Somalia Intensifies Hunt for Islamic State Militants, Vows No Safe Haven

AL-MISKAD MOUNTAINS, Somalia — On a windswept ridge overlooking a maze of limestone caves, Puntland State Defence Forces soldiers huddle around a hand-held screen, tracking a lone figure sprinting through a chalky valley. “He has been to fetch water for his friends,” one says, as the dot moves toward a suspected hideout. Another adds: “He is running and carrying something on his back.”

The suspected cave network below, commanders say, shelters 50 to 60 Islamic State group fighters. It is one node in a stubborn insurgency that has dug into Somalia’s remote northeast, even as U.S.-backed Somali forces have battered it for more than a year.

Somalia’s al-Miskad mountains, once home only to scattered nomadic families, became a sanctuary for IS-Somalia after the group lost territory in Syria and Iraq. By April 2025, then–U.S. Africa Command chief Gen. Michael Langley told Congress that “ISIS controls their global network from Somalia.” Washington has since escalated support; the Pentagon carried out 60 strikes on IS-Somalia in 2025, repeatedly targeting militants seeking cover in caves.

Those strikes, along with ground offensives, have dented the group’s reach. “The ability to stage attacks in Somalia has been degraded” and IS “does not pose a significant threat to Puntland State or Somalia today,” said Tricia Bacon, director of the Policy Anti-Terrorism Hub at American University. But she warned the Somali branch remains “critical” for channeling money, logistics and recruits to Islamic State affiliates in Africa and beyond, including Afghanistan — a reminder that pressure here can echo far from these mountains.

IS-Somalia grew under Abdulqadir Mumin, a Somali national who once lived in Sweden and the U.K., held British citizenship and broke from al-Shabab, the al-Qaida-aligned insurgency that has fought the Somali government for nearly two decades. In 2015, Mumin appeared with 17 men pledging allegiance to Islamic State. His fighters muscled al-Shabab out of parts of al-Miskad, recruited foreigners, and evolved into a training and financial hub — raising an estimated $2 million in 2022 through extortion of businesses and agriculture in the port city of Bosaso, according to a U.S. Treasury report.

Puntland State forces pushed IS-Somalia out of Bosaso in early 2025. Yet the group held on to villages and small towns in the mountains, including Dardar, home to about 600 people, where it imposed austere rules on dress, gender mixing and music. Residents say the edicts were scrawled on a blackboard in a neighboring village; men were forbidden to let their trousers fall below the ankle or wear stylish haircuts. Women were ordered to wear a specific hijab with socks and gloves. Dissent brought terror.

“Life became very difficult,” said the village imam, Said Mohamud Ibrahim, sitting cross-legged on the cool floor of his mosque. He said IS militants expelled him from his pulpit: “They said: ‘We are the imam now. And if you do not follow our instructions and leave the mosque right now, you will get what you deserve.’” He understood it as a threat of beheading or abduction. “People were afraid. Some were kidnapped and are still missing.”

Among the worshippers is Mahad Jama, who still speaks in the present tense about his niece, Shukri. She was pregnant when IS fighters kidnapped and killed her two years ago, he says, leaving behind two children and a sick mother. “She was a good girl, a very loving daughter,” he says softly. Her 7-year-old son, Said, who was deaf and rarely left her side, was with her when militants came to the house. He was killed too. “You can’t imagine what it feels like to lose your niece,” Jama says. “When you receive news of a child’s death, it is almost impossible to accept.”

Dardar changed hands after months of fighting. Puntland State forces retook it in February 2025, aided by U.S. strikes that killed three IS militants the previous May. But commanders concede the insurgents still hold pockets nearby.

At a forward base carved into the mountains, roughly 500 Puntland State soldiers rotate between patrols and long hours under tarpaulins lashed to stone. Camels haul machine guns and mortar tubes up goat tracks. There is no electricity or running water. Goats provide meat, and helicopters drop supplies twice a day when the weather allows. In quieter moments, a few soldiers jab at battered smartphones, scrolling through images and calling home.

“We fought hard and won… because this is our land,” said 32-year-old officer Muna Ali Dahir, one of a handful of women among the troops here. She has seen combat but, with fighting expected nearby, is staying back to prepare for casualties. She has eight children and has seen them only twice in the past year. “They say: ‘Mum is coming back and we will win.’ It makes me feel that I am doing the right thing.”

Other soldiers trade stories from the front. In one photo, 24-year-old Abdikhair Abdiriza Jama grips the arm of a bearded, long-haired prisoner. “This is Hassan. The Turkish man that we captured,” he says. He was 14 when IS first appeared in the region. “I didn’t believe that they existed. At first, I thought it was just propaganda. But when I held one of them… I realised that foreign fighters were attacking our country.”

In June 2025, the United Nations estimated IS-Somalia’s ranks at up to 800 fighters, more than half of them foreign. Puntland State authorities say they have killed hundreds over the past 16 months and have released images of more than 50 captured foreign suspects from countries including Ethiopia, Morocco and Syria. Officials say detainees face trial and, in some cases, the death penalty. Human Rights Watch has previously raised concerns over due process and the treatment of those accused of belonging to Islamist armed groups; a U.N. report in 2022 said Somalia was working to coordinate custody and uphold detainee rights.

The fight here remains a joint venture, stitched together by surveillance and speed. As word spreads of an imminent clash, an American drone buzzes high overhead, vacuuming up imagery to guide Puntland State gunners. Mortars thump and smoke peels across the rock as rounds slam into cave mouths. No return fire follows. When the local drone creeps back up to assess the strike, the cave entrance looks scorched, but the runner from the morning feed has vanished. Later, Puntland State commanders learn that U.S. drones tracked and struck fighters inside. It is unclear how many were hit.

Even with momentum shifting, officers and analysts say IS-Somalia is neither finished nor isolated. In the mountains, small units can scatter into crevices and re-form quickly. In fundraising, facilitation and training, the group remains plugged into a wider Islamic State lattice. Bacon, the American University scholar, cautions that while IS-Somalia is “currently constrained,” it has shown itself “capable of recovering and regrouping from losses.”

On the ridge, the mood oscillates between banter and resolve. A test burst of gunfire cracks through the afternoon heat. Squads peel off in loose files, rifles low, eyes on the rock. “We won’t stop until the last fighter is captured,” says Abdikhair Jama. “Whether it takes 10 or 15 years, we will go wherever they move or hide. Only when the land is fully cleared will we rest.”

For Dahir, the calculation is more intimate but no less steely. “I own this country and those who invade are wrong,” she says, before tucking her phone back into a pocket and turning toward the casualty station. In these mountains, where caves can conceal an army and a village can change hands in a morning, the end of the war cannot yet be seen from the screen in her comrades’ hands. But the soldiers keep watching, and they keep going.

By Ali Musa
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.