Thursday December 12, 2024
By Mohammed Omar Ahmed
ISIS fighters use the mountainous Bari region as their base. CREDIT/ Bloomberg
(Bloomberg) -- The semi-autonomous region of Puntland is planning a new offensive to combat a growing Islamic State insurgency in Somalia’s mountainous north.
The Islamist group, designated as a terrorist group by the US, has more than doubled in size this year, with as many as 1,200 combatants, including foreign fighters, holed up in the Bari mountains east of the Puntland capital, Bosaso, according to a local security official. The US military has expressed concern about Islamic State’s growing presence in the region.
“It’s a huge threat, and Puntland intends to dislodge it from its hideouts, once and for all,” Mohamed Mubarak, the head of the Puntland Security Coordination Office, said in an emailed response to questions on Wednesday.
Islamic State in Somalia is headed by Abdulkadir Mumin, who formed the offshoot of Islamic State when he left the al-Qaeda-linked al-Shabaab group nine years ago. Mumin — who according to the International Crisis Group may be the global leader of Islamic State — was the target of a US air strike in May.
The Somalia affiliate of the group has grown in influence through its ability to mobilize funds for disbursement across the continent, which have resulted in it playing an “outsize influence” in the larger group, the ICG said in September. In Puntland, it generates funds by extorting businesses and exporting small quantities of gold mined in Bari, and it handles the transfer of funds among a range of IS-linked cells outside Somalia, it said.
Islamic State’s presence in Puntland “has been central to IS’s global financial and operational network, so the impact of our actions will be global,” Mubarak said.
Puntland is one of Somalia’s six federal states. It declared autonomy in 1998, though unlike the neighboring region of Somaliland, it has not sought to be recognized as an independent state. The region is estimated to contain at least a billion barrels of oil resources.