Issue No. 517

A Long War against Al-Shabaab
 
“The conventional army loses if it does not win. The guerrilla wins if he does not lose.”
                                                                                                                                      Henry Kissinger
 

The prevailing narrative around the current offensive against Al-Shabaab, sparked by local militias in Somalia’s Hiiraan region in August 2022, paints a picture of a group standing on its last legs. The Somali government and its international partners have proudly touted the success of its counterinsurgency campaign, but against what metrics? There are no signs of local government being set up in the newly liberated areas, and it remains uncertain whether Al-Shabaab has been permanently expelled. Last year when the offensive was launched, there was a steep escalation in both the scale and the frequency of violence inflicted by Al-Shabaab. A recent article from the Africa Centre for Strategic Studies on Militant Islamist Violence in Africa said that fatalities linked to Al-Shabaab shot up from 2,606 in 2021 to 6,225 in 2022.
 
In Somalia, the latest metric of success against Al-Shabaab is a body count. The government publishes daily numbers of slain insurgents. Al-Shabaab, however, has increased the intensity of its attacks in recent months, and several Somali National Army (SNA) bases have been over-run with little media coverage. How do we measure success to paint a clearer picture of the current offensive? 
 
One metric might be the credibility and popularity of the federal government. In order to expand its authority across the country, Somalia’s government needs more than an Al-Shabaab body count to appeal to the country’s weary population. But nearly a year after he took office, the honeymoon period for President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud’s administration seems to be waning and the FGS has become mired in political wrangling with federal member state leaders over issues like term limits, fishing licenses, and the allocation of powers and responsibilities within the federation. 
 
A second metric is whether the government has a coherent offensive strategy anchored in an overarching security architecture. The SNA is mandated to ensure the nation's sovereignty, independence, and territorial integrity -- not to fight a domestic insurgency. Somalia’s New Policing Model (NPM) assigned this particular role to state-level Daraawiish forces, which are currently non-existent or underdeveloped outside of Puntland and Jubaland. Recently cleared areas are still expected to be secured by the federal army, even though this responsibility lies with the FMS police forces. To date, Villa Somalia has shown little enthusiasm for supporting state policing capacity, focusing exclusively on the federal police and Daraawiish instead. 
 
A third metric is the federal government’s physical control of Somalia’s territory. Despite having lost ground to government-led offensives in Galmudug, Hirshabelle, South West, Jubaland, and Mogadishu, Al-Shabaab still controls major supply routes and enjoys freedom of movement in much of the country. Federal officials have projected that Somalia would be liberated from AS by the end of 2023. In mid-January, Defence Minister Abdulkadir Mohamed Nur told the press that, "Haradhere and Gal’ad districts have been taken from the hands of the Al-Shabaab terrorists, […] this means Al-Shabaab is overpowered and gone. The remaining towns will also be liberated soon."
 
Recent attacks by Al-Shabaab cast doubt on the capacity of government forces to hold liberated areas. On 17 January, Al-Shabaab militants stormed and seized the SNA base in Hawadley, killing a senior army commander and several soldiers. The base had only just been recaptured from AS by the SNA and allied militias in October 2022. 
 
On 20 January, Al-Shabaab forces conducted a particularly disastrous and deadly attack on the US-trained Danab military compound in the recently liberated district of Gal’ad in Galmudug. AS posted pictures of soldiers’ corpses sprawled across the compound, and of the spoils of war taken by ASfighters, including military vehicles. AS did not attempt to hold the Gal’ad base but instead retreated, announcing it killed 159 government soldiers. The government told a different story. While acknowledging the death of the Danab deputy commander and 7 soldiers, it stated that the attack had been repelled, and over 100 AS fighters had been killed. Neither claim can be independently verified.
 
On 12 February, a federal Forward Operating Base was attacked in the Sabiid area of the Lower Shabelle region. On 7 March, Al-Shabaab detonated a car bomb at Janaa Abdalle, a military base near Kismayo. In both instances, AS-affiliated media claimed to have over-run the bases, posting images of deserted bases and weapons, vehicles, and other spoils of war reportedly brought to AS camps. Janaay Abdalle had been recaptured from AS by Jubaland forces in January. Somali state media reporting on both incidents stated that the AS attacks had been successfully repelled. Again, the competing claims cannot be corroborated.
 
Despite these setbacks, there does not yet appear to be an overall rethinking of Somalia’s security strategy. Casualties of Al-Shabaab violence have been mounting. The jihadists’ capacity to stage raids against fortified government positions seems undiminished. Government control of territory has ebbed and flowed, and recent gains appear precarious at best. 
 
No matter which metrics are used to measure government progress, it seems there is a long way to go before AS is defeated and the insurgency is ended. As retired US Marine General Jim Mattis once opined, “No war is over until the enemy says it's over.”