What Al-Shabaab Understands About Somali Authority

In south-central Somalia, a trader knows what to expect at an al-Shabaab checkpoint. The rate is fixed, set out in a published schedule. The receipt allows passage through the next checkpoint without paying again. If the assessment seems unfair, there is a court the trader can appeal to. This is how a Mogadishu-based NGO director described the system to The New Humanitarian last September. At a federal government roadblock, by contrast, the soldier demands a bribe that he pockets himself, which means the same trader will be taxed again at the next stop, and the next, by men in the same uniform pursuing the same private arrangement.

The detail is small, but it explains, more economically than any military analysis, why al-Shabaab has retaken in eighteen months the territory it last held in 2019, why the group now operates checkpoints on the outskirts of Mogadishu, and why analysts such as Matt Bryden, writing for the Africa Center for Strategic Studies in January, can credibly suggest that the group's seizure of the capital is 'simply a matter of time.' After two decades and several billion dollars of donor-funded reconstruction, the Somali state struggles to do what an internationally sanctioned insurgency does as a matter of routine: tax predictably, settle disputes, and leave a paper trail.

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Al-Shabaab's current advance, which the group calls Operation Ramadan, began in February 2025. Within months it had reclaimed at least five districts across Lower Shabelle and Middle Jubba. By the end of last year, according to assessments by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point and the Critical Threats Project, the group had relinked its support zones in central and southern Somalia for the first time since the 2022 government offensive.