ISW analysis from 17 days ago predicted that Maxaas would be Al Shabab's next target. This means that the FGS knew that Maxaas was threatend and instead of sending men and supplies to Maxaas, Culusow sent troops to Beled Xaawo. Xasan Sheekh just does not care about fighting Al Shabab anymore. I think he has given up on it and is just focused on bribing his way to another term. This is insane even by the standards of koonfur.
Central Somalia
Author: Liam Karr with Edie Tesfaye
Al Shabaab recaptured another district capital in central Somalia as it continues to reverse nearly all major gains made during a landmark Somali-led, US-backed counterterrorism offensive in 2022. Al Shabaab captured Moqokori on July 7 after overwhelming local forces with a complex suicide vehicle-borne improvised explosive device attack, which the group claimed killed 47 soldiers and allied militia fighters and wounded another 65. Local Somali politicians blamed slow federal support for the loss, citing unanswered weekend requests for air support and failure to send reinforcements or basic supplies. Somali forces have remained in the area to prepare a counteroffensive to retake the town. Moqokori sits on a network of roads that connects the Hiraan region to other regions within central Somalia.
Figure 4. Al Shabaab Retakes Central Somalia
Somali forces captured Moqokori and several other district capitals in 2022 as part of a landmark Somali-led, US-backed offensive. The offensive disrupted al Shabaab’s ground lines of communication between central and southern Somalia by clearing al Shabaab from the eastern halves of Hiraan and Middle Shabelle regions east of the Shabelle River. These gains cut off al Shabaab’s forces further north in central Somalia.
Al Shabaab has reversed these gains throughout 2025. Fighters from the group’s core territories in southern Somalia initially overwhelmed Somali forces in the Shabelle River Valley north of Mogadishu in January, while the group’s fighters in central Somalia targeted Somali forces hundreds of miles northwest in the Adan Yabal district. The two al Shabaab pincers from central and southern Somalia successfully reinfiltrated previously cleared areas of the Middle Shabelle region for the first time since 2022 and linked in the Adale district in March.[65] The group then captured key areas along the road west of Moqokori as well as Adan Yabal town in April. These advances put the group within 45 miles of Moqokori from the east, west, and south by mid-April, and unspecified local security officials told Somali media in June that al Shabaab aimed to capture the town.
Al Shabaab will likely target Mahas in the coming days and weeks if it holds Moqokori, which would be the first major town that al Shabaab has captured in central Somalia in 2025 that it did not control before 2022. Mahas is the last district capital that Somali forces control in this part of central Somalia and is fewer than 25 miles north of Moqokori. Unspecified local officials told Somali media in June that al Shabaab intended to capture Mahas and warned after the Moqokori attack that al Shabaab began moving toward Mahas. The Somali Federal Government (SFG) has controlled Mahas for over a decade.
The group’s gains have relinked al Shabaab–controlled territory in central and southern Somalia. The group reinforced and resupplied its forces in central Somalia en masse in March for the first time in nearly three years and has continued to rotate fresh forces into central Somalia in the months since. The group’s latest advance in Moqokori creates a second supply line between al Shabaab–controlled central and southern Somalia. Al Shabaab control of Mahas would open another ground line of communication and the most direct route between southern Somalia and the group’s administrative center in central Somalia—El Bur—since 2022.
Al Shabaab’s gains set conditions for the group to increase the frequency and severity of attacks on major government-controlled towns across central Somalia, including along the Ethiopian border. Al Shabaab’s advances have degraded Somali ground lines of communication stretching from Mogadishu across central Somalia, isolating several large, government-controlled towns. Most of the district capitals that the SFG still controls in central Somalia lie in the Shabelle River Valley near a major highway that runs from Mogadishu to the Ethiopian border—Bal’ad, Jowhar, Jalalaqsi, Bulo Burde, Halgan, and Beledweyne. Al Shabaab had conducted fewer attacks on these towns from 2023-2024 than 2021-2022—with Halgan as the lone exception—because of the 2022 Somali offensive. Al Shabaab has increasingly contested or captured operationally key areas in the valley between these towns in 2025 to reestablish its support zones between central and southern Somalia. The group can use these new support zones and supply lines to stage more frequent and severe attacks on these towns as it did before 2022.
Al Shabaab is pressuring another key ground line of communication between Mogadishu and government-controlled towns near the Somali coastline in central Somalia. Somali forces retook key areas along the road in late June but have not retaken key interior areas, which will enable al Shabaab to sustain pressure on the road. The group has already carried out more attacks around Adale town, which lies 10 miles from the road along the coast, in 2025 than it has in the previous four years combined. Al Shabaab degrading government control of the road will isolate El Dheere and Harardhere—the two northern-most district capitals that Somali forces liberated in 2022.
Al Shabaab will likely use its new support zones and the decreased pressure on its core support zones to increase the frequency and severity of attacks along the Ethiopian border. The group regularly attacked security forces and towns along another major highway that runs near the Ethiopian border from Beledweyne to northern Somalia. The frequency and severity of attacks had decreased substantially since the 2022 offensive, however, much like in the Shabelle River Valley.
Increased al Shabaab activity on the Ethiopian border poses a direct threat to Ethiopia. Al Shabaab invaded Ethiopia from this area in central Somalia in early 2022 as part of its first-ever offensive into Ethiopia. The 2022 Somali offensive helped Ethiopian forces enforce a relatively stable buffer zone. Al Shabaab has continued to probe the Ethiopian border since 2022, however, and can use its new support zones and supply lines to support more regular and larger-scale activity against Ethiopia.
The SFG’s losses are a strategic setback. Al Shabaab’s gains undermine Somalis’ trust in the SFG, particularly in central Somalia. Local politicians in central Somalia have blamed slow SFG support as the cause for the deteriorating security situation.[75] Other militia groups who had supported the 2022 offensive against al Shabaab have since withdrawn or struck deals with the group, citing a lack of support from the SFG, including salary payments.[76]
These losses undermine the SFG’s international credibility in its ability to retake its national territory from al Shabaab. Many of Somalia’s international partners praised the 2022 offensive as the first Somali-led counterterrorism offensive to retake significant territory from al Shabaab. The offensive stalled in 2023, however, and the SFG’s clan-based coalition began to collapse in 2024 due to domestic and regional political issues. The offensive benefited from al Shabaab’s missteps that alienated locals in the area, the Somali president’s clan ties in the area, and the prevalence of strong clan militias in the area.
The SFG was unable to consolidate its gains despite these favorable conditions, which are not present in al Shabaab’s center of gravity in southern Somalia.
https://www.understandingwar.org/ba...ons-shabaab-momentum-africa-file-july-10-2025
