appears to have marked half a year without a U.S. strike on the Islamic State in Somalia. According to New America’s tracking and the United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) website, the last declared U.S. strike against the group occurred on May 6, 2026. On that date, the United States “conducted an airstrike targeting ISIS-Somalia … in the vicinity of the Golis Mountains, about 75 km southeast of Bossaso,” per a press release issued by AFRICOM.
The apparent half year pause in U.S. strikes against the Islamic State in Somalia is notable, as U.S. strikes against the group played a central role in generating an unprecedented pace of strikes in Somalia during the second Trump administration. With an apparent lull in strikes against ISIS-Somalia, the total number of strikes this year in Somalia is likely to decline compared to 2025, the peak of U.S. strikes in the country.
However, the seeming pause also raises questions about the extent to which the public can trust government statements about the number and extent of its strikes. While AFRICOM has not declared any strikes against ISIS-Somalia since May 6, 2026, there is one reported strike that the U.S. has denied conducting. According to Mohamed Gabobe, a Somali-American reporter based in Mogadishu, writing for Drop Site, the U.S. conducted strikes against ISIS-Somalia in the vicinity of Togga Baalade in the Al-Miskad mountains on September 3, 2026. Gabobe cited Puntland security officials as the source of his report.
AFRICOM denied conducting the alleged September 3, 2026 strike in response to a query from this author. In addition, in late October, AFRICOM told this author in response to a separate query that “U.S. Africa Command publicizes all airstrikes conducted under its authority in Somalia on our public website. We do not maintain an undisclosed or unannounced strike count.” AFRICOM’s tally of strikes on its site does not include any strikes against ISIS-Somalia since May 6, 2026.
What Does the Lull Suggest About the Trajectory of U.S. Strikes
The apparent lull suggests that the United States is likely to conduct fewer strikes in Somalia this year than in 2025. The decision to conduct a campaign of strikes against ISIS in Somalia, beginning in February 2025, spiked U.S. strikes in Somalia to unprecedented levels. According to New America’s tracking (which includes alleged strikes AFRICOM has denied conducting), the United States conducted 126 strikes and operations in 2025 compared to 93 to date in 2026.
If the United States were to conduct strikes in November and December at the average monthly pace that it has conducted strikes in the rest of 2026, according to New America’s data, it would fall about 15 strikes short of the 2025 peak. However, this calculation includes the early part of 2026 when the United States was conducting strikes against both al-Shabaab and ISIS in Somalia (it also includes two reported strikes against ISIS in Somalia in 2026 that AFRICOM denies conducting).
According to AFRICOM’s tally of declared strikes, the United States conducted an average of 12.6 strikes per month from January-May. This pace of strikes, if extended for the final two months of 2026 would still result in a total that falls slightly short of the 2026 peak. However, from June-October the average was only 5.4 strikes per month.
The primary cause of this decline is the seeming end of or pause in the campaign against ISIS-Somalia. In 2026 so far, the United States has primarily conducted strikes against al-Shabaab. Through November 6, 2026, using only AFRICOM’s declared strikes, 62% of strikes have targeted al-Shabaab versus 38% targeting ISIS-Somalia. However, this trend has not been constant throughout the year. In the period following the May 6 lull, the United States conducted 28 strikes against al-Shabaab and zero against ISIS-Somalia, according to AFRICOM’s tally. Indeed, prior to the lull that followed the last declared strike on ISIS-Somalia on May 6, 2026, 56% of strikes in 2026 targeted ISIS-Somalia while 44% targeted al-Shabaab.
It is of course possible that the rest of November and December 2026 will see a significant escalation of strikes or even the return of strikes against ISIS-Somalia. U.S. strikes in Somalia could still surpass their 2025 peak. However, at this point, it is likely that there will be at least a small decline in the overall number of strikes.
It is worth recalling that such a decline after a significant surge in strikes would not be unprecedented. During Trump’s first term, according to New America’s tracking, the number of strikes in Somalia grew year over year for the first three years, but then declined in 2020 relative to 2019. Similarly, in Yemen an unprecedented spike in the number of strikes in 2017 was followed by a decline to numbers similar to and even below the final years of the Obama administration. However, analysis of the seeming decline in strikes against jihadists in Yemen is complicated by the likely existence of covert strikes, an issue that may also challenge analysis of the trajectory of strikes in Somalia.
Questions of Trust and Covert Strikes – Is There Actually a Lull?
Drop Site’s report of U.S. strikes against ISIS-Somalia on September 3, in the midst of the seeming lull in strikes reveals a significant challenge for analysts trying to track the character and extent of U.S. strikes – that challenge being uncertainty regarding whether U.S. government statements about its strikes can be fully trusted and whether there have been covert strikes conducted outside of AFRICOM’s authority.
The Drop Site report is particularly notable because it cites Puntland security officials as the source for the attribution of the September 3 strike to the United States. This distinguishes the report from cases in which media or trackers of strikes attribute responsibility to the U.S. by either simply assuming the U.S. is generally behind strikes or by citing local residents whose ability to determine the actor behind strikes is unclear.
For example, Airwars listed a January 2025 strike involving civilian casualties in northern Somalia as having likely been conducted by the United States, citing a Somali Guardian article that referred to a “suspected US drone strike” without providing sourcing for its attribution of the strike to the United States. Other sources cited by Airwars noted that they lacked a basis to attribute the strike to the United States (or to any other specific actor).
In Somalia, and other locations such as Yemen, it is not uncommon for strikes by any party to be labeled as American strikes. However, as recent comments by a former commander of Somalia’s Danab unit (the unit which works closely with the United States) makes clear, drone and strike capabilities in Somalia are “widely distributed” and can no longer be assumed to be American, as “now we have the African Union Mission, Turkey, UAE, and the U.K. that have also entered that space.”
The attribution of the January 2025 strike to the United States should raise questions, as the first declared U.S. strike in Somalia of 2025 occurred on February 1, 2025, after the alleged January strike. During January 2025, the semi-autonomous Puntland state had begun an operation against ISIS, but an AFRICOM official told the Washington Post that while the U.S. was monitoring that operation, it had not provided support. Similarly, after the February 1 strike, Mohamed Mubarak, the head of Puntland’s security coordination office, told the BBC, “We have not seen much support except from Kenya, Ethiopia and the UAE. We don’t know if the Americans will conduct more than one airstrike,” a statement that should trigger immediate skepticism regarding the attribution of any 2025 strikes prior to February to the United States.
In October 2026, Gabobe, again writing for Drop Site, reported that “Four separate security officials from the semi-autonomous Puntland region confirmed,” that the January 2025 strike had been conducted by the United Arab Emirates.
The September 3 strike is not the sole strike in 2026 against ISIS in Somalia, where Puntland officials appeared to confirm a U.S. strike but where AFRICOM denied conducting a strike (although it is the only one during the seeming lull). On April 22, 2026, the Puntland Counterterrorism Operation Telegram Account posted about U.S. participation in a bombing operation, targeting a cave where ISIS operatives were hiding, reporting that eight ISIS operatives were killed. It did not provide a date for the operation, but Harun Maruf, a longtime reporter on Somalia including for Voice of America, appeared to place the strike on April 22 while other local sources suggested that while the exact timing could not be verified it likely happened on April 22 or the evening of April 21.
AFRICOM in response to a query, told this author that it did not conduct a strike that matched the reported location and date of the strike. The closest strikes (date-wise) acknowledged by AFRICOM that could align with the broad location of this operation occurred on April 20, 2026 90 km southeast of Bossaso and on April 25, 75 km southeast of Bossaso (which cannot be the strike in question because it post-dates the reports of the operation). The United States conducted a strike on April 21, but that strike was in southern Somalia about 90 km southwest of Kismayo, more than 1,000 kilometers away from the presumed vicinity of the reported April operation.
It is important to be wary about reflexive distrust of AFRICOM statements regarding its strikes. A too inclusive approach to attributing U.S. responsibility risks generating erroneous accounts of the trajectory of the campaign. It can also help obscure the responsibility of other actors, like the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, and others who have been far less forthcoming than the United States when it comes to accepting responsibility for their strikes and operations and any alleged civilian casualties.
However, it is also important to maintain a skeptical eye regarding the possibility that there are covert strikes that have not occurred under AFRICOM’s authority or otherwise not been declared, potentially even more than the two such alleged cases that have been reported so far in 2026. The need for skepticism has been amplified by a range of high profile cases over the past two years that have undermined trust in the U.S. government’s public account of its strikes around the world.
Yemen provides a particularly notable set of examples, where Yemeni reporting – and some international media – have cited local security sources to allege an apparent series of covert U.S. strikes against Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula officials in late 2025 and early 2026. In August 2026, the Wall Street Journal reported that on February 12, 2026, the U.S. conducted a strike that U.S. Central Command said was not a military strike. Notably, though in Yemen, that strike targeted an alleged liaison between al-Shabaab and the Houthis.
On November 2, 2026, the Wall Street Journal reported that the United States had conducted a strike on Iranian assets on Qeshm island “in the latest of a series of limited strikes Washington has secretly carried out against the country in recent weeks,” citing U.S. officials.
President Trump has also repeatedly denied or sought to cast doubt on American responsibility for the February 28, 2026 strike on a girls’ school in Minab that according to Airwars killed at least 155 people, the vast majority young children. In March, Trump blamed Iran. In June, he insisted that the responsible party may never be known. As late as October, Congressional representatives felt a need too push for clearer answers from the government on the strike – an oddity given the government would know where it had conducted strikes.
Despite Trump’s prevarications, the evidence is quite clear that it was a U.S. strike. According to the New York Times, already by March 2026, the initial military investigation had determined that the U.S. was responsible for the strike. A September 2026 Bloomberg report notes that the U.S. knew it was responsible within hours. Analysis of visual evidence by a range of sources including CNN, the New York Times, and the AP among others quickly pointed to U.S. responsibility, finding alternative explanations incompatible with the extent and character of the damage.
A willingness to keep strikes secret or attribute them to non-U.S. actors is not a new phenomenon, as revealed by leaked cables discussing Obama’s 2009 escalation of strikes in Yemen against Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. However, Trump’s implausible response to the Minab strike, despite (or perhaps because of) the significant civilian casualties suggests a particular brazenness on the part of the current administration. Indeed, Mark Esper, one of Trump’s former Secretaries of Defense during his first term, has said that in 2020 Trump had asked about the possibility of striking drug traffickers in Mexico while blaming other countries for the strikes.
This larger environment makes it important that the United States strengthen its efforts at transparency and to support the proper attribution of strikes whether conducted by the United States or others.
Is the War on ISIS-Somalia a Success?
In an era of seemingly endless counterterrorism wars, it is tempting to view the U.S. campaign against ISIS-Somalia as a successful limited operation. And there are good reasons it might be considered one. As I noted in a prior piece on the early stages of the apparent lull, “One possible reason for the lull is that the campaign has achieved many of its objectives.” Testimony from AFRICOM’s leadership in May 2026 and a UN report from February 2026 suggest that the campaign has indeed done severe damage to ISIS-Somalia’s capabilities. To accomplish such aims in a year and a half would seemingly fit the promise of going light and supporting partners.
However, significant questions persist. The Islamic State in Somalia has not been conclusively destroyed, generating uncertainty about whether future strikes will be needed to maintain the sustained pressure behind the successes the U.S. and its partners have marked. In addition, as the campaign was conducted with little public debate or specific congressional authorization, treating it as merely a toggling up of existing campaigns under existing authorities, it is difficult to distinguish a short pause from a more sustained end to strikes, leaving even seemingly sustained pauses open to the possibility of a sudden re-escalation. The difficulty of determining when a war has ended is further complicated by the possibility that the U.S. has conducted covert strike, potentially making the seeming lull a mirage.
In May 2013, President Obama warned that “Unless we discipline our thinking, our definitions, our actions, we may be drawn into more wars we don’t need to fight, or continue to grant Presidents unbound powers more suited for traditional armed conflicts between nation states.” The campaign against the Islamic State in Somalia is such a case where there is a need for disciplined thinking both to avoid the risks of unbound warfare and to more clearly identify cases where the U.S. may have achieved successes – and how to ensure those successes are sustained over the long term.
Source:.newamerica.org
