The Africa Center for Strategic Studies published on 17 November 2025 an analysis titled "Somalia at Risk of Becoming a Jihadist State" by Matt Bryden, founder of Sahan, a policy and research center focused on the Horn of Africa.
The author has extensive experience in Somalia and Somaliland. He says al-Shabaab now controls about 30 percent of Somalia's territory, far more than the federal government in Mogadishu, and poses a serious threat of taking the capital. The federal government is heavily reliant on the African Union Support and Stabilization Mission for security.
Somalia's economy is fractured and heavily dependent on three major ports of Kismayo, Mogadishu, and Bossaso while Berbera supports Somaliland. The ports, in turn, empower different federal states that often defy central government authority. The author concludes that Somalia faces a prospect that it may become an illiberal Islamist state.
