Bodies of Al-Shabaab members killed by Somali security forces after bombings followed by gunfire in the Somali capital (Anatolia)

March 15, 2024 was an ordinary day in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, distinguished only by the arrival of some of the elite of society for a Ramadan evening at the famous SYL Hotel, located in a fortified security square that includes the Presidential Palace, the offices of the Prime Minister, and other government buildings.

The guests did not realize at the time that this would be the “last supper” for some of them, and that Al-Shabaab would attack the hotel in the context of a significant increase in its activity during the holy month, throwing questions about the fate of the war that the Somali government announced nearly two years ago to liquidate the presence of the Al-Qaeda-affiliated movement in the country. Puntland.

A similar violent attack by the movement on the Hyatt Hotel in Mogadishu on August 20, 2022 was one of the reasons that prompted the newly elected Somali President, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, to declare a comprehensive war on the movement, pledging to eliminate it at the end of 2023, and launching a comprehensive strategy that goes beyond the military dimension. To wars raging on the economic, media and intellectual fronts.

The surge of Somali forces and their allies has led to the movement's decline in many of its strongholds in the Hiran, Middle Shabelle and Galmudug regions, with military pressure on Al-Shabaab increasing unprecedentedly.

Clans on the front line

A study published by the Counter-Terrorism Center in New York attributes the progress achieved by Mogadishu to the interaction of a group of factors, the most important of which is the relative improvement demonstrated by the performance of the Somali army, which has been prepared over the last decade to assume security duties at the end of this year with the withdrawal of African forces from the country.

While the second factor is the Somali government’s development of its alliances with the tribal militias known locally as “Maawisli,” which were used extensively in coordination with the government army, in a scenario similar to the “Awakening” experience in Iraq in the middle of the last decade.

Clashes between the tribes and the organization began in June 2022 in the central region of the country, and the government soon adopted the “tribal uprising” and supported it, turning it into Operation “Black Lion” at a later time.

This clash between the clans and the movement was driven by local frustration with Al-Shabaab’s constant demands for money and recruits, in addition to its resort to collective punishment measures in the event of non-compliance. The movement’s intensification of the taxes it imposes on populations suffering from the catastrophic consequences of climate change also contributed to fueling tribal anger. Against it.

Tribal militias are characterized by providing larger numbers of fighters compared to the regular (French) forces.

As events escalated, the movement took retaliatory measures to prevent civilians from cooperating with the government, including filling wells in the countryside, burning villages, and displacing their people, which ultimately had an effect opposite to the expectations of Al-Shabaab’s planners.

Tribal militias enjoy a number of advantages when compared to the army, the most important of which is that they are less expensive in terms of operational costs, and they provide larger numbers of fighters compared to regular forces. In addition to the above, they enjoy great local support, possess extensive knowledge of the terrain of their areas, and are also of the nature of their composition. More harmonious and harmonious with local policy tools than government forces.

The involvement of the tribes in this war represented an advanced step in dismantling the alliances of societal forces with the movement in the center of the country, which caused the youth to lose many of the safe havens to which they had sought refuge, and increased the effectiveness of operations targeting them in their previous concentration sites.

External support

In a paper issued by the International Crisis Group, it monitors the presence of external support for this war since its early beginnings, as the Ethiopian forces provided military aid to the local community in the Hiran region to repel al-Shabaab, and also targeted them with their planes from the air.

In addition to Ethiopia, Somalia received support from various regional and international parties, as Eritrea was Sheikh Mahmoud's first African destination, which hosted thousands of Somali soldiers who received military training on its territory, then returned to their country where they were deployed in the anti-terrorism forces.

Somalia also received remarkable American support, with US President Joe Biden announcing the return of hundreds of his country’s soldiers to Somalia, in addition to various military and intelligence aid.

The two parties signed a military-security memorandum of understanding in February 2024, under which the Pentagon will build five military bases in the center and south of the country for the Danab forces, which are sponsored by the United States of America.

Somalia receives various American military and intelligence support and assistance (AFRICOM website)

Drones are in the service of war

In the same context, government forces and their allies benefited from the great support provided by American and Turkish drones in the battles with Al-Shabaab, as their strikes weakened the organization’s ability to hold leadership structure meetings to build a counter strategy, and also weakened the ability of the movement’s members to move around and transfer equipment.

These aircraft are not satisfied with monitoring the movements of fighters before and during battles, but go beyond this to intervene by directly supporting military operations on the ground, thus providing the air cover that the Somali arsenal lacks.

Economic and media war

The economy represented another front in the government's war on Al-Shabaab, as a package of measures aimed to dry up the organization's financial resources, which General Stephen Townsend, the former commander of US forces in Africa (AFRICOM), described as "the strongest and richest Al-Qaeda branches in the world."

The Somali government announced the imposition of strict sanctions on merchants and economic institutions proven to have paid money to Al-Shabaab. The US Treasury also imposed a series of sanctions on people and entities that support the movement and launder money on its behalf, in steps aimed at paralyzing the movement’s activities and sources of funding.

The progress made by government forces and their allies caused the movement to lose control over many of the cities and local communities on which taxes were imposed. This expansion also led to the movement losing financial revenues from the royalties that were paid to its members in exchange for allowing movement and movement within the areas that were subject to it.

Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud (right) opened a satellite channel to intellectually confront Al-Shabaab (Anatolia)

The media formed another front in which the Somali government was waging a battle to besiege the movement’s propaganda machine, as the Deputy Minister of Information, Culture and Tourism of Somalia, Abd al-Rahman Yusuf al-Adala, announced in 2022 the issuance of a decision to block more than 600 electronic pages affiliated with the movement.

In March 2024, government officials confirmed the allocation of teams at the National Intelligence Agency whose job is to monitor and alert technology companies to remove extremist content, which negatively affects the movement’s ability to promote and mobilize.

In late November 2022, the Somali President also opened a new satellite channel called Dilger (Protector of the Homeland) to confront the movement intellectually, stressing that one of its goals is “to present a moderate religious vision that combats extremism and the terrorist currents’ misinterpretation of religion, strengthening patriotism, instilling noble values, and rejecting violence and terrorism.”

Within the same framework, Mogadishu worked to undermine the influence of the pillars on which the Al-Shabaab movement’s discourse was based, calling it “Kharijites,” which was widely used in the media. A statement issued by the “Conference of Somali Scholars” also forbade spreading or supporting the movement’s ideas, calling out the comprehensive war waged by the government. “Islamic jihad... to protect the lives, money and honor of citizens.”

In the last stage, the Somali forces and their allies were able to achieve unprecedented progress (Getty)

Various challenges

In the last phase, the Somali forces and their allies were able to make unprecedented progress and regain control of more than 215 sites, most of them in the states of Hirshabelle and Galmudug, and with the Somali President announcing in March 2023 the launch of the second round of operations towards the movement’s stronghold in the south of the country, many Challenges remain before decision-makers in VillaSomalia.

According to many studies, the biggest challenge is the movement’s ability to adapt to pressure and its resort to guerrilla tactics, which enabled it to catch its breath and carry out counter-strikes, whether with suicide bombings or attacks on army centers, or even to regain control over some of the territory it lost.

A study by the “Soufan Advisory Center for Security Affairs” believes that the most important challenges that the government faced during the last stage is the shortcomings of its strategy related to the mechanisms for “retaining” and “constructing” the recovered lands, and its inability to maintain a strong presence leaves the local population hesitant to cooperate with government forces out of fear of facing retaliation from Al-Shabaab once the government leaves, prompting some rural clans to make agreements with the movement to ensure their safety.

While the development of the attack towards the south of the country requires the government to carry out a deeper political settlement and community reconciliation, given the complexity of clan relations in those areas, which threatens that operations to liberate lands from Al-Shabaab’s control will lead to clashes over political control not only between local communities, But also between the official forces of the states and the local tribal militia.

In this context, this step requires building a clear strategy to control and govern the territories in Al-Shabaab’s southern strongholds, which includes defining the roles that both the federal armed forces and local forces can play in controlling the recovered territories and providing security in the long term.

There are challenges of another kind that the Somali government will have to face, some of which are related to the withdrawal of African forces from Somalia at the end of this year, while the intense tension between Mogadishu and Addis Ababa, against the backdrop of the memorandum of understanding that the latter signed with the separatist region of Somaliland, carries with it many issues. Risks.

The movement took advantage of the memorandum of understanding to mobilize against Ethiopia, while the potential withdrawal of Ethiopian forces from Somalia will deprive the federal forces of a vital security support on the one hand, and it will also create a security vacuum that Al-Shabaab will rush to fill on the other hand.

Source: Al Jazeera + websites