U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) killed five members of Shabaab, Al Qaeda’s branch in East Africa, in a “self-defense airstrike” in central Somalia on July 19. AFRICOM has launched four self-defense...
Over the last few weeks, troops from the Somali National Army (SNA), backed by clan-based militias, African Union forces, and U.S. air support, have steadily made progress against Shabaab, al Qaeda’s...
The US military confirmed that its aircraft launched an airstrike against a "senior leader" of al Qaeda's branch in Somalia. "The strike took place in the vicinity of Saakow, Somali...
In late September, African Union (AU) forces surrounded the port city of Kismayo on Somalia’s southern coast. The AU troops stood on the threshold of capturing the city from the al Qaeda-af...
Al Qaeda is returning to the shadows. The experiment by al-Shabab, al Qaeda's Somali affiliate, of attempting to govern a broad area in Somalia's south officially came to a close...
The US State department has added seven senior leaders of Shabaab, al Qaeda's affiliate in Somalia, to the...
As Ethiopian forces continue to press their offensive in Somalia, Shabaab forces have relinquished control of a key southern city that has been under the terror group's control for three yea...
September has not been a good month in the sometime Somali capital of Mogadishu, even by the relative standards of a failed state that has not had an effective central government in the sixteen y...
Co-Authored with Seungwon Chung Being an African Union peacekeeper in Somalia must be one of the world's worst jobs, even in a down economy. The African Union Mission...
By Daveed Gartenstein-Ross and Madeleine Gruen The advance of Islamist groups in Somalia is seen as a cause for concern by Western law enforcement and...
Since emerging from an era of colonialism under Italy and Britain, Somalia has passed through military dictatorship, famine, and civil war to regional fragmentation. In the modern period, America...
Difficult as it may be to conceive, the already-bad security situation in Somalia deteriorated further over the weekend. Yet as Islamist militants brought their offensive to the edge of Mogadishu...
Last week, al-Qaeda chieftain Usama bin Laden interjected himself yet once again into the ongoing conflict in the territory of the former Somali Democratic Republic. On closer examination, the mo...
Map of Shabab-controlled regions in southern and central Somalia. The red ovals indicate major cities and towns taken over by Shabab according to open source reports. The yellow boxes...
Al Qaeda could beat the U.S. in Iraq if American political will collapses.
As this column has chronicled over the past year and a half, United States policy toward the remnants of the former state of Somalia has evolved into a sort of dramatic farce played out in the fo...
Two weeks ago a "national reconciliation congress" that Somalia's ineffectual "Transitional Federal Government" (TFG), under pressure from international donors who are its only means of supp...
The recent deaths of prominent Al-Qaeda terrorists such as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq and Abu Hafs al-Urdani in Daghestan, as well as a host of less publicized kills and captures, have hastened...
Last week, my colleague at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD), Andrew McCarthy; the former Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York who led the pros...