Islamic State leader Abdulqadir Mumin hunted in Somalia; British wife says he abandoned family

Mogadishu — Somali and U.S. forces are intensifying a joint campaign in northeastern Somalia to capture Abdulqadir Mumin, whom U.S. officials say now leads the Islamic State group, as his estranged wife in Britain says he abandoned the family more than a decade ago and has not contacted them since.

Security officials say Mumin is believed to be hiding in the Cal Miskaad mountains inPuntland State, where Islamic State fighters have fortified camps and used remote valleys to evade detection. U.S. Africa Command has said the Somalia branch has played a growing role in the group’s global network since the collapse of its self-proclaimed caliphate in Syria and Iraq in 2019.

The most recent publicly confirmed strike occurred Nov. 25, when joint Puntland State and U.S. special operations forces targeted suspected Islamic State compounds in the Baalade valley. U.S. troops inserted by helicopter as MQ-9 Reaper drones launched airstrikes on locations believed to shelter senior militants. Somali officials said a senior commander and between 10 and 15 fighters from Syria, Turkey and Ethiopia were killed, and that weapons stockpiles and mining equipment tied to the group’s finances were destroyed.

Authorities estimate that about 200 fighters remain active in the Cal Miskaad range. They say Mumin is moving between caves, relying on couriers and written messages, as the tightening campaign restricts his movement and communications across Puntland State’s rugged highlands.

As the manhunt escalates, Mumin’s family life has re-emerged as a point of public interest—and distance. His wife, Muna Abdule, who lives in Britain with their three children, told the Daily Mail that he left when the children were still young and did not say where he was going.

“He left us, what else can I say?” she said. “I have not seen him or heard from him in more than 10 years. The children know, but they have no contact with him.”

Abdule said she visited him once in Somalia before he emerged as a senior figure in the Islamic State group. She said he claimed to have changed, but she later concluded that was not true and cut off all communication.

Mumin’s path to leadership spans several countries. Born in Puntland State in the early 1950s, he left Somalia during the civil war and later settled in Sweden before moving to the United Kingdom, where security officials say he preached in mosques in Leicester and London. British authorities investigated him for allegedly recruiting young men to travel to Somalia, and officials say he left the U.K. around 2010 as scrutiny increased.

After returning to Somalia, he initially aligned with al-Shabab before defecting in 2015 and pledging allegiance to the Islamic State group. Regional officials say he expanded his faction from a small cluster of loyalists to roughly 1,000 by late 2024, drawing recruits from multiple continents and using remote mining operations in Puntland State to generate revenue. The current estimate of 200 fighters pertains to those believed to be active in the Cal Miskaad range, officials say.

U.S. and Somali officials warn that Mumin’s role within the Islamic State network gives him influence beyond Somalia’s borders despite recent losses. AFRICOM has emphasized the importance of disrupting the group’s funding pipelines—including the mining operations and taxation systems it has built in remote terrain—to limit its ability to project power across the region.

The Cal Miskaad offensive underscores the evolving nature of counterterrorism in Somalia: a mix of precision airstrikes, helicopter-borne raids, and local intelligence designed to constrict movement and isolate leadership figures. Officials say the ongoing pressure campaign aims to fragment the group’s command-and-control, degrade its finances and force senior operatives into greater risk as they rely on runners and paper messages to communicate.

For Abdule and her children, the high-stakes pursuit remains a distant, painful backdrop. “I can only tell the children the truth,” she said. “Their father made his choice. We are trying to live with it.”

By Ali Musa

Axadle Times international–Monitoring.