Somalia's Al-Shabaab Offensive: Gains, Setbacks, and the Long Road to Security

The Campaign in Central Somalia

The Somali government's military campaign, which drew significant momentum from the grassroots Macawisley clan militia movement that emerged from Hiran in 2022, has continued to advance in the central regions. Somali National Army units, supported by Turkish-trained special forces, UAE-funded units, and the clan militias that provide both local intelligence and fighting manpower, have pushed Al-Shabaab out of significant territory in the Hiran and Middle Shabelle regions.

In Bay and Bakool, the picture is more complicated. These are regions where Al-Shabaab's roots run deep, where the group has provided taxation, dispute resolution, and a form of order that, however brutal, filled a vacuum left by the absence of effective government. Displacing Al-Shabaab from territory there requires not just military pressure but a credible government alternative that can provide security and services to the population. That alternative remains inadequately developed, and the gap between military advance and civilian administration has been one of the campaign's consistent weaknesses.

Al-Shabaab's response to military pressure has followed a pattern established in earlier campaigns. When frontal military resistance becomes too costly, the group withdraws from fixed positions, disperses into the population, and shifts to asymmetric tactics: roadside bombs, assassinations of local administrators and traditional elders who cooperate with the government, complex attacks on military installations, and targeted bombings in Mogadishu and other urban centres. The group's capacity for this kind of adaptive insurgency has not been significantly degraded by the territorial losses of the past three years.

The ATMIS Transition

The African Union Transition Mission in Somalia, ATMIS, which replaced the previous AMISOM mission, has been drawing down its forces in phases as agreed with the Somali government and the African Union. The drawdown reflects both a political commitment to Somali sovereignty and the reality that troop-contributing countries, particularly those from Uganda, Burundi, Djibouti, Ethiopia, and Kenya, face their own domestic pressures and are not prepared to maintain large-scale deployments indefinitely.

The question that the ATMIS transition raises is whether the Somali National Army is ready to hold the territory that ATMIS currently secures. The honest answer, based on the performance of Somali forces in different theatres, is: in some places yes, in others not yet. The units trained by Turkey and the UAE in particular have shown improved capability and discipline. But the broader Somali National Army suffers from chronic problems: irregular pay, clan-based loyalty splits that make cross-clan operations politically complicated, insufficient heavy weapons and logistics, and a command structure that is not always united in operational priorities.

A premature ATMIS withdrawal in regions where Somali forces are not yet capable of holding ground could undo years of gains. The precedent from earlier drawdowns in 2014 and 2015 is not encouraging: Al-Shabaab retook significant territory after AU force reductions in that period. The Somali government and its international partners are aware of this precedent and are trying to sequence the transition more carefully. Whether they are succeeding will be tested in the coming months as the next phase of withdrawals proceeds.

Al-Shabaab's Resilience

Understanding why Al-Shabaab has survived 15 years of counterinsurgency campaigns, drone strikes, two AU missions, and multiple Somali government offensives requires looking at the group as something more complex than a military organisation. Al-Shabaab functions simultaneously as an armed group, a taxation authority, an informal court system, and a provider of a kind of brutal predictability in areas where government has been absent for decades.

Its revenue base is estimated by various analysts and UN monitoring reports at around 100 million dollars annually, derived from "zakat" taxation levied on businesses, traders, and farmers in areas it controls or influences, from port fees in areas near its zones of activity, from taxation of remittance flows, and from a diaspora funding stream that the group has been more successful than commonly acknowledged in maintaining. This revenue base funds fighters, weapons, administration, and a degree of social provision that keeps the group embedded in communities rather than simply imposed on them by force.

The group's leadership has also proven resilient. The killing of previous Al-Shabaab leaders, including Ahmed Abdi Godane in 2014, produced short-term disruption but not strategic collapse. The current leadership under Ahmed Omar, known as Abu Ubaidah, has maintained strategic coherence while allowing tactical adaptation. The group's internal governance, including its shura council and regional command structure, has proven more durable than many analysts expected.

The Clan Dimension

The clan dynamics of Somalia's conflict are impossible to understand Somalia's security situation without engaging seriously with them. Al-Shabaab is not simply an ideological movement that imposes itself on a reluctant population. It has clan relationships, clan grievances, and clan constituencies that sustain it in certain areas. The Macawisley militia movement that drove its success against the group in Hiran worked precisely because it mobilised clan identity and local grievance against Al-Shabaab in a way that outside forces could not replicate.

But what works in one clan's territory does not automatically transfer to another. The Somali National Army itself is not above clan politics, with commanders managing units whose loyalty runs to their clan first and the federal government second. When operations require crossing clan boundaries, or when the distribution of spoils and positions after a military victory is handled in ways that disadvantage particular clans, the coalition holding together can fracture quickly.

Al-Shabaab has consistently exploited these fractures. Its recruitment draws from young men in areas where clan grievances against the federal government or against rival clans make the group's combination of ideology, discipline, and alternative authority attractive. Addressing Al-Shabaab's base requires addressing the grievances that feed it, not just the military structures through which those grievances are expressed.

What Success Actually Requires

The military campaign against Al-Shabaab is necessary. Allowing the group to hold and govern territory, extract taxation, and administer a parallel state is not a viable long-term option for a Somali government that aspires to function as a sovereign state. But the military campaign is not sufficient. Every analysis of Al-Shabaab's resilience, and every comparison with other insurgencies that have or have not been defeated, points to the same conclusion: insurgencies collapse when the population they depend on withdraws its support, and populations withdraw support when a credible alternative provides what the insurgency was providing.

In Somalia's case, that means governance. It means district administrators who show up, who manage disputes fairly, who do not extort the businesses and farmers who were previously being extorted by Al-Shabaab. It means schools and clinics that function. It means a legal system that operates. It means, at minimum, the rudiments of a state presence that gives people a reason to bet on the government rather than the insurgency.

The Somali government has made genuine progress on governance in Mogadishu and in some federal member states. That progress has not consistently extended into newly liberated rural areas. Building it will require sustained investment, sustained political attention, and sustained patience from international partners who have historically prioritised the military dimensions of Somalia's crisis over its governance dimensions. Whether that patience exists is one of the defining uncertainties of Somalia's next chapter.

The Regional Stakes

Somalia's security situation matters beyond Somalia's borders. Al-Shabaab has demonstrated the capacity to conduct attacks in Kenya and Uganda, and its external operations wing has ambitions that extend further. A Somalia that stabilises and builds effective government over the next decade would remove a significant source of regional insecurity. A Somalia that cycles through campaigns and setbacks, never consolidating gains, would remain a reservoir of instability from which the whole of East Africa suffers.

For Ethiopia, whose forces have contributed to ATMIS and whose border with Somalia is long and porous, the security in central and southern Somalia directly affects the threat environment in the Ogaden and Somali regional state. For Kenya, which experienced the Westgate and Garissa attacks and whose northern border regions remain Al-Shabaab territory in practical terms, Somalia's trajectory is not an abstraction. For Djibouti, whose port and military base economy depends on regional stability, a collapsing Somalia would be an immediate economic and security crisis.

The campaign underway in 2026 is the latest chapter in a long story that has no satisfying ending yet. There is genuine reason for cautious optimism in the tactical advances of the past three years. There is also ample historical reason for humility about projecting those advances into a durable political settlement. Somalia has been here before. The test is whether this time is different enough.