict. This was also justified through the focus group discussions in Magengeni and Kagera villages. During the discussions members shared that their community had high expectations for the improvement of services and therefore their living standards. Similar evidence was detected by Halima et al. [27] "…residents want local government reforms to give their communities more access to electricity and other amenities." Region's unpreparedness in managing expectations and proceeds from the oil and gas exploration moved them into deadly protests [27].
At the same time, the local people continued to be misinformed from various sources in Mtwara and the country at large. The information came from media such as televisions, radios, newspapers and blogs ( Figure 2). While more than half (62.2%) of respondents got information from political representatives. Kabendera [23] noted that the discontented groups, coupled with the expectations of the ordinary people who think the discovered oil and gas would have to filling money into their pockets, could have easily been provoked into action by shrewd politicians who are keen to get support ahead of 2015 polls. As well the similar experience of regions with mineral resources, such as Shinyanga in northern Tanzania and Mara in the North-West of the country, which have remained extremely poor, could have galvanized the residents of Mtwara into demanding the government to explain to them how they would benefit from the resources before shipping them out [23].
Only few (4.1%) of respondents affirmed that they got information from the local government representatives ( Figure 2). Kabendera [23] noted that probably the government didn't do even the social and environmental analysis before introducing some of the gas projects because they would have come across such challenges and found ways to address them [23]. This, on the other hand, implies that the Government did not make enough effort to inform its people about the project and, consequently, the people received much of their information from other sources that misinformed them. As a result they resorted to violence and participation in conflict attempt to protect resources from being moved away. In addition, the local community already had experience from other investors in and outside the country, which extracted people's resources and left them poor. This resulted in dissatisfaction between the Government, investors and the local community. This was also proved during one of the focus group discussion at Kagera Village where members commented that: "The information about of non-fulfillment of expectations for Mtwara Municipality additionally was caused by experience of conflicts from other places within country. Similar problems were faced at Geita and Kahama Districts in Tanzania and other countries worldwide with an abundance of natural resources. Example of similar natural resource conflicts have been detected in Nigeria, Sudan, Congo and Uganda. There evidences in most cases were learned from the media and political representatives of different parties". Also, during the household survey, community members expressed their expectations which were submitted in village offices. These requests were accepted by the Government (see Figure 3). The majority of respondents (90.8%) commented that the government accepted request, but it did not start the implementation of the promises on time. Just a few respondents (9.2%) revealed that the government rejected requests. This implies that although the government accepted the community requests, it was not ready to implement them on time; or rather they did not give them information about the progress of the project. Some of the promises for improvement of social services in the region were made during the election campaign in 2010 (well documented in the CCM Manifesto [25]), but they were not implemented until the introduction of the natural gas project.

Reasons of Local Community Involvement in the Conflict
In studying the conflict it is important to identify the reasons of its arising. The main reasons for the peoples' participation in the conflict were identified by the respondents as indicated in Table 1. About 98% of the respondents commented that it was because of false promises from the government and a lack of implementation for local residents in Mtwara. These findings relate with what happened in the Niger Delta in Nigeria. The failure of the early independent Nigerian Government to follow through on promises such as to treat the Region as a special development area, the steady reduction in the share of oil royalties that states in the Delta have received, and, finally, the habitual disregard of state needs by the non-indigenous military state governors, resulted in and worsened delta problems. The neglect of the Delta's development (roads, schools, electricity, and health services which all ended well inland before reaching coastal communities), Nigeria's overall economic decline since the mid-1980s, and the tendency of educated Delta youths to leave the area, have confirmed its status as an economic backwater and people who remained behind simply lacked prospects elsewhere [28]. Again 95.9% of the respondents revealed that the political interference motivated violence in Mtwara District. This coheres to what happened in the North and Southern Sudan whereby political interference in the natural resources (oil and gas) resulted in civil wars which were future fuelled by feelings of economic and political marginalization, deprivation and disfranchisement by the Southern Sudanese population [29,30]. Also, 89.8% of respondents said violence resulted to low benefit sharing from project benefits. This resembles the experience learnt from the Sudan natural resource conflict where the oil revenue sharing agreement remained a major bone of contention -primarily over fairness, transparency and management. The fact that oil resources in the North Sudan were not shared equally was deemed unfair. Southerners highlight the lack of transparency from the government and the multinational companies when reporting true revenue figures. This undermined the 'equal-wealth'-sharing agreement. The fact that various peace agreements were essentially wealth-sharing agreements serves as a measure of the magnitude of the problem [31].
Again, 96.9% of the respondents pointed out that because of poor involvement from stakeholders the eruption of the conflict occurred. Where communities and stakeholders are poorly included, marginalized or excluded from the dialogue in the extractive industry development and subsequent profit distribution process, they are very likely to begin to oppose the development. As tensions escalate, communities may develop strategies of violence as a coercive measure against the industry alliance and/or government as a means for addressing old grievances and mounting opposition [32]. In the Niger Delta, poor involvement of stakeholders has witnessed on unprecedented spate of conflicts in the recent past, and all efforts to quell the conflict seem to have failed to yield the desired results in the natural resource community benefits [33].
The findings on the reasons as to why the people from Mtwara decided to engage in conflicts between the community and government were also discussed. Table 2 summarizes, 81.6% of respondents revealed that the conflict was due to over expectations that the community had on improving their social services, 92.9% of respondents said that it was due to the failure of the government to fulfill their basic promises, 91.8% of respondents commented that it was due to a lack of enough participation of community members before and after the establishment of the project.
Also, 87.8% of respondents claimed that the resulting conflict was due to poor organization to cooperate in social responsibility, 88.8% of the respondents said that the conflict was due to the issues of political interference and 76.5% of respondents commented the conflict was due to the delay of project support for community members. This implies that the community had complaints about the government which needed to be taken into consideration before and after the establishment of the gas project from Mtwara to Dar es Salaam. Also daily assessment of community needs and involvement were not taken into consideration, hence, conflicts erupted. The researchers also investigated through the comments from respondents about whether strikes were the only solutions for the community's voice to be heard. All respondents pointed out that strikes were the only solution for them to raise their voice to the government. Strikes were the result of the community's attempts to express their ideas and show their opposition to the mismanagement of the government. This has been explained by different writers where competition over natural resources such as oil or diamonds can lead to and intensify or sustain violence over resources, but natural resources can also play a role in managing and resolving conflict and preventing its reoccurrence [34].
The researchers found several reasons as to why respondents thought that strikes were the only solution to their problems as per Table 3. The majority of respondents (99.0%) claimed that strikes foster the implementation of promises and draw an attention to local community needs (92.9%). Also, respondents (90.8%) said that strikes create opportunities for the public to be heard and discussion to be had. Again, 90.8% of respondents pointed out that strikes create awareness within the country and immediate responses (89.8%). Likewise Duarte [35] reported that increase of pressure on the government could support the satisfaction of certain community's demands. Generally, the competition between community and government in Mtwara motivated the government to find a more permanent foundation for conflict resolution. This was also expressed by one member in Magengeni village during focus group discussion who stated that: "I decided to participate in the strikes in order to force the government to implement their promises and involve us in the benefit sharing". The researchers also found that all respondents were aware of government public talks with community members about the conflict. The researchers also future investigated what decisions were made during conversations between the government and the community (as summarized in Figure 4). The majority of respondents (91.9%) said that community needs exceeded the government's capacity though the government accepted the requests from the public.  According to the findings, majority of the respondents (55.1%) revealed that they trusted on the government promises since the promises intended to improve their social economic wellbeing. While other respondents (44.9%) said that they did not trust government promises due to experiences from other areas in Tanzania, where an abundance of natural resources resulted in conflict. The researchers further investigated to find out why some of the respondents did not trust the government. It was found out that major reasons for that was low involvement of local community in before and after establishment of the project (95.9%) and delay of the project benefits (74.5%). Among other reasons mentioned included the influence from political leaders (60.2%) and the past experience from Tanzania and other parts of the world (59.2%) (see Table 4). The gas conflict was also motivated by historical issues with resources in Tanzania as stated in one of the focus group discussions; "Communities around the mineral mines were found not to benefit even with the abundance of resources in their communities. A good example is Geita Gold mine in Geita region and Mwadui in Shinyanga." This information was justified by the WEO and VEO from the Mangengeni and Kagera villages. They commented that; "In most areas where the project took place there was a low involvement of local people, delay in receiving benefits, but also conflict expansion was motivated by the politicians for their own political interests".

Public Involvement
The preparations (meetings, seminars or public talks with the local community) before the implementation of the project were studied ( Table 5). The findings reveal that some seminars were organized at the beginning of the project. Also, 53.1% of respondents pointed out that some members were taken abroad (to Norway and other countries) for further studies. Those studies aimed to provide a new experience for participant about natural resource management and help understand how the natural gas could bring development. The media provided different information about the gas and the related project benefits within the country. That information was organized in different perspectives; some programmes showed the benefits while others showed the negative experiences from Tanzania and abroad. Half of respondents said that they were educated through the media. While the remaining 50% said that they were not educated at all. Majority of respondents (i.e. 65.3-67.3%) said that public talks and meetings were not organized from the beginning which led to the escalation of the conflict. Despite all of these dues appear that some initiatives were taken by the government to increase the capacity of the local community to understand more about natural gas, related activities and the benefits associated with the project. The findings from the respondents in this study show that the Government did not have enough of a capacity to fulfill promises. Some important initiatives were not taken (such as public talks and meetings) at all.
Additionally, this study shows how many government leaders made a visit to Mtwara for the purpose of explaining and making promises about benefits from the gas project (see Table 6). The majority of respondents pointed out that several visits were made by the President (79.6%) and by the Prime Minister (75.5%). Different promises were made by the President in 2010 during the Election Campaign [25]. The former Prime Minister (2010-2015) soon after election made a visit to Mtwara Municipality and after that visit was announced in parliament that all promises would be implemented. Other officers made poorer communication attempts with the local community (i.e. 10.2-16.3%). This implies that the visits to Mtwara were made by the national leaders rather than the regional and district leaders.

Measures for Stabilization of Conflicts
The majority (i.e. 93.9-99.0%) of the respondents indicated that introductions of additional police forces as well as army forces were made. Also talks took a place by the Government as an attempt to implement for conflict violence stabilization (see Table 7). As well, 73.5% of respondents indicated that there was an internal and external capacity building for community representatives. Particularly, there was a significant increase in the number of local residents who were empowered to seek additional education about the gas issue. Additionally, 59.2-60.2% of respondents attended seminars, public meetings and the public education provided about the benefits of the gas project. The activities mentioned aimed to strengthen local community education. Again 50% of respondents commented that some of the promises were implemented; such as construction of industries (Dangote cement), improvement of electricity power supply. However some other promises were not yet meet. These results indicate that the government took measures to rescue the situation after the conflict; these measures were intended to stabilize the violence and sensitize the community benefits of the gas project for community members.
In Nigeria, the President has stepped up efforts to find a lasting solution to the renewed militancy in the Niger Delta by holding a private meeting with the former President. They have been discussing the oil and gas conflict in the Niger Delta. As well, the President organized a meeting with local community representatives of the Niger Delta [36]. This shows that, in Niger Delta, different measures have been taken to address the oil and gas conflict. The measures taken involve both top government officials as well as local community representatives. During the focus group discussion of the participants in Magengeni village the following comment was received: "The government took strong measures to stabilize the situation and, again after stabilization, the government took on other negotiation measures in order to find a sustainable means of solving the conflict". The majority of respondents said that the stabilization of violence took around 1-2 months. Different activities were organized during the period of conflict stabilization (see Figure 5). 93.9-95.9% of respondents stated that organized media education, meetings and seminars took place. Meetings were held to discuss issues of the project implementation and its benefits to the community. Seminars were organized to train some of the members in the study area on the gas project. The implementation of all promises has not fully been reached yet, having been just introduced only a few of them so far have been fulfilled. This implies that strong measures were taken after the occurrence of the conflict; therefore, if such measures could be taken before this could help avoid such conflict in the future. Similar findings were revealed in the study from the conflict in Nigeria, where some measures were taken by the government to meet with the local community. For example, the Institute for Multi-track diplomacy (IMTD) has been helping to facilitate education for the local community in the Niger Delta about the benefits of oil and gas projects. To support the Niger Delta Peace Forum (NDPF), people were trained (a hundred people of NDPF members) on the conflict resolution, local community for capacity building, as well as group facilitation and leadership skills. Additional knowledge was provided through the organizing of meetings, public talks, seminars and study abroad [37]

Evaluation of the Community Expectations
Analysis of data in relation to the evaluation of community expectations for improving social services such as water, power, health and education shows that the majority of respondents (81.6%) commented that their expectations were partially considered or were taken as not important (see Figure 6). This implies that low consideration of promises, and its partial implementation together with poor knowledge, was among the main motives behind the conflict in Mtwara. All respondents said that the Government gave them promised through verbal talking to improve and develop their services (health, education, employment, power and water services), no any official document was ever established and signed.

Fulfillment of Community Expectations
The implementation of Government promises achieved during the conflict stabilization period in 2013 has been revealed in this study. It was found that the majority of respondents (i.e. 87.8%) commented that the government achieved few promises (see Table 8). This coheres with what happened in Nigeria in the Region of the Niger Delta where the local community demanded that promises be met for a more equitable distribution of the income generated by oil and gas production and for medial action to counter the effects of gas flanking as well as other forms of solution for environmental damage in the Delta Region [38]. In the case of Mtwara Municipality, the government did achieve a few promises although these promises which were implemented by the government did not satisfy the local community.
Among the promises that were implemented by the government since 2013 were services such as education, power supply and police security (see Table 9). Some contributions have been provided to local schools which have helped to build new and improve existing classrooms. Additionally, some students from Mtwara District were sponsored by the Government of Tanzania for undergraduate studies specifically in the area of gas and oil both within the country and abroad. In the case of power supply, the Government constructed the Mtwara Gas Power Plant which supplies stable power to both Mtwara and Lindi Regions. As well, police security services have been maintained with the increase of police staff and their equipment. Remaining services were not fulfilled; for example, health services, trading and water supply (see Table 10). Those services remain in the same conditions as they were before conflict. Evaluation of the community's satisfaction with the implementation of promises by the government after the violence shows that the majority of respondents were not satisfied with benefits received from the government in 2013. At the beginning (i.e. 2010), the community expected to benefit more from the gas deposits. Several reasons were identified to explain why the community was not satisfied (see Table 10). Among the main reasons were low compensation for land taken (96.9%), the low implementation of job promises (95.9%) construction of industries (95.9%) and false promises (92.9%). Linked results were obtained in the study of Shanghvi [39] where two-thirds of the respondents expressed outright dissatisfaction with their experience regarding compensation for the land taken from them at the expense of investments in the natural gas industry. Residents complained that "some cattle and coconut trees died because of poisonous chemicals but they haven't been compensated for to-date", "the compensation is inadequate", "if you refuse the compensation amount they still move you from your land by force" [39]. Komu [40] had observed compensation-related disputes came second in the ranking of land conflicts in Tanzania. Similar situation detected in India [41,42] and China [43] were local government paid lower compensation than in market and as well delay with the payments. In other case Kabendera [23] reported that the presence of the gas didn't spur the growth of manufacturing and processing industries in the region, as was expected, and hence made the community dissatisfied by lost job opportunities.
Additionally, little involvement of local community members (87.8%) created a deficit of appropriate knowledge which leads to incorrect decisions being made among community members. The last reason for community dissatisfaction was the excessive use of power by the security force (police and army forces). Residents feared participation in any activities because police/army forces were unable to distinguish between violators and non-violators and applied measures to all residents. This implies that till now the community is not satisfied with the Government's implementation of the promises. Similar reasons for natural resource conflicts were stated by community leaders in Peru: (i) few employment opportunities for the local communities, which exacerbates the existing horizontal inequalities; and (ii) insufficient compensation for the environmental costs of mining (primarily water pollution) and for the relocation of communities away from their land (often the source of their livelihood) [44].
These findings are an indication that conflict could erupt again if the government does not provide enough education and ignores the community needs, and in specific, if it does not provide feedback about the progress of its promises and their fulfillment

Conclusion
Some of the main reasons for the local community's participation in the conflict are as follows; false promises from the government, poor stakeholders' involvement before and after the implementation of the project, political interference, and low benefit sharing from the project benefit. In most cases, those expectations were not implemented or implemented only partially and, hence, they created a conflict between community members and the government. Some of the promises made were improvement of health, education, trading, power, water and security services, as well as construction of industries and provision of employment. Nevertheless, the community revealed that the project benefits were delayed and in the end they benefited at a low level compared to what they had expected.
The Government did initiate some of the roles needed before and after the establishment of the project, although the measures which were taken by the Government did not satisfy the local community. From the beginning, the Government conducted a few seminars and some community representatives were taken abroad for study and to acquire more knowledge about the gas project. But the organization of meetings and public talks were poor. After the conflict violence the government implemented some promises, such as industrial construction and improvements in education. As well, the Government stabilized violence and maintained peace and harmony in the local community in Mtwara. In order to avoid these conflicts in the future, all stakeholders and beneficiaries need to be fully involved in all stages of the project from the beginning and up to the end. Also, the Government must implement the promises made to the local community. Politicians were required not to intervene in the development issues. Moreover, equal sharing of project benefits needs to be considered for the sustainability of the project.