Somalia 2025: Al-Shabaab’s Resurgence and the Struggle to Build a Federal State
Somalia’s 2025 was not defined by security challenges alone. It was a year in which the country’s fight against Al-Shabaab intersected with a sensitive security transition, deepening federal tensions, unresolved constitutional disputes, and growing regional competition around the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden, and Bab al-Mandab.
At the beginning of the year, Somalia entered a new phase with the launch of the African Union Support and Stabilization Mission in Somalia, known as AUSSOM, which replaced the African Union Transition Mission in Somalia, ATMIS. The transition was intended to support Somali forces as they gradually assumed greater security responsibilities. Yet it also raised urgent questions about funding, troop levels, operational capacity, and whether Somali institutions were prepared to prevent Al-Shabaab from exploiting possible security gaps.
By the middle of the year, the challenge had become clearer. Al-Shabaab intensified its operations in central and southern Somalia, while political disputes between Mogadishu and key federal member states, particularly Jubaland and Puntland, weakened the possibility of a united national security approach. By the end of 2025, Somalia faced a more complicated question: could the federal government fight terrorism, manage internal political disputes, secure international support, and continue state-building at the same time?
The central lesson of the year was that Somalia’s struggle was not only about defeating Al-Shabaab militarily. It was about whether the Somali state could build the political consensus and institutional presence needed to make any military victory sustainable.
AUSSOM and the Test of Security Transition
The year opened with a major institutional shift. On January 1, 2025, AUSSOM began operating after the end of ATMIS. The new mission was designed to assist Somali forces during a transition in which more responsibility for national security would move gradually to Somali institutions.
But the transition was never merely administrative. It was a strategic test. Somalia and its partners had to manage the drawdown and restructuring of African Union support while preventing Al-Shabaab from using the transition to regain territory, disrupt supply routes, or increase pressure on government-held areas.
The challenge was especially serious in rural and contested regions, where Al-Shabaab has long relied on mobility, taxation networks, clan grievances, intimidation, and shadow governance. A reduced or underfunded international mission could create openings that the group is well positioned to exploit.
By April, the fragility of this transition had become more visible. Security concerns increased as Al-Shabaab escalated attacks in central Somalia, while uncertainty over the future of international support raised questions about the ability of Somali forces to hold and stabilize recovered areas.
The transition from ATMIS to AUSSOM therefore became one of the defining files of 2025. It tested not only Somalia’s military readiness, but also the credibility of the wider state-building project.
Al-Shabaab’s Renewed Offensive
The most important security development of 2025 was Al-Shabaab’s renewed offensive in central and southern Somalia.
In April, the group captured the strategic town of Adan Yabal in central Somalia, an area that had previously served as an important base for government operations against the movement. The advance was significant because it demonstrated that Al-Shabaab remained capable of organized operations, territorial pressure, and attacks on positions not far from key government routes.
Soon after, fighting intensified around Wargaadhi in Middle Shabelle, another strategic area linked to routes between Mogadishu and Galmudug. The battle showed that Al-Shabaab’s strategy was not limited to suicide bombings or isolated attacks. The group continued to pursue semi-conventional operations aimed at controlling towns, roads, military bases, and local administrative spaces.
This exposed a central weakness in Somalia’s security strategy: clearing territory is not enough. The war against Al-Shabaab depends on what happens after military operations.
A town can be retaken by force, but if police, local administration, services, reconciliation mechanisms, and permanent security are not established quickly, the area remains vulnerable to renewed militant influence.
The Problem of Liberated Areas
One of the clearest lessons of 2025 was that military gains against Al-Shabaab are difficult to sustain without governance.
Al-Shabaab does not depend only on armed strength. It exploits administrative vacuums, clan disputes, weak services, delayed stabilization, corruption, and public distrust of state institutions. In areas where the federal government or local authorities fail to establish a credible presence after liberation, the group can return through intimidation, taxation, shadow courts, targeted killings, or local networks.
This made 2025 a test of what could be called sustainable liberation. Somali forces and allied clan militias may be able to enter towns, but the state must remain there. Without governance, security, and basic services, battlefield victories risk becoming temporary achievements.
The challenge is especially difficult because liberated areas often require more than military deployment. They need local political settlements, functioning district authorities, predictable salaries for security forces, justice mechanisms, clan reconciliation, and humanitarian assistance. Without these elements, Somalia risks repeating the cycle of advance, withdrawal, and Al-Shabaab return.
Puntland and ISIS: A Separate Northern Front
While Al-Shabaab increased pressure in central and southern Somalia, Puntland faced a different jihadist threat in the north: the Islamic State’s Somalia branch, particularly in the mountainous areas of the Bari region.
In early 2025, Puntland launched operations against ISIS positions in the Cal Miskaad mountains. This front highlighted an important reality: Somalia’s security landscape is not shaped by Al-Shabaab alone. Although Al-Shabaab remains the largest and most dangerous militant actor in the country, ISIS in Puntland represents a distinct threat because of its terrain, financial networks, possible foreign fighter links, and ability to operate away from the main battlefields in the south.
Puntland’s operations also revealed a key feature of Somalia’s federal reality. Federal member states are not only political actors competing with Mogadishu; they are also security actors with real operational responsibilities.
This raises a critical question for Somalia’s counterterrorism strategy: how can the country coordinate the fight against jihadist groups when the federal government and powerful federal member states remain divided over politics, authority, and constitutional reform?
Federal Tensions: Jubaland and Puntland Outside the Consensus
Somalia’s crisis in 2025 was not only military. Tensions between the federal government and key federal member states continued to shape the political environment, especially disputes involving Jubaland and Puntland.
The most sensitive issues included elections, constitutional reform, power-sharing, security arrangements, and the balance of authority between Mogadishu and the federal states.
The dispute with Jubaland remained particularly serious after clashes in late 2024 between federal forces and Jubaland forces around Ras Kamboni, following regional elections rejected by Mogadishu. The political aftershocks continued into 2025, showing how fragile federal relations had become at a time when Somalia needed a united front against Al-Shabaab.
Puntland also remained outside several federal initiatives led by Mogadishu, reflecting wider mistrust over constitutional changes and the direction of state-building.
This is one of Somalia’s central dilemmas: the country is fighting an armed insurgency while still negotiating the basic rules of its federal order. When Mogadishu is at odds with key federal states, counterterrorism coordination weakens, international partners face uncertainty, and Al-Shabaab gains opportunities to exploit political division.
Constitution and Elections: Reform Without Consensus?
Constitutional reform and the move toward direct elections remained among the most sensitive political files in 2025.
President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud and his government pushed for constitutional revisions and a more direct electoral model, seeking to move beyond the indirect system based on elite bargaining and clan-based seat allocation. Supporters of reform argue that direct elections are necessary to build broader national legitimacy and reduce the dominance of closed political networks.
But the reform agenda did not produce broad national consensus. Several political actors and federal member states viewed the process with suspicion, fearing that it could concentrate power in Mogadishu or change the rules of political competition before elections.
This created a difficult dilemma: Somalia needs political reform, but reform without consensus can deepen fragmentation. The question in 2025 was not whether Somalia should reform its political system, but whether such reform could be carried out without triggering a new round of federal confrontation.
Ethiopia, Somaliland, and the Sea Access Dispute
Somalia entered 2025 still affected by the crisis triggered by Ethiopia’s memorandum of understanding with Somaliland in January 2024. The deal offered Ethiopia possible access to the sea through Somaliland in exchange for political arrangements that Mogadishu rejected as a violation of Somalia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
Turkish mediation in late 2024 helped reduce tensions through the Ankara Declaration between Somalia and Ethiopia. In early 2025, signs of de-escalation emerged, including diplomatic contacts and visits between Somali and Ethiopian officials.
But de-escalation did not mean resolution. The core issues remained unresolved: Somaliland’s status, Ethiopia’s search for sea access, Somalia’s sovereignty claims, and the strategic importance of ports along the Gulf of Aden.
For Somalia, the crisis reinforced a major lesson: sovereignty is no longer only a domestic constitutional issue. It is tied to ports, maritime access, recognition politics, regional rivalries, and the security of the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandab.
Somalia’s location has become both an asset and a vulnerability. Its long coastline, proximity to the Gulf of Aden, and position near one of the world’s most important maritime corridors make it a focal point for Turkey, Ethiopia, Gulf states, Western powers, and other international actors.
The Humanitarian Crisis: A Prolonged Emergency
Although security dominated the headlines, Somalia’s humanitarian crisis remained one of the country’s deepest vulnerabilities in 2025.
Millions of people continued to need humanitarian assistance. Food insecurity, displacement, malnutrition, weak health services, limited access to clean water, and the recurring effects of droughts and floods kept large parts of the population in chronic fragility.
Somalia has not fully escaped the cycle of climate shocks and conflict-related displacement. Al-Shabaab’s presence restricts access in some areas, while insecurity limits humanitarian operations. At the same time, funding pressures mean that aid agencies often struggle to meet needs at the required scale.
The danger is that Somalia’s humanitarian emergency has become so prolonged that it risks being normalized. People are not only facing hunger; they are also losing access to education, healthcare, water, livelihoods, and protection.
This matters politically and strategically. Humanitarian collapse can deepen displacement, fuel clan tensions, weaken trust in state institutions, and create conditions that extremist groups can exploit for recruitment, taxation, and control.
International Support: High Expectations, Declining Patience
For two decades, Somalia has depended heavily on international support for security, institution-building, budget assistance, stabilization, and humanitarian response. But 2025 showed the limits of this model.
International partners want to see progress in governance, anti-corruption, constitutional reform, security sector integration, and political consensus. The Somali government, however, still needs sustained external support to prevent security gaps that Al-Shabaab could exploit.
This creates a difficult balance. If international support declines too quickly, the security and humanitarian situation could deteriorate. But if support continues without deeper reforms, it risks sustaining an elite political system that does not produce effective state authority.
Somalia’s international partners are increasingly asking whether the current model is sustainable. In 2025, the answer remained uncertain.
The Central Lesson of 2025
The main lesson of 2025 is that Somalia faced three overlapping crises.
The first was security-related. Al-Shabaab remained capable of attacking, maneuvering, capturing towns, and threatening key routes, while ISIS in Puntland represented a separate northern threat.
The second was political. Relations between the federal government and federal member states remained unstable, and disputes over the constitution and elections risked becoming obstacles to state-building rather than tools for reform.
The third was humanitarian and economic. Millions still needed assistance, while climate shocks, displacement, weak services, and limited funding continued to undermine social resilience.
Somalia in 2025 was not a failed state, but it remained a state caught halfway through recovery. It had a federal government, security forces, international partners, growing institutions, and a strategic location. But it still struggled to impose stable authority across the country, build durable political consensus, and protect its population from repeated humanitarian shocks.
What 2025 Means for 2026
Somalia enters 2026 facing five major challenges.
First, it must prevent Al-Shabaab from turning tactical gains in central and southern Somalia into a strategic threat to Mogadishu and the state’s vital corridors.
Second, it must secure clear and sustainable funding for AUSSOM, so that the transition from ATMIS does not become a security vacuum.
Third, it needs an internal political settlement with Jubaland, Puntland, and other actors, because counterterrorism cannot succeed amid open federal division.
Fourth, constitutional reform and elections must be managed through consensus rather than confrontation.
Fifth, Somalia’s humanitarian crisis must remain on the international agenda, because hunger, displacement, malnutrition, and weak services can fuel instability, recruitment, and public distrust in the state.
For Sheba Intelligence readers, the essential picture is this: Somalia in 2025 was not simply a country fighting Al-Shabaab. It was a country trying to build a state during a long war, under a tense federal system, with uncertain international support, and in one of the world’s most sensitive maritime regions.
The question for 2026 is therefore not only whether Mogadishu can defeat Al-Shabaab. It is whether Somalia can build the political consensus and state presence needed to make any military victory sustainable.
