Somalia, Washington cuts the lifeline as Al-Shabaab advances

An abandonment announced in the middle of a security crisis

On July 1st, 2026, Washington informed the African Union Commission that it would stop supporting the United Nations Support Office in Somalia beyond December 31, 2026, according to diplomatic documents reviewed by Reuters. This decision, described as "irreversible" by a senior African diplomat quoted by Vanguard News, directly threatens the very existence of the African Union mission, which fields nearly 12,000 troops deployed in Somalia.

I am writing this open letter because the timing of this withdrawal is almost cynical: it comes at the exact moment when Somali president Hassan Sheikh Mahamoud is promising a "final offensive" against the jihadist group Al-Shabaab, according to remarks reported by the Somali state agency SONNA and relayed by Infobae.

Why this letter is addressed to you, Western readers

You live far from Mogadishu, but what is unfolding there concerns you directly. A Somalia sliding further under the influence of a group affiliated with al-Qaeda is not an isolated regional problem: it is a security vacuum that other actors, far less concerned with human rights and international stability, will rush to fill.

This letter does not claim to explain everything. It aims to clearly name a contradiction: you cannot demand that a country win a war against terrorism while simultaneously stripping it of the logistical means essential to fighting that war.

A diplomatic note with immense consequences

In a note dated July 1st and reviewed by Reuters, the United States indicated it would no longer support the United Nations Support Office in Somalia (UNSOS), whose total budget is close to 500 million dollars. Washington also specified it would block any additional UN logistical support to the African Union mission before the Security Council.

The United States finances roughly 26% of the UN budget through assessed contributions, according to The EastAfrican. Its withdrawal from this specific funding stream therefore deprives the African Union mission of a substantial share of its logistical support in fuel, food, and medical services.

Washington justifies its decision by citing insufficient progress

According to information relayed by several outlets, including CGTN Africa, Washington believes Somalia has not made "sufficient progress" in the fight against Al-Shabaab and has not taken on greater responsibility for its own security. That argument is not entirely baseless on the facts, but it ignores the structural dependency that the United States itself helped create over nearly two decades.

A spokesperson for the U.S. State Department confirmed that the United States would no longer continue supporting UNSOS operations, according to Zeit Online, without publicly detailing the full strategic reasoning behind the decision.

A counteroffensive that wiped out years of gains

According to the Crisis Group, Al-Shabaab launched a counteroffensive in 2025 that erased nearly all the territorial gains made by the Somali government between 2022 and 2023. The group retook control of most of the Middle Shabelle and Hiiraan regions during the first half of 2025, before the advance slowed in the face of a government counter-push backed by international forces.

According to the Hiraal Institute, this 2025 counteroffensive did change Al-Shabaab's tactical behavior, pushing the group out of urban centers, but it did not reduce its overall pace of attacks, which reportedly even increased since then.

A threat that still controls vast swaths of territory

Despite nearly twenty years of war, Al-Shabaab "still controls vast stretches of the country", in the very words used by Vanguard News. Human Rights Watch, in its 2026 World Report, confirms that Al-Shabaab's offensives allowed the group to retake territory previously recovered by the government in 2022, particularly in central Somalia.

This resilience, year after year, despite considerable Western and African military investment, shows just how far a purely military solution has always fallen short of defeating such a deeply rooted movement.

An independence speech turned declaration of war

On the occasion of Somalia's 66th anniversary of independence, President Hassan Sheikh Mahamoud stated that the government now has "a clear plan to put an end to Al-Shabaab", adding that Somali troops "would launch a final offensive to eliminate the group from the country", according to remarks relayed by the SONNA agency and picked up by Infobae.

The president also reiterated an offer of amnesty to jihadist fighters willing to abandon the extremist organization's ranks, an approach that combines military pressure with incentives for defection, in hopes of weakening Al-Shabaab from within.

Strikes already underway against the group's positions

Somalia's Ministry of Defense announced on Thursday the "elimination" of 27 suspected members of Al-Shabaab in new bombing raids conducted on July 1st and 2nd in coordination with international partners, targeting the group's positions in the Lower Shabelle region south of Mogadishu, according to Infobae. Earlier in the week, the ministry had already announced the deaths of 35 other suspected members of the group in the same region.

These operations, presented as tactical successes by Mogadishu, come in a context where the Somali government's ability to turn these one-off gains into a lasting strategic victory remains, historically, highly uncertain.

Funding arrears that have piled up for years

Well before the American announcement of July 1st, the African Union mission in Somalia was already suffering from chronic underfunding. According to the IPI Global Observatory, the mission received only about half of its funding needs for 2025, adding to substantial arrears from previous years, while no funding had even been pledged for 2026.

Out of an estimated budget of 166.5 million dollars for the 2025-2026 period, according to a London School of Economics brief, only a limited fraction had actually been disbursed even before the American withdrawal was announced, illustrating a structural financial fragility that predates Washington's decision.

An emergency meeting convened by the African Union

Facing this announcement, the African Union convened an emergency meeting on Friday on the future of its military mission in Somalia, according to Vanguard News. A senior diplomat warned that "a major Al-Shabaab advance cannot be ruled out" if funding were indeed to vanish by year's end, a warning that reflects how gravely African officials themselves view the situation.

This emergency meeting reflects a concern that goes far beyond mere budgetary considerations: it is the very credibility of the collective security model in East Africa that is now being directly put to the test by this American decision.

A logistical pillar on which Mogadishu's government survival depends

According to The Straits Times, the African Union mission, nearly 12,000 strong, props up a fragile government in Mogadishu and helps push back al-Shabaab militants, whose previous offensives had already brought them to within a few kilometers of the capital. These troops depend heavily on logistics provided by the UN, notably for food, fuel, and medical care.

Depriving these troops of this basic logistical support does not make them disappear overnight, but it drastically reduces their real operational capacity on the ground, in a context where every week of reduced military pressure directly benefits the adversary.

A long-planned withdrawal, now threatened with acceleration

The UN Security Council had already planned a gradual withdrawal of African Union troops starting in 2028, under resolution 2809 adopted in December 2025. But according to the IPI Global Observatory, nothing suggests the security situation will improve enough by that deadline to allow a smooth handover of responsibility to Somali forces alone.

The American withdrawal of UNSOS funding therefore risks precipitating a scenario that even the UN's most optimistic planners already considered risky by the 2028 horizon, let alone with a sudden acceleration by the end of this year.

An objective quietly scaled down for several years already

According to LinkedIn Editors and several analysts cited by specialized publications, there is now a broad informal consensus that defeating Al-Shabaab under current funding conditions is unrealistic. The goal, increasingly, is limited to containment: keeping the threat largely confined within Somali borders and away from strategic international shipping lanes.

This shift in ambition, from decisive victory to mere containment, speaks volumes about the waning international political will to durably fund a war that has seemed endless for nearly two decades.

What this retreat concretely means for Somali civilians

Accepting containment over victory means, in practice, accepting that millions of Somalis continue living under the direct or indirect threat of a group that has repeatedly demonstrated its capacity to carry out indiscriminate attacks against civilians, according to Human Rights Watch. This is not a geopolitical abstraction: these are real lives being sacrificed on the altar of Western budget fatigue.

I refuse to present this strategic shift as a mere technical question of resource management: it carries a direct human cost, measurable in Somali lives, that decision-makers in Washington should at least have the honesty to publicly own.

A Horn of Africa strategic for global security

Somalia occupies a major strategic position, close to some of the busiest shipping lanes in the world, linking the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean. A security collapse in this country would have repercussions well beyond its borders, notably for the security of international commercial shipping, an issue that directly affects Western economies, including North American and European ones.

It would be naive to believe Somali instability would remain a purely regional problem: the recent history of piracy off the Somali coast already demonstrated, some fifteen years ago, how quickly a local security vacuum can become a global economic problem.

The precedent this withdrawal sets for other theaters

This American funding withdrawal also sends a signal to other international partners engaged in stabilization missions elsewhere in the world: Western commitment can be pulled unilaterally, even at a critical phase of a conflict, whenever results fail to meet expectations set by Washington alone, without genuine prior consultation with the allies directly concerned.

This precedent should worry every government currently counting on sustained Western support to stabilize its own territory against comparable jihadist threats, from the Sahel to South Asia.

A foreign policy refocusing elsewhere

This decision fits into a broader trend of reassessing American military and financial commitments abroad, a shift that apparently favors other strategic priorities deemed more immediate for U.S. national security. This refocusing is not necessarily irrational in itself, but its execution raises serious questions about the timing and method chosen.

Cutting critical funding at the exact moment an African ally launches a major offensive against a terrorist group affiliated with al-Qaeda sends an ambiguous message about the long-term reliability of American commitments to its security partners.

The gap between counterterrorism rhetoric and budgetary acts

There is an obvious tension between America's constant rhetoric about the need to fight global jihadist terrorism and this concrete decision to reduce logistical support to one of the most important counterterrorism missions on the African continent. This contradiction deserves to be named bluntly, rather than diluted in vague diplomatic jargon.

This gap between words and actions is unfortunately nothing new in Western foreign policy toward Africa, but it remains just as problematic every time it repeats itself.

A potential opening for other powers

A lasting weakening of the Western presence in Somalia could open the door to greater involvement by other regional or global powers, whose priorities do not necessarily align with democratic stability or human rights. China, already heavily present economically in the Horn of Africa, could seek to expand its strategic influence amid a gradual Western disengagement.

This dynamic is not hypothetical: it has already been observed in other regions of the world, where a Western withdrawal left a space that other powers, far less concerned with governance issues, rushed to fill.

A worrying precedent for regional geopolitical balance

The Horn of Africa remains a zone of intense geopolitical competition among several world powers, each seeking to secure strategic access to this pivotal region between Africa and the Middle East. A prolonged security vacuum in Somalia would likely not remain unclaimed for long, in a context of already heightened international rivalry.

It is precisely this dynamic that should worry Western chancelleries well beyond the immediate budgetary considerations tied to this American decision.

Population displacement that has been accumulating for years

The successive offensives and counteroffensives between the Somali government and Al-Shabaab have triggered repeated waves of population displacement, particularly in the Middle Shabelle and Hiiraan regions, according to Human Rights Watch. These displaced civilians often live in precarious humanitarian conditions, with no certainty of ever being able to return permanently to their homes.

Forced evictions also continue in the capital, Mogadishu, where demographic pressure from the influx of internally displaced people further complicates an already fragile urban situation in terms of security and basic infrastructure.

An international weariness leaving little room for humanitarian action

Amid a proliferation of international crises competing for global media and diplomatic attention, Somalia struggles to hold a priority place on the international humanitarian agenda, despite considerable needs affecting millions of people directly impacted by this prolonged conflict.

This relative international indifference should never serve as an excuse to downplay the real urgency of Somalia's humanitarian situation, whatever place it currently occupies in Western diplomatic priorities.

A diplomatic window still theoretically open

The American decision, although described as "irreversible" by a diplomat quoted by Vanguard News, will not take effect until the end of 2026. This leaves, in theory, a window of several months for an alternative diplomatic mobilization, whether by the European Union, other international partners, or a revision of the American position itself under pressure from African allies.

This window, however, remains narrow, and nothing guarantees that a credible alternative funding solution could be assembled in such a short timeframe to offset the withdrawal announced by Washington.

The Somali offensive as the decisive variable of coming months

The success or failure of the "final offensive" promised by President Mahamoud, in the coming weeks, could also influence the American position, should significant and lasting territorial gains be demonstrated on the ground before the end-of-year deadline.

But given the track record of previous offensives, largely reversed by Al-Shabaab in the following months, caution remains warranted before drawing definitive conclusions about the outcome of this new military campaign.

An urgent revision of the withdrawal timeline

Through this letter, I am asking for one simple thing: that American decision-makers at least reconsider the timeline of this withdrawal, synchronizing it with the actual outcome of the offensive currently promised by Mogadishu, rather than imposing it according to a budgetary schedule disconnected from realities on the ground.

This is not a naive request for unlimited, unconditional funding: it is a request for minimal coherence between stated counterterrorism goals and the concrete means allocated to achieve them.

A shared responsibility among Western allies

If Washington holds firm on its decision, it then falls to other Western partners, particularly European ones, to seriously consider at least partially filling this funding gap, rather than leaving Somalia and the African Union alone to face this sudden budgetary constraint.

The West cannot claim to defend an international order built on fighting terrorism while, one after another, disengaging from its most concrete commitments on precisely this front.

A partner still relatively on the sidelines of this file

The European Union, despite existing financial contributions to Somali stabilization, has not so far announced any significant increase in its commitment to offset a potential full American withdrawal from UNSOS funding. This relative European caution is partly explained by internal budgetary constraints, but it leaves a gap that few actors seem eager to fill today.

Yet several European countries, some of which already have direct security interests in the region through the fight against maritime piracy, would have the means to at least partially cushion the consequences of the American withdrawal, if a clear political will emerged quickly.

An opportunity to demonstrate European strategic autonomy

This Somali file could also become a revealing test of Europe's capacity to act autonomously on international security issues, without systematically depending on American budgetary decisions. A Europe capable of filling, even partially, this funding gap would send a strong signal of its willingness to genuinely weigh in on international security matters beyond its immediate neighborhood.

Nothing guarantees, however, that such European mobilization will materialize within the necessary timeframe, as European budgetary decision-making processes often remain slower than the real urgency on the Somali ground would demand.

A risky bet Somalis will pay for

What this American decision reveals, at its core, is the structural fragility of a collective security model heavily dependent on a single dominant funder. When that funder decides to withdraw, even partially, the entire Somali security edifice is immediately weakened, with potentially devastating human consequences for millions of civilians.

President Mahamoud promises a final offensive, but that promise rings strangely hollow at the exact moment the logistical means needed to carry it through risk disappearing before the military campaign has even had time to produce lasting, verifiable results.

An open letter, hoping it does not go unheard

I close this letter with no certainty about its real impact, aware that American foreign policy decisions are not generally made by reading a column published thousands of kilometers from Mogadishu. But I continue to believe that clearly naming a contradiction remains the indispensable first step toward one day correcting it.

Somalia deserves better than a budgetary abandonment disguised as strategic adjustment, and Westerners who claim to defend global security should, at the very least, have the courage to publicly own the human consequences of their own financial decisions.

By Maxime Marquette, columnist

Editorial stance

I am not a journalist but a columnist and analyst. My expertise lies in observing and analysing the geopolitical, economic and strategic dynamics that shape our world. My work is to take political strategies apart, to understand global economic movements, to put the decisions of international actors in context and to offer analytical perspectives on the changes that are redefining our societies.

I do not claim the cold objectivity of traditional journalism, which stops at reporting facts. I claim analytical clarity, rigorous interpretation and a deep understanding of the complex issues that concern us all. My role is to give meaning to the facts, to place them in their historical and strategic context, and to offer a critical reading of events.

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