For more than two decades, Somalia’s war against al-Shabaab was most visibly fought through military offensives and battlefield contests.
But the Somali government has increasingly reached a more difficult conclusion: a terrorist movement cannot be defeated by military force alone. The fight must also extend to the ideas, finances, narratives and social influence that allow such a movement to survive.
Addressing the UN General Assembly in September, President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud described the government’s approach as confronting terrorism militarily, ideologically and financially. The clearest evidence of that broader strategy, however, is often found far from the front lines.
In late September, senior Somali officials gathered at the Ministry of Defence headquarters in Dayniile. Defence Minister Ahmed Moallim Fiqi drew attention not to a battlefield victory, but to the fact that senior officials could simply gather there late in the evening.
Tonight, here in Dayniile district, where the Ministry of Defence is located, we are able to spend the evening without fear.
Fiqi contrasted the scene with the security environment only a few years earlier, recalling a period when national elections were held under intense protection and mortar shells landed close to election venues.
“We remember four and a half years ago, when elections were being held here … mortar shells were raining down like stones around the hall where the election was taking place,” he said.
Prime Minister Hamza Abdi Barre offered another, more everyday example. He told the same gathering that he had travelled from his residence to the Ministry of Defence without roads being closed for his convoy. His vehicles moved through ordinary traffic, stopped along the route and were caught in congestion like other motorists.
Tonight, I travelled from my residence all the way to the Ministry of Defence, and not a single road was closed for me. We simply moved among ordinary Somali citizens. At certain points, we stopped. We were caught in traffic.
In another country, such a journey might be unremarkable. In Mogadishu, after years in which senior officials frequently travelled behind security cordons, armoured vehicles and closed roads, it carries a different meaning.
It suggests that the state is beginning to occupy public space differently — not only by protecting officials from society, but by allowing them to move more naturally within it.
The same shift is increasingly visible after dark. Mogadishu now hosts sporting events, cultural gatherings and restaurants that remain busy into the evening. During the 2026 World Cup, crowds gathered at outdoor screenings in the capital to watch matches late into the night, with ministers joining members of the public.
During recent Independence Day celebrations, President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud also joined young Somalis at Taleex Square, appearing among crowds rather than behind the usual layers of official distance.
Public gatherings that once would have carried a much heavier security calculation are increasingly becoming part of the city’s ordinary rhythm. These scenes are not simply evidence of improved security. They are themselves part of the wider struggle against terrorism.
Contesting the ideology
That wider contest begins even with language. Somali officials increasingly avoid referring to the organisation as al-Shabaab and instead call it Khawaarij.
The distinction is deliberate. Al-Shabaab means “the youth”, a powerful association in a country where young people make up the overwhelming majority of the population. Somali officials argue that a violent terror organisation should not be allowed to appropriate a name that belongs to Somalia’s younger generation.
Khawaarij, by contrast, carries historical and religious associations with rebellion and the distortion of religion to justify violence. The objective is psychological as much as theological: to separate the movement from the identity of Somali youth and make clear that joining it is not an expression of belonging to their generation.
For years, the organisation’s propaganda relied on presenting itself as a religious movement confronting an illegitimate political order.
Somalia’s government is attempting to reverse that framing and portray the conflict instead as one between Somali society and a movement that has manipulated religion while attacking the same population it claims to defend.
Taking the argument into the mosques
That ideological contest now reaches much further into the religious sphere. Al-Shabaab has long used religious language to recruit, justify violence and claim moral authority. The government has increasingly sought to ensure that mosques, Qur’anic schools and other religious institutions are not left entirely outside the national effort to counter extremist narratives.
Authorities are registering religious schools and Qur’anic memorisation centres as part of a broader effort to bring Islamic education into a clearer national framework.
The government has also moved towards greater coordination of Friday sermons, encouraging mosques to address connected themes so that worshippers across Mogadishu and eventually more widely across Somalia, hear a more coherent public religious message.
A bill now before parliament proposes the establishment of a Somali Scholars Council, envisioned as a national body that would unite religious scholars, strengthen their role in public life and help counter extremist interpretations.
Minister of Endowments and Islamic Affairs Sheikh Mukhtar Robow Ali told lawmakers that the council could promote religious awareness, support peace and reconciliation, strengthen social cohesion and counter the misuse of religion and extremist ideas.
Robow’s own presence at the centre of the effort adds another layer. Once a senior figure within al-Shabaab, he later broke with the organisation and now serves as Somalia’s Minister of Endowments and Islamic Affairs.
His trajectory illustrates how the government’s strategy is not only about defeating terrorists militarily, but also about weakening the ideological pathways that once drew people towards the movement.
Fighting the propaganda war
The same logic extends into the digital sphere.
For years, terrorist attacks generated a second wave of impact through videos, photographs, social-media posts and claims circulated after the violence itself.
Somali and international outlets sometimes reproduced material originating from the organisation, extending its reach far beyond the immediate battlefield. A single attack could therefore produce two effects: the physical damage itself and the impression of strength created afterwards.
Somalia’s government has increasingly targeted websites, social-media channels and online platforms it says are used to spread terrorist propaganda.
At the same time, the Ministry of Defence, National Intelligence and Security Agency and Somali Police Force have increased official briefings designed to prevent militants from monopolising the narrative around security incidents.
The broader campaign also reaches into finance. For years, al-Shabaab has collected payments from businesses, traders, farmers and transport operators, often presenting coercive demands as taxation.
This system has provided the group not only with revenue but with a form of authority: the ability to compel people to obey even in places it does not openly control.
Somali authorities say they have targeted financial accounts, communication channels and transfer systems believed to facilitate militant financing.
Reclaiming public space
The campaign eventually returns to where ordinary Somalis experience security most directly: the street.
Concrete barriers, checkpoints and long-term closures became familiar features of Mogadishu over years of insecurity. Journeys became longer, businesses lost passing customers and public space increasingly reflected the geography of threat rather than the needs of ordinary city life.
Public sport carries a similar message. In May 2025, African football figures including Emmanuel Adebayor, Jay-Jay Okocha and Samuel Eto’o took part in a football event in Somalia alongside former Somali players.
For a country long represented abroad through conflict and terrorism, the images mattered internationally. Their deeper significance, however, may have been domestic.
Al-Shabaab has historically sought to regulate social and cultural behaviour and has condemned forms of public entertainment. In that context, thousands of Somalis gathering openly for football is not merely recreation.
It is a population reclaiming decisions about where it gathers, what it watches and what it considers normal.
Reframing sacrifice
Somalia’s government is also contesting another powerful extremist narrative: sacrifice.
The government increasingly refers to fallen soldiers as martyrs, publicly honours them and names institutions after officers killed in battle.
When Major Hassan Mohamed Osman, known as Hassan Tuure, was killed in January 2023, the Danab training camp at Baledogle was renamed in his honour shortly afterwards.
The message is that honour belongs not to those who attack civilians or turn weapons against the country, but to those who die protecting it.
Prime Minister Barre made that connection explicit when he asked who had made Mogadishu’s security gains possible.
“Did it happen by itself? No. Who made it possible? After Allah, it was made possible by those sitting here tonight, by those fighting on the front lines, by those standing on our streets maintaining security, our sons and daughters serving this country in the armed forces,” Prime Minister Hamza Abdi Barre said.
The government is also trying to extend that recognition beyond symbolism.
Somali authorities have announced plans to establish dedicated educational and healthcare facilities for children whose parents were killed while serving in the armed forces.
Defence Minister Fiqi and army commander Brigadier General Ibrahim Mohamed Mohamoud have met some of those children, while the Council of Ministers has approved regulations governing their welfare.
Seen together, the military operations, ideological reframing, religious engagement, regulation of religious education, coordinated mosque messaging, financial disruption, digital counter-propaganda, reopening of public space, recognition of fallen soldiers and support for their families form parts of the same strategy. None is sufficient on its own.
Together, however, they reflect an attempt to weaken not only al-Shabaab’s capacity to fight, but also the religious, social and psychological environment in which terrorism survives.
