Al-Shabaab's Unstoppable Advance Threatens Mogadishu as Somalia's Defenses Crumble

In the vast scrublands of Somalia, a brutal reality is unfolding that threatens to reshape the Horn of Africa’s security landscape. The jihadist terror organization al-Shabaab is conducting a relentless offensive that has systematically reversed years of hard-won territorial gains, pushing federal forces back toward the capital of Mogadishu. By late July 2025, the group has undone many of the most significant victories achieved during a US-backed counteroffensive in 2022, and there are no indications that their momentum will slow.

What makes this advance particularly alarming is not just the territory being captured, but the strategic significance of each location—key transport hubs, river crossings, and highway intersections that could eventually allow al-Shabaab to encircle and isolate the capital itself. Meanwhile, Somalia’s international partners have proven largely ineffective, with African Union forces taking defensive positions rather than mounting counteroffensives, and domestic political dysfunction undermining any coherent military response.

Strategic Towns Fall After Prolonged Sieges

The most recent major territorial gains by al-Shabaab in central Somalia came with the capture of two strategically significant townships: Moqokori and Tardo, both located in the Somali state of Hirshabelle. These victories represent far more than simple territorial expansion—they demonstrate al-Shabaab’s ability to overcome Somalia’s most determined defenders in prolonged, high-intensity combat.

Moqokori, in particular, became the focal point of a two-month grinding offensive that saw al-Shabaab fighting against not just federal troops but also a collection of smaller militias representing the local population. These local militias typically present formidable opposition in open battle for two critical reasons: their intimate familiarity with the terrain where fighting occurs, and their extraordinarily high stakes in the outcome. While the bulk of Somali federal troops are known to be undermotivated, underpaid, and undertrained, local militias represent the last line of defense between their own families and a marauding terrorist insurgency that may mark them for death. The militias at Moqokori have been hailed in some circles as Somalia’s best weapon against the jihadist threat.

For al-Shabaab to break through at Moqokori after multiple months of high-intensity fighting represented a major victory even by the standards of their ongoing offensive. According to local sources, the group ultimately achieved their breakthrough with a pair of coordinated suicide assaults, collectively deploying several large car bombs and multiple hundreds of gunmen. Against the combined strength of these terrorist assaults, both federal defenders and local militias were forced to pull back, though the government in Mogadishu initially claimed to have successfully defended the town even as skirmishes continued in the outskirts.

With fighting still ongoing near Moqokori, al-Shabaab turned its attention southward to the town of Tardo, where they again faced a combined force of local militias and troops from the Somali military. In this case, however, the jihadists managed to capture the town without a fight. According to one member of the Somali parliament, a large part of the collapse in government lines stemmed from the military’s failure to send reinforcements or even basic supplies like water tankers to the defenders. Al-Shabaab rounded out its territorial capture in this zone with the small town of Gumare, marking the first time the jihadists have consolidated control in this area since 2018.

Critical Infrastructure Falls Southwest of the Capital

Most recently, al-Shabaab captured another pair of strategically important towns in yet another location, this time in an area southwest of Mogadishu in the region of Lower Shabelle. A series of deadly suicide bombings led to the eventual withdrawal of both Somali and international peacekeeping forces from the towns of Sabiid and Anole, just one month after those areas had been recaptured from a prior al-Shabaab assault.

The loss of these two towns carries profound strategic implications. They protect a critically important river crossing that, if properly defended by al-Shabaab, will now prevent Somali troops from moving across much of the area south of the capital. This effectively creates a barrier that fragments government control and limits the mobility of federal forces attempting to respond to threats or reinforce vulnerable positions.

With this most recent series of victories, al-Shabaab is now positioned to put substantial pressure on two key locations: Bulobarde and Jalalaqsi. Bulobarde functions as a regional transport hub where two major highways converge—a position it has held since last being under al-Shabaab control back in 2014. Its surrounding district has an estimated population of nearly half a million people, and possibly even more given the displacement of civilians from areas the jihadists now control. Capture of the town and the highway intersection that comes with it would allow al-Shabaab to completely lock down one of the most strategically important routes out of Mogadishu.

The city of Jalalaqsi represents an arguably even bigger prize. Capture of that area would allow al-Shabaab to work its way down the highway in question, getting progressively closer to Mogadishu while cutting off federal troops from easily traveling to other vulnerable areas. According to the Long War Journal, al-Shabaab will most likely attempt to encircle these two cities in the near term in order to apply pressure and eventually capture them in mass assaults, replicating the tactics they successfully employed at Moqokori and Tardo during this most recent set of battles.

Why Killing Fighters Doesn’t Stop Al-Shabaab

Somalia is fighting back, to be clear. On the day before Tardo fell to the jihadists, a drone strike killed a handful of al-Shabaab fighters west of Moqokori. In the last couple of weeks, Somali forces have claimed credit for multiple operations that killed over a dozen al-Shabaab militants each. But as much as Somali leaders attempt to tout these counterterror operations as indicators of their success in combat, they tend to oversell the actual relevance of these sorts of counterattacks.

Similar to the Taliban of Afghanistan, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or JNIM in the Sahel, al-Shabaab’s status as a jihadist insurgency means it doesn’t think about human casualties in the same way that a proper, non-Russian military would. Although martyrdom isn’t necessarily an ideal scenario for individual al-Shabaab fighters, the group operates in a way that happily accepts a degree of personnel losses in order to cause greater damage, take territory, protect finances, weaponry, or senior leadership, or even just lure government forces into ambushes and firefights.

Al-Shabaab’s number of fighters at any given time is difficult to pin down, but the group is known to be actively recruiting and training personnel in large numbers. With the way al-Shabaab structures its offensives, it’s able to easily plug new fighters into a given operation when others are killed off. Put simply, killing al-Shabaab fighters simply isn’t a deterrent to their larger war effort in the same way that wiping out groups of soldiers from a formal military would force that military to reposition or better protect its troops—again, with the exception of Russia.

It’s not that al-Shabaab’s fighters are truly expendable; after all, there are still a limited number of them in total, and those with fighting experience and acumen are particularly valuable. But destroying small cells or individual fighting units doesn’t interrupt al-Shabaab’s offensive capabilities in the way that the Somali government’s celebration of those small wins might lead an observer to believe. Because Somalia has to rely on a relatively small number of elite, fast-moving units to launch effective counterattacks against the group, it lacks the ability to mount the kind of large-scale counteroffensive that would really be able to do damage—either by wiping out militants on the scale of hundreds instead of the occasional dozen, or by attacking the supply and logistical infrastructure that allows al-Shabaab to sustain its operations.

The African Union Mission’s Ineffective Response

Somalia’s international partners have been unable to make up the gap in capability. Right now, Somalia serves as temporary home for over ten thousand forward-deployed troops from an African Union mission operating under the acronym AUSSOM. Comprising 4,500 troops from Uganda, 2,500 from Ethiopia, and a thousand or more each from Egypt, Kenya, and Djibouti, AUSSOM is meant to help stabilize Somalia, but its troops have largely taken up defensive positions across the country instead of leading counteroffensives against al-Shabaab.

The deployment comes with multiple controversies, partly because of the fractious relationship between Somalia and participating nation Ethiopia, and partly because of the difficult legacy of past African Union deployments in Somalia. Under AUSSOM’s watch, al-Shabaab has captured major chunks of territory, carried out at least one nearly successful attempt on the Somali President’s life, and deftly avoided the sorts of direct confrontations with African soldiers that might lead to heavy losses.

There is a chance that AUSSOM will play a more important role as al-Shabaab tightens its hold around Mogadishu. Both of the major targets now in al-Shabaab’s sights—Bulobarde and Jalalaqsi—are the locations of bases occupied by fighters from the nearby nation of Djibouti, who will lend additional manpower to fight alongside Somali federal troops. But although Djibouti’s soldiers and their equipment could prove quite helpful, there are no guarantees they would actually get the chance to fight.

Al-Shabaab’s creative use of encirclements, followed by attritional skirmishes, and then massive assaults spearheaded with car bomb detonations, are quite effective at forcing defenders into tactical retreats. It may not make sense for Somali federal forces, Djiboutian soldiers, or local militias to stay and fight under those circumstances, just as it didn’t in the recent capture of Tardo. Even if a defense at Bulobarde or Jalalaqsi did make tactical sense, there’s no guarantee that Djibouti’s government wouldn’t pull its soldiers from the fight in order to avoid heavy losses for a military with only twenty thousand active personnel in total.

Just last week, Somalia witnessed another of its partners from AUSSOM fail to deter al-Shabaab from taking yet another target—this time in the captures of the towns of Sabiid and Anole southwest of the capital, where Ugandan forces were supposed to help hold the line. In those towns, around thirty-five Ugandan soldiers were killed in multiple suicide attacks, destroying morale at a time when they had already been fighting without pay for over a year, since the US and the European Union paused funding for their deployment. With the retreat of Ugandan forces, a planned, limited counteroffensive in nearby towns became impossible.

Limited Impact from Other International Partners

Somalia’s international support doesn’t exclusively consist of AUSSOM, but its other partners haven’t been much more effective. The United States is also active in Somalia, launching airstrikes against jihadist targets, but they’re only partially focused on al-Shabaab. Instead, American forces are primarily concerned with the Islamic State - Somalia branch, who have become a global hub for Islamic State leadership and financial networks from the relative safety of the mountains in autonomous Puntland.

America has occasionally lent air support in the fight against al-Shabaab, but the specifics of those strikes are largely unknown, and according to information available in the public domain, they don’t appear to have been enough to turn the tide. Turkey also deploys troops in a barracks in Mogadishu, but it has largely handled training operations to help Somali soldiers, who don’t exactly have a reputation for making those Turkish trainers proud when they actually take that expertise into combat. At home, Turkish leaders have faced domestic pressure to draw down aid expenditures on Somalia, as opposition figures have alleged that aid is being siphoned away by corrupt and well-connected contractors.

Domestic Political Dysfunction Undermines Military Response

As al-Shabaab captures more and more territory, especially strategically important positions that were supposed to be success stories for the Somali military, internal elements have started to turn their backs on Mogadishu as well. Speaking to the AFP, one Somali militia leader described Somalia’s current president as being extremely inept at working with the clans.

Somali special forces, known as the Danab Brigades, remain effective at the sorts of isolated, one-off counterattacks against al-Shabaab mentioned earlier, but they too are suffering the effects of attritional warfare, with more and more veteran fighters and officers being taken out of the fight. As Mogadishu’s federal forces start to crumble, the president and his inner circle have been far more focused on playing politics ahead of an election next year—working desperately to control the narrative around Somalia’s fight but utterly failing to focus on the fight at hand.

Al-Shabaab’s Growing Strength and Economic Power

All the while, al-Shabaab itself has only grown stronger. The group has taken control of regional economies in much of the central Somali heartland, where it doesn’t have to worry about being pushed off its captured territory anytime soon. Speaking to Barron’s, researcher Rashid Abdi described the group as one of the wealthiest insurgencies in Africa. As Abdi explained, the group out-taxes the state, and its business tentacles spread everywhere.

Al-Shabaab’s ranks are swelling with disillusioned young men, including some army deserters, who are enticed not just on religious grounds or for reasons of self-protection, but by al-Shabaab’s better ability to pay and a growing sense that they’ll end up on the winning side of the nation’s civil conflict. The group’s positions are growing ever more defensible, they’re able to build bigger and better improvised explosives, they’re able to coordinate the sorts of encircling attacks that they favor, and they’re poised to hit Mogadishu with destabilizing terror attacks from all directions.

Just last week, Mogadishu’s commander of the nation’s prisons indicated that al-Shabaab is currently planning a coordinated large-scale attack on Mogadishu’s Central Prison, where hundreds of al-Shabaab fighters are incarcerated and could swell the jihadist group’s ranks if they were to be freed.

The Path Toward Al-Shabaab’s Endgame

As much as the Somali government may not want to admit it, al-Shabaab is ascendant right now. Mogadishu does not appear equipped to take back, and then hold, the territory they’ve lost. If they can’t accomplish that fundamental objective, then it’s only a matter of time before al-Shabaab reaches its endgame—a scenario that could see the jihadist group establishing effective control over major population centers and critical infrastructure leading into and out of the capital itself, fundamentally altering the security situation in the Horn of Africa for years to come.

Iran’s Proxy Strategy Remains Central Despite Recent Setbacks

The strategic calculus that drives proxy warfare extends far beyond Somalia’s borders, offering important context for understanding how non-state armed groups operate within broader geopolitical frameworks. From Tehran’s perspective, the recent conflict with Israel has reinforced rather than diminished the importance of proxy forces for Iranian domestic security. Before the October 7th attacks, it was generally believed that Israel would fare poorly in a direct confrontation with Iran because of the impact that its proxies could have in response. Their failure to deliver on that strategy doesn’t invalidate the logic behind it.

Consider a simple thought experiment: Think back to the confusion and panic of October 7th, when the surprise attack caught Israel’s security services so off-guard that it took agonizing hours to mount a serious response. Now imagine this generational shock had been accompanied by a simultaneous volley of missiles from Iran, Lebanon, and Yemen—a volley far bigger than anything Iran was able to muster during the recent 12 Day War, perhaps accompanied by a ground invasion from Lebanon. In this scenario, it’s hard to imagine an outcome where the death toll on October 7th wouldn’t have been many times worse, where the shock and chaos reverberating through Israeli society wouldn’t have felt near-apocalyptic.

This was meant to be Tehran’s plan for any war: the massive deterrent intended to keep Israel at bay. The reason it didn’t play out like this was because after Hamas launched such a massive attack, Israel responded by choosing to dismantle this Axis of Resistance piece by piece—without drawing the other big players into the fray until it was too late. The fact that Iran has moved to resupply its proxies so quickly should be a clear sign that the military strategy of strength through proxies has not faded away. This pattern of proxy reliance mirrors al-Shabaab’s own relationship with various international jihadist networks, demonstrating how non-state actors can leverage external support to sustain operations even after significant setbacks.

The Logistics Challenge of Rearming Proxy Forces

Bringing proxy groups back up to military readiness has become an uphill battle for state sponsors, illustrating the vulnerabilities that groups like al-Shabaab also face in maintaining their operational capabilities. Just getting weapons to these groups has turned into something of a headache for Tehran—something it never needed to worry much about before. Prior to the fall of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, Iranian planes could land in Damascus and link up with trucks that would take their weapons stashes straight to Hezbollah.

Now, Syria’s new government is actively hunting down Iranian smugglers. They want nothing to do with Tehran’s smuggling activities and are instead attempting to show the international community—with varied success—that they are a sovereign state.

Just last month, Syrian forces caught a truck with Russian anti-tank missiles hidden under cucumbers heading into Lebanon. In May, they stopped Iranian air-defense missiles near the border. For years, Lebanon’s military largely ignored Hezbollah’s weapons flowing across the border—a stance that can be partially attributed to the country’s extremely weak government. Now, however, Lebanese forces have started intercepting these shipments with help from Israeli intelligence.

Still, the Axis is trying its hardest to adapt. Intelligence sources say Hezbollah have “restructured their smuggling network” and are building their own drones now, though they still need Iranian parts. And they’re learning from each bust, finding new ways to move gear in smaller pieces. The risks here are steep.

Israel’s made it clear that if Hezbollah gets serious about rearming, they’ll start hitting them again. And that’s before we even get onto the growing tensions between Hezbollah and the official Lebanese army.

For their part, the Houthis have consistently shown the least restraint of any of the members of the Axis of Resistance, and with more sophisticated weaponry could significantly worsen shipping through the Red Sea—a vital shipping channel through which much of the world’s commerce flows. To be clear, Hezbollah is nowhere near ready to engage in any sort of conflict with Israel—or even to provoke Israeli strikes on the scale of last autumn. Nor are the Houthis about to become a more far-reaching threat, with brand new superweapons or anything.

But we nevertheless are seeing that Iran learned real lessons from its war with Israel; lessons which emphasize rather than deemphasize the importance of proxy forces for their own domestic security. Lessons which have compelled them to start rearming and rebuilding their proxies as fast as possible. And that will be keeping the whole region—and broader world—on edge. Because while the risk of a wider Middle East war may have died down for now, the circumstances in which another conflagration could erupt are already starting to grow.

The Congo’s Illusory Peace Deal

In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, another conflict zone demonstrates how premature declarations of peace can obscure continuing instability—a pattern that may eventually apply to Somalia if international actors prematurely claim success against al-Shabaab. Amidst lots of diplomatic fanfare and high-minded discussions of peace, the Congo, Rwanda, the United States, and quite a few other nations are ready to declare victory in ending an intense civil conflict. But any claim of true peace in the Congo just cannot survive scrutiny.

The Congo has been fighting a years-long war against an internal insurgent group known as M23, located in the nation’s east and predominantly along the border with Rwanda. M23 is widely understood to be backed by Rwanda’s leaders and its military, and with the help of thousands of uniformed Rwandan troops, M23 has taken over the entire border with Rwanda and the bulk of two provinces—North Kivu and South Kivu—along with their capital cities, Goma and Bukavu respectively. With control over those provinces, M23 can take over the production of various lucrative and important minerals, especially coltan, which can then be smuggled into Rwanda and sold off at a premium.

The DRC and Rwanda signed a peace deal several weeks ago, brokered by the United States and meant to end the fighting that’s torn the eastern Congo apart. But that deal came with a number of problems—primarily, that it didn’t directly involve M23, and thus didn’t bind M23 to any actual agreement. Although M23 is understood to be a proxy group operating on behalf of the Rwandan government, all proxy groups have goals and incentives that can differ from those of their international sponsor, and without M23 actually signing onto the deal or agreeing to its terms, there was no guarantee that the fighting would actually stop. Not to mention, Rwanda categorically denies any allegation of involvement in the M23 conflict, meaning that by agreeing to not engage in hostilities toward the DRC, Rwanda was just agreeing to continue doing what it claimed to have been doing all along.

Nor did the deal account for the role of other militia groups all across the Congo, where some groups fight beside government forces, but over a hundred beyond just M23 oppose Kinshasa. In practice, the US-brokered deal mostly served to clear the way for a surge of anticipated American investment into both the DRC and Rwanda, allowing Washington to strengthen its grip on the Congo’s critical mineral resources.

The Doha Negotiations: A Declaration Without Substance

The really important talks to watch were a separate series of negotiations between the Congo and M23 directly—brokered by the nation of Qatar, and held in its capital city, Doha. These were the first series of direct talks between the Congo and M23 since 2022, and while it’s been very slow going, for a wide range of reasons, the talks have been making progress. This past week, the Doha negotiations made headlines across the globe, for what was represented, across many news outlets, as a real end to the fighting between M23 and the Congo for good. Unfortunately, however, even the briefest look at the fine print reveals that this simply isn’t the case.

What the Congo and M23 agreed to this week wasn’t a truce itself but a so-called ‘declaration of principles’—that is to say, a preliminary agreement that basically says that both sides would like to work toward the establishment of a peace deal, but that falls many miles short of being a peace deal in itself. Under the terms of the deal, the Congo and M23 will commit to “building trust” through an exchange of prisoners, a return of federal authorities to areas that M23 controls, and other measures meant to restore a sense of normalcy. Under the terms of the deal, M23 and the Congo do commit to signing a peace deal no later than August 18, but that deal hasn’t been signed at the time of writing, and the full terms of a real peace deal haven’t even been agreed yet.

On its face, the simple fact that this agreement doesn’t establish a truce in the eastern Congo should be a problem in itself. Not only do the parties involved have barely a month to engage in rushed prisoner exchanges and figure out a way to get federal authorities back to North and South Kivu, but they still have to hammer out the terms of a final agreement—and that’s going to be a problem. Already, it’s become clear that M23 and Kinshasa have starkly divergent understandings of what they’ve currently agreed to, with M23 officials claiming that their group doesn’t have to withdraw from any territory, and has instead been given a mechanism to more smoothly integrate the essential functions of federal Congolese government into an autonomous rebel-controlled zone.

The Congo’s spokespeople, however, have indicated that the agreement calls for a “non-negotiable withdrawal” of M23, before Congolese officials and soldiers deploy into North and South Kivu provinces. That’s not just a minor misunderstanding; it sets up a large-scale confrontation and a showdown between M23 and Kinshasa, that must be played out before a final peace deal could be signed. Nor is that confrontation avoidable, since the task of returning federal Congolese officials to Goma and Bukavu will be impossible to complete, if both sides can’t come to an understanding. And with the positions of M23 and the Congolese government so starkly divergent, it does not appear likely that either side would agree to each other’s understanding of the situation.

Continued Hostilities Despite Diplomatic Progress

It’s not yet clear whether M23 and Kinshasa might genuinely intend to avoid any fighting while this preliminary agreement is in effect, and to be clear, that is a possibility. But at least right now, there’s reason to believe that M23 and the Congo will continue to engage in hostilities, despite what they’ve agreed to in the Qatar negotiations. After the Congo and Rwanda signed their deal, M23 and Congolese soldiers continued to skirmish frequently on the fringes of M23’s captured territory, and during that same time, the Congo shot down a plane headed to a rebel-controlled airstrip, despite M23’s claims that it was carrying humanitarian aid.

Not only that, but in early July, both M23 and the Congolese military appeared to reinforce their positions in and around the conflict zone, particularly near South Kivu, where the federal government flew in hundreds of troops and took up positions across the frozen battle lines. Both sides are poised to start fighting again in case something goes haywire, and with so many points of potential conflict over the next few weeks, even small skirmishes or misunderstandings could very quickly lead to an exchange of fire across the entire front line.

Nor do either M23 or the Congolese government seem inclined to grit their teeth and accept each other’s demands, for the sake of preventing further bloodshed. For M23, although it would be great from an outside perspective if they were to vacate Goma, Bukavu, and other populated areas, it’s difficult to see how that would work in a practical sense. Right now, there’s no clarity on whether M23 fighters could get some sort of amnesty deal worked out with Kinshasa, or whether they could otherwise be allowed to exist unbothered in some way—and without those assurances, M23 has no reason to give up its defensible positions in urban areas.

To walk away without real guarantees would mean that thousands of M23 fighters are supposed to just disappear into the jungle, with no reason to be confident that Congolese forces wouldn’t just start trying to hunt them down once they’re in areas where the international press can’t follow. M23 has also continued fighting against independent militias, known as Wazalendos, who aren’t likely to abide by the terms of a peace deal the government agrees to—meaning that by abandoning their fortified zones, M23 would throw away key advantages against an opponent that will probably continue to attack it.

The Impossible Choices Facing Kinshasa

For the Congolese government, allowing M23 to retain control over North and South Kivu would be untenable for several reasons at once. Not only would that grant Rwanda long-term, de facto control over the Congo’s territory and some of its richest mineral deposits, but it would give other armed militant groups in Congo reason to believe that if they, too, can conquer a patch of territory and hold it, then the government will agree to give them a degree of autonomy. That would be a non-starter for any number of world governments dealing with separatist or autonomous movements, and the Congo is no different.

Plus, if the Congo does grant amnesty deals to M23 fighters, then it’ll allow the perpetrators of systemic extrajudicial executions, mass sexual abuse of women and children, and a range of other war crimes and atrocities, to simply walk free across the nation. This creates a moral and political dilemma that has no easy resolution, and one that mirrors the challenges facing Somalia if it were ever to negotiate with al-Shabaab—a group that has committed similar atrocities against civilian populations.

The Islamic State Threat in Ituri Province

Any fragile balance that the Congo and M23 can achieve could still be upset by the chaos emanating from a completely different conflict in a completely different part of the Congo. In the nation’s Ituri province, the Islamic State’s Central Africa franchise—known in the Congo as the Allied Democratic Forces or ADF—are growing in power and carrying out mass-casualty attacks with some frequency. The nation of Uganda borders Ituri province, and has launched a large-scale offensive against the ADF jihadists, broadening an ongoing military campaign against what Uganda alleges are anti-Ugandan militias that hide on Congolese soil.

Recently, a joint Ugandan and Congolese military force attacked the ADF in a district near a major highway, at the jihadists’ so-called Madina camp, where they’re at their very strongest. But although Uganda and the Congo have been able to push the ADF away from the terrain where they’ve been based for years, they haven’t been able to gain any decisive advantage. Instead, Islamic State fighters have disappeared en masse into the bush, where they’ve kept up attacks on Congolese civilians while conducting asymmetric guerrilla warfare against the governments trying to hunt them down.

Uganda, too, takes advantage of the conflict in a similar way to Rwanda’s involvement with M23, although the zones where Ugandan troops are located are rich in gold and valuable timber instead of the mineral coltan. With the ADF running wild across Ituri province, and Uganda cementing its own hold on lucrative smuggling networks to harvest the Congo’s resources, the backdrop of any Congo-M23 deal will be one of much broader instability. Even if these two sides can agree to a peace, which is far from guaranteed at this stage, then the deal will take effect in a nation that’s still near the precipice.

This multi-front conflict environment in the Congo offers sobering parallels to Somalia’s situation, where al-Shabaab represents only one of numerous armed groups operating across the country, and where any peace agreement would need to account for the complex web of militias, clan-based forces, and jihadist factions that make comprehensive stability nearly impossible to achieve.

Related Coverage

• How the UAE’s Regional Meddling Triggered a Historic Realignment Across the Middle East
• The UAE is Destabilizing the Entire Middle East
• The UAE’s Regional Ambitions Collapse as Middle East Powers Push Back

Frequently Asked Questions

What towns has al-Shabaab recently captured, and why do they matter strategically?

Al-Shabaab captured Moqokori and Tardo in Hirshabelle state, Gumare in the same zone, and Sabiid and Anole in Lower Shabelle southwest of Mogadishu. These captures reverse territorial gains made since 2018 and position the group to threaten Bulobarde and Jalalaqsi—key highway intersections that would allow al-Shabaab to lock down routes into the capital and cut off federal troop movements.

Why are local militias and African Union forces unable to stop al-Shabaab’s advance?

Local militias, despite their terrain knowledge and high motivation, are overwhelmed by al-Shabaab’s tactics of months-long encirclements, attritional skirmishes, and massive coordinated assaults using suicide car bombs and hundreds of gunmen. The 10,000-strong AUSSOM force has largely taken defensive positions rather than launching counteroffensives, and Ugandan troops fought without pay for over a year after US and EU funding pauses, severely damaging morale.

Why doesn’t killing al-Shabaab fighters slow down their offensive?

Al-Shabaab operates as a jihadist insurgency that accepts personnel losses to achieve larger objectives and continuously recruits and trains new fighters to replace casualties. The group plugs new fighters into operations without pausing its momentum, unlike conventional militaries that reposition when losing personnel. Somalia’s elite Danab units can only kill dozens at a time—far short of the scale needed to disrupt al-Shabaab’s operational capacity.

How does al-Shabaab sustain itself economically and keep growing its ranks?

Researcher Rashid Abdi described al-Shabaab as one of Africa’s wealthiest insurgencies, with business tentacles spread everywhere and the ability to out-tax the Somali state in the territory it controls. Its ranks are swelling with disillusioned young men—including army deserters—attracted by better pay and the perception that al-Shabaab is on the winning side of the civil conflict.

What is al-Shabaab’s likely path toward threatening Mogadishu itself?

According to the Long War Journal, al-Shabaab will likely encircle Bulobarde and Jalalaqsi in the near term, applying attritional pressure before launching mass assaults—replicating the tactics used at Moqokori and Tardo. Capture of those two cities would allow the group to control major highway intersections, lock down routes out of Mogadishu, and position itself to hit the capital from multiple directions with destabilizing attacks.

Sources

• https://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2025/07/shabaab-seizes-two-towns-in-central-somalia.php
• https://www.hiiraan.com/news4/2025/July/202120/heavy_fighting_erupts_in_moqokori_district_as_al_shabab_launches_major_assault.aspx
• https://ctc.westpoint.edu/somalia-at-a-crossroads-resurgent-insurgents-fragmented-politics-and-the-uncertain-future-of-aussom/
• https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/al-shabaab-captures-central-somali-town-presses-with-advance-2025-07-14/
• https://www.barrons.com/news/somalia-donors-losing-faith-as-al-shabaab-surges-7185fe64
• https://www.hiiraan.com/news4/2025/July/202284/turkey_s_military_and_aid_presence_in_somalia_draws_scrutiny_from_lawmakers.aspx
• https://somaliguardian.com/news/somalia-news/al-shabaab-captures-strategic-towns-near-somalias-capital-after-au-somali-troop-withdrawal/
• https://www.garoweonline.com/en/news/somalia/ethiopia-s-somali-region-to-join-fight-against-al-shabaab-in-central-somalia
• https://www.garoweonline.com/en/news/somalia/somali-prisons-chief-warns-of-al-shabaab-plot-to-attack-mogadishu-central-prison\
• https://www.crisisgroup.org/africa/horn-africa/somalia/al-shabaab-recaptures-key-town-while-mogadishu-struggles-regain-upper
• https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/first-trump-africa-summit-drc-tensions-shabaab-momentum-africa-file-july-10-2025
• https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/iran-militia-allies-houthis-hezbollah-a36d7de7?mod=world_feat1_middle-east_pos1
• https://www.naharnet.com/stories/en/314251-smuggling-attempts-to-hezbollah-increasing-via-syria-report-says
• https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/iran-update-july-17-2025
• https://apnews.com/article/yemen-houthi-rebels-iran-weapons-red-sea-e282c456e3db6f63fe696cba50e7c864
• https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/06/19/rising-lion-escalation-objectives-and-the-logic-of-targeting/
• https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-strike-in-syria-said-to-target-top-hezbollah-official-in-arms-smuggling-unit/
• https://www.wsj.com/world/iran-orders-material-from-china-for-hundreds-of-ballistic-missiles-1e874701
• https://www.france24.com/en/middle-east/20250430-lebanese-army-dismantled-over-90-of-hezbollah-sites-near-israel-security-official-says
• https://www.newsweek.com/iran-spy-crisis-israel-mossad-arrests-executions-2089236
• https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/iran-news/article-861478
• https://www.crisisgroup.org/africa/great-lakes/democratic-republic-congo-rwanda/dr-congo-rwanda-deal-now-comes-hard-part
• https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/rwandan-rebels-fate-clouds-trumps-vision-mineral-rich-congo-2025-07-23/
• https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/congo-m23-rebels-pledge-qatar-reach-peace-deal-next-month-2025-07-19/
• https://apnews.com/article/congo-rebels-m23-peace-minerals-rwanda-2135ef4a7c3fd422bd9b460452daabca