Can Somalia's New Offensive Defeat al-Shabaab?

• Author: Hansen, Stig Jarle

The Harakat al-Shabaab has defied all predictions of its doom and demise over the last 17 years. Today, al-Shaabab is the numerically strongest affiliate in al-Qa'ida's network, still controls large amounts of territory, and is probably Africa's strongest jihadi organization overall as well. The U.S. Department of Defense has assessed the organization to be the "largest, wealthiest and most lethal al-Qaeda affiliate in the world," and some experts have mentioned al-Shabaab's leader, Ahmed Diriye, as a potential replacement for al-Qa'ida's leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, who was killed in a drone strike in Afghanistan on July 31, 2022. (1) The Somali terrorist group continues to carry out terrorist attacks throughout Somalia, including a deadly bombing of the compound housing Mogadishu's mayor's office on January 22, 2023. (2)

Yet, the organization now faces new challenges. A new offensive by the Somali government has been launched across central Somalia. Somalia's president, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, has even predicted an end to al-Shabaab's insurgency by the end of 2023. (3) Indeed, the offensive has seen many successes. So far, al-Shabaab is on the retreat, losing village after village, and the offensive remains popular in Somalia, with many Somalians having lost patience with the organization and especially its use of intimidation to get the local population to pay what al-Shabaab refers to as taxes, but what in many ways function as protection money.

It is important to note that al-Shabaab has faced challenges before and proved surprisingly resilient. (4) The group was severely beaten by the Ethiopian forces intervening in Somalia from December 2006 to the start of 2009; it nevertheless reemerged stronger than ever. Al-Shabaab was largely driven out of Mogadishu in 2011, but still manages to both widely tax the city today and continue to launch heavy terror attacks in the capital. The militant group lost large territories in the period of 2012-2017, but it managed to survive and increase its income-generating activities.

Still, there are several new factors at play in the present offensive as compared with previous offensives. Al-Shabaab is facing a more comprehensive and Somali-led offensive, stronger local ownership over the operations, and a stronger focus on curtailing the organization's income. (5) Al-Shabaab can nevertheless still take advantage of the factors that ensured its resilience in the past: disunity among its enemies, its ability to infiltrate and even govern territories beyond its military control, and to 'tax' much more efficiently in these areas than the government. (6) This article is an attempt to explore the factors that make this offensive different from past offensives and the factors that both enhance and inhibit the government efforts in order to highlight what will determine the future of al-Shabaab. This article proceeds in three parts. It first briefly outlines the evolution of the current offensive. It then examines reasons for tempered optimism about the current offensive and how it differs from past campaigns. The next section looks at the sources of al-Shabaab's resilience and how this may blunt or limit what can be achieved in this campaign. Finally, the article offers some conclusions.

The Current Offensive

The current offensive started in August 2022 in response to a realization that previous strategies against al-Shabaab had failed to bring about any meaningful weakening of the group, and perhaps a recognition that even a negotiated settlement with al-Shabaab demanded that the government negotiate from a position of strength. In fact, President Mohamud directly expressed that his government would, "in the right time," negotiate with al-Shabaab. (7) The offensive was launched in two regional states, Hirshabelle and Galmudug, the weakest regional states in Somalia. In these areas, the offensive has been impressive, leading to the fall in mid-January 2023 of Harardhere, a former pirate hub and a strategic city in Galmudug. (8) Around the same time, Somali forces also captured the nearby town of Galcad, some 200 miles north of Mogadishu. In both Harardhere and Galcad, the al-Shabaab militants fled without putting up a fight, though in Galcad some of the militants returned to attack a Somali government military base before 30 of their fighters were killed in a U.S. drone strike near the town on January 20, 2023. (9) Since the offensive began in August 2022, the government has reported killing hundreds of al-Shabaab fighters and liberating dozens of towns and villages across central Somalia. (10)

Reasons for Optimism: The Ways This Campaign is Different

A stronger Somali army is finally taking the lead.

In many ways, the new offensive is different than previous ones in Somalia. First, the Somali National Army and its Somali partners are leading the operations. In the past, offensives have tended to be foreign led. (11) The development follows the strategic goal of the African Union and its partners over the last 10 years, in which Somali forces would be handed increasing responsibility for fighting al-Shabaab and intervening powers from the African Union would slowly withdraw from combat operations.

The Somali army has indeed steadily assumed a larger role since 2017. (12) The role the Somali army plays today illustrates how far the country's armed forces have come over the last decade, lowering the sky-high desertion rates it had in its early phase and lowering corruption in its ranks as well as removing 'ghost units--units that existed only on paper while commanders embezzled funds that were to be used for paying soldiers. The Somali army today is far from a strong army, but it is stronger than it has been since before the civil war.

Moreover, the Somali army is not fighting alone in the current campaign; it has extensive support from the United States, which uses drones and provides air power to aid the current offensive, as demonstrated by the January 20, 2023, U.S. airstrike near Galcad. In another example, Danab forces, special forces trained by the United States, attacked al-Shabaab near El Ba'ad, in the El Dhere district of the Galgaduud region in north-central Somalia, on December 23, 2022, drawing upon U.S. air support in the form of drones. (13) There has also been extensive Turkish support, with Turkey deploying the now-infamous Bayraktar drone systems in October 2022. (14) Both countries, together with Eritrea, are also training Somali forces. The forces of the African Union in Somalia, the African Union Transition Mission in Somalia (ATMIS), (a) have also provided air support as well as a military presence that has forced al-Shabaab to hold some reserves in order to keep a check on them. However, ATM IS has also became unpopular in Somalia during this offensive because of its perceived passivity. Some Somali observers have viewed the...