Mogadishu (Somalia Today) — Somalia’s government says it has driven Al-Shabaab into its deepest cash crunch in nearly a decade, shifting its campaign against the Al-Qaeda-linked insurgents from the battlefield to the balance sheet in a bid to dismantle the group’s “mafia-style” taxation empire.
In a security assessment released this week via the state-run Somali National News Agency (SONNA), officials said intelligence drawn from the militants’ internal ledgers showed the group’s 2025 revenue had plummeted to under $80 million.
The figure represents the lowest annual income for the jihadists in seven years and a sharp decline from previous estimates that placed their earnings well above $100 million.
Authorities attribute the financial squeeze to a dual strategy: the targeted killing of the group’s top financial architects and a sweeping crackdown on the illicit webs of money couriers, urban extortion rackets, and port levies that have long sustained the insurgency.
“The cumulative impact of this federal economic strategy is clearly evident,” a senior intelligence official told state media, noting that the group is now struggling to pay its foot soldiers.
‘Financial decapitation’
The government’s report highlights the loss of two pivotal figures as a “structural blow” to Al-Shabaab’s treasury.
Mohamed Mire Jama, a veteran operative who served as the group’s “interior minister” and oversaw domestic revenue collection, was killed in a precision air strike near Kunyo Barrow in late 2024, according to U.S. Africa Command.
Mire was described by security analysts as a key strategist who managed the group’s administrative reach into areas under government control.
His death was followed in January by the killing of Abdullahi Hassan Abdi Osoble, known as “Abdullahi Wadaad,” in an operation by Somalia’s National Intelligence and Security Agency (NISA) in the Lower Shabelle region.
Identified as the group’s head of finance, Wadaad reportedly managed the complex extortion networks that tax everything from real estate transactions to farm produce.
The loss of this institutional knowledge appears to have disrupted the group’s ability to adapt to new government pressure.
Intelligence sources cited by the government claim the fiscal crisis has forced Al-Shabaab to slash monthly salaries for frontline fighters and operatives to below $80, a move officials hope will trigger desertions and hamper recruitment.
The urban Squeeze
For over a decade, Al-Shabaab has proven resilient despite losing territorial control of Mogadishu, maintaining a shadow government capable of taxing businesses in the capital through intimidation and violence.
The United Nations has previously estimated the group collected as much revenue as the federal government itself, leveraging a 2.5 percent “zakat” (tax) on annual profits and transit levies on goods.
However, the government’s recent offensive has targeted these “invisibles” of the insurgency.
In Mogadishu, authorities have rolled out a vast network of CCTV surveillance systems and deployed undercover security personnel across major markets such as Bakara, once a stronghold of militant finance.
The surveillance push, combined with the enforcement of the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism Act, has made it riskier for businesses to pay protection money.
“Business communities… are actively refusing to comply with the group’s payment demands,” the government assessment read, citing a fear of prosecution.
Authorities have previously frozen hundreds of bank and mobile money accounts linked to “merchant” payments suspected of flowing to the insurgents.
The crackdown has also tightened controls at Mogadishu’s port and international airport, severing access to cargo manifests that Al-Shabaab agents historically used to calculate extortion fees on imports.
Resilient threat
Despite the government’s optimistic assessment, independent experts warn that Al-Shabaab remains a financially adaptive organization.
A 2024 report by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC) estimated the group’s revenue in a single Islamic year at nearly $164 million, fueled by its control of trade routes in southern Somalia and the Juba Valley.
The group has also survived previous U.S. Treasury sanctions targeting its transnational money-laundering networks in the Horn of Africa, the UAE, and Cyprus.
The UN Panel of Experts on Somalia also cautioned that, even as government pressure squeezes the group’s urban revenue, it still generates funds through “checkpoints and forced payments” in rural strongholds where state presence remains weak.
Furthermore, the government’s aggressive surveillance strategy has come at a cost.
Security analysts note that Al-Shabaab has previously retaliated against businesses complying with CCTV mandates, bombing storefronts to enforce its authority, leaving Mogadishu’s traders caught in a deadly dilemma between state law and insurgent terror.
Yet, Somali officials insist the current strategy is forcing a critical wedge into the insurgency’s operations.
“The goal is to turn financial pressure into battlefield advantage,” the government statement concluded, “forcing the insurgents to choose between funding operations… and maintaining the coercive networks that have underwritten the war for nearly two decades.”
