MOGADISHU: Somalia\u2019s Al-Shabab militia shows signs of resurgence after making gains in strategic regions and coming close to assassinating the president with a roadside bomb last week.<\/p>\n
The extremist group was on the defensive in 2022 and 2023 after a concerted military push by the government and its international partners.<\/p>\n
However, analysts say those gains are being reversed at a time when support from the US and African Union is looking increasingly shaky.<\/p>\n
The group has seized key locations in Middle and Lower Shabelle, coastal regions on either side of the capital Mogadishu.<\/p>\n
And a bomb blast that narrowly missed the convoy of President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud on March 18 showed that Al-Shabab again poses a significant risk in the capital itself.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, Somali officials said the group had taken control of the center of a key town in Middle Shabelle, Masaajid Cali Gaduud.<\/p>\n
That came just a day after the president traveled to the region in a high-profile bid to push back the militants.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere were explosions and heavy gunfire this morning,\u201d Abdulkadi Hassan, resident of a nearby village, said by phone.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Somali government forces and local community militias have retreated from the town, and Al-Shabab are now in control.\u201d<\/p>\n
Analyst Matt Bryden, co-founder of research group Sahan and an expert on the conflict, said this was typical of recent clashes.<\/p>\n
He said the government had lost strategic chokepoints, including three of four bridges in Lower Shabelle.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe see the evidence of an army in disarray and in retreat,\u201d said Bryden.<\/p>\n
He said the government was enlisting clan militias, police and prison guards \u2014 \u201cthrowing everything it has into the war effort.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople in Mogadishu also are beginning to fear the government is not capable of securing the city and that there\u2019s a chance of Al-Shabab fully encircling or possibly even at one stage overrunning the city,\u201d said Bryden.<\/p>\n
The president has remained defiant, establishing a temporary headquarters in Cadale, about 220 km north of Mogadishu.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe war will not stop; we are not coming back from where we are now, and we will attain the victory we seek,\u201d Mohamud told troops gathered at nearby Adale earlier this week.<\/p>\n
However, the government faces the threat of reduced international support.<\/p>\n
African Union-led forces began supporting the Somali government in 2007, eventually becoming the largest multilateral peacekeeping force in the world, with more than 20,000 troops at its peak.<\/p>\n
Although renewed under a new name, the AU Support and Stabilization Mission in Somalia, or AUSSOM, in January, Washington has yet to confirm its crucial financial contribution.<\/p>\n
\u201cSecurity assistance for the government is being cut, particularly the American assistance, but probably European contributions will shrink as well,\u201d said Bryden.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe combination of these factors raises the possibility that from July, but possibly even sooner, the balance of forces will shift increasingly toward Al-Shabab,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Other analysts say Al-Shabab is still far from threatening the capital, and its advances come from the government taking its eye off the ball.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe government\u2019s been more focused on politics, on other issues,\u201d said Omar Mahmood of International Crisis Group.<\/p>\n
He said Al-Shabab had been exploiting local clan grievances in Middle Shabelle and a broader uncertainty around the president\u2019s struggles to introduce direct elections.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe country is not united right now … and part of this has to do with politics around the constitution and electoral plans that the government is trying to institute,\u201d said Mahmood.<\/p>\n
Al-Shabab \u201cprobably saw this as an opportune time to strike … But this is a long-standing war. I see it as closer to a stalemate than anything else.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t see this narrative where there\u2019s this march toward Mogadishu right now,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
MOGADISHU: Somalia\u2019s Al-Shabab militia shows signs of resurgence after making gains in strategic regions and coming close to assassinating the president with a roadside bomb last week. The extremist group was on the defensive in 2022 and 2023 after a concerted military push by the government and its international partners. However, analysts say those gains …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":79026,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-79014","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79014","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79014"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79014\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79028,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79014\/revisions\/79028"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}