Somalia and Al-Shabaab

Somalia has been functionally collapsed as a state since 1991, when the fall of Siad Barre's regime produced civil war, clan conflict, famine, and the disintegration of every functioning government institution. Despite more than three decades of international engagement - US intervention in 1993, AMISOM peacekeeping from 2007, successive UN political missions, and ATMIS's transition to AUSSOM - Somalia has never re-established effective sovereignty across its territory. Al-Shabaab remains one of al-Qaeda's most financially autonomous and operationally significant affiliates globally, controlling large rural areas of southern and central Somalia and maintaining the ability to conduct complex attacks in the capital Mogadishu. Al-Shabaab emerged from the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), which briefly controlled much of southern Somalia in 2006 before being driven out by Ethiopian military intervention. The ICU's armed youth wing - the 'Youth' (al-Shabaab) - survived and radicalised, pledging allegiance to al-Qaeda and launching a sustained insurgency against the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) and AMISOM. By 2008-2010, al-Shabaab briefly controlled Mogadishu and much of southern Somalia. It was driven from Mogadishu in 2011 by AMISOM and the TFG, and from its last major urban centre (Kismayo) in 2012, but adapted by shifting to guerrilla tactics, rural governance, and systematic taxation and kidnapping. The October 2017 Mogadishu truck bombing - which killed 512 people, making it al-Shabaab's deadliest-ever single attack - demonstrated the group's continued capacity to conduct mass-casualty urban operations nearly fifteen years into the AMISOM mission. Al-Shabaab finances itself through a sophisticated taxation system - taxing traders, businesses, and transport routes in areas under or near its control - that generates more revenue than the Somali federal government in many areas. The UN Panel of Experts has consistently described it as al-Qaeda's most financially autonomous affiliate. The 2022-2023 period offered the most significant counter-al-Shabaab gains in a decade. President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud (elected April 2022) launched a major military offensive with clan Macawisley militias in Hiraan and Middle Shabelle. The offensive recaptured significant territory. But momentum faltered by late 2023 as ATMIS drawdowns created security gaps. Al-Shabaab counterattacked, recapturing areas previously described as 'liberated.' The gradual handover of AMISOM's Forward Operating Bases to Somali forces, many of whom had received only three months' training, created predictable vulnerabilities. ATMIS's transition to AUSSOM in January 2025 has created a new phase of crisis. AUSSOM was authorised by UNSC Resolution 2767 (December 2024) with a mandate of up to 12,626 personnel. But as of mid-2025, AUSSOM had received barely a quarter of its $166 million budget; troop-contributing countries had not received allowances for a year and a half; and the security situation was actively deteriorating. In July 2025, al-Shabaab captured Sabiid and Anole, located 40 kilometres southwest of Mogadishu, following the withdrawal of AU and Somali forces - bringing the group's territorial gains to within striking distance of the capital's supply routes. A February 2026 bombing near Mogadishu's Aden Adde International Airport killed over 30 people. A March 2025 assassination attempt on President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud via IED underscored al-Shabaab's continued penetration of the capital. Somalia's political crisis compounds the security deterioration. Hassan Sheikh Mohamud's efforts to amend the constitution, impose a new electoral system, and extend his own tenure beyond his May 2026 term expiry have generated fierce opposition from Puntland and Jubaland, which accuse him of undermining federalism and the power-sharing framework that underpins Somalia's fragile stability. The Africa Center for Strategic Studies warned in November 2025 that Somalia risked becoming a jihadist state; it identified the political crisis as both independently dangerous and compounding the al-Shabaab threat by preventing the political consensus needed for effective counterterrorism.

Somalia hosts one of the world's most acute and protracted humanitarian crises, affecting 5.9 million people (OCHA 2025). Climate shocks - a triple drought from 2021-2023 followed by devastating floods - have now overtaken conflict as the primary driver of displacement, though conflict remains the compounding factor that prevents humanitarian response. 2.4 million people are internally displaced; over 283,000 cross-border movements were recorded in 2024. More than 1,827 schools have been closed across the Lake Chad Basin and Somalia combined, reflecting the educational collapse across the wider region. Al-Shabaab's taxation system - which extracts revenues from businesses, traders, and farming communities at rates that sometimes exceed FGS taxation - is simultaneously a governance mechanism and a significant drag on economic activity in areas near or under al-Shabaab influence. The group's practice of punishing those who refuse to join, combined with its forced recruitment campaigns, has created particular risks for young Somali men.

As of mid-2026, Somalia is in what the Africa Center for Strategic Studies described in November 2025 as a compounding polycrisis: political crisis at the federal level (constitutional dispute over elections and term extension); security deterioration (al-Shabaab retaking territory and striking Mogadishu); AUSSOM financial crisis (TCCs unpaid, mission at risk of collapse); and severe humanitarian conditions. The September 2025 al-Shabaab video messaging - which explicitly rejected constitutional democracy, women's rights, and music - underscores that the group has no interest in negotiated political accommodation. Any scenario in which AUSSOM collapses or withdraws without an adequate Somali force in place would dramatically expand al-Shabaab's territorial control.

Short-Term (0-12 months) Critical. AUSSOM's financial sustainability is the most urgent near-term risk variable: if the EU and other donors fail to close the 2025 funding gap and establish multi-year commitments, AUSSOM will either draw down to ineffective levels or terminate. Al-Shabaab's offensive momentum (July 2025 territory seizure; February 2026 airport bombing) will continue and likely intensify. Long-Term (3+ years) Long-term stabilisation requires a political settlement that addresses federal-regional tensions, delivers genuine clan-inclusive governance in Mogadishu, reduces al-Shabaab's governance advantage in rural Somalia through public investment, and builds a professional Somali security force. All three are necessary and none are currently on a credible implementation pathway.