Every year, DAESH/IS-Somalia secures millions of dollars, with financial assessments indicating that the group has accumulated more than $3 million since 2022 alone. Despite its relatively small size, IS-Somalia’s most defining characteristic is its function as a major financial and logistical artery for the global Islamic State movement, giving it a strategic weight far beyond its operational footprint.
The group’s financial model is built on highly concentrated and targeted extortion networks, extracting illicit taxes from business leaders and local communities through violence or the threat of violence. This system is particularly entrenched in the commercial hub of Bosasso, where the group intimidates commercial entities and facilitates the export of small quantities of gold mined in Bari. These revenue streams sustain IS-Somalia’s operational expenses, its procurement of weapons and explosives, and the maintenance of its command and recruitment systems.
This compact, high-value revenue model stands in sharp contrast to the far larger economic machinery of Al-Shabaab, which generates an estimated $150 million annually. Al-Shabaab achieves this through widespread illicit taxation, control of trade routes, and the operation of a parallel administrative bureaucracy across the territories under its influence. While Al-Shabaab’s financial strength is anchored in territorial control and mass taxation, IS-Somalia benefits from a leaner, more flexible economy that allows it to remain mobile, asymmetrical, and externally funded without administering large areas.
A central component of IS-Somalia’s importance within the wider ISIS network lies in its role as the co-location site of ISIS’s Al-Karrar office, the senior command node responsible for overseeing the organization’s activities in Central, Eastern, and Southern Africa. This arrangement transforms IS-Somalia into a financial clearinghouse, allowing it to receive, manage, and disperse funds across Africa while also providing strategic guidance to affiliated cells and branches.
Evidence confirms that IS-Somalia has successfully distributed money to ISIS affiliates throughout Africa and even as far away as Afghanistan. Beyond financial transfers, it has established itself as a logistical artery for the delivery of foreign fighters, operational supplies, and ammunition across the region.
International counterterrorism initiatives have increasingly targeted this financial and logistical backbone. Notable actions include the global terrorist designation of Abdiweli Mohamed Yusuf, the group’s financial chief, and the 2023 killing of Bilal al-Sudani, a key ISIS financial facilitator. The most significant disruption came on 25 July 2025, when Abdiweli Mohamed Yusuf was captured in a joint AFRICOM–Puntland raid in Bari, dealing a major blow to IS-Somalia’s financial operations and its ability to disperse funds externally.
To fully understand IS-Somalia’s evolution, its trajectory must be assessed alongside its dominant rival, Al-Shabaab. The two groups diverge fundamentally in ideology and ambition.
Al-Shabaab, aligned with Al-Qaeda, operates within a nationalist paradigm and seeks to overthrow the Federal Government of Somalia, expel foreign forces, and impose a Greater Somalia under strict Islamic governance. Its strategy is grounded in the Somali national conflict. IS-Somalia, however, is dedicated to the global Islamic State project and aims to extend the caliphate’s presence across Africa. Its organizational model reflects ISIS’s post-caliphate doctrine: decentralized, externally oriented, digitally enabled, and non-territorial, prioritizing the management of nodes and networks over the control of land.
The two groups also differ significantly in force size, tactical expression, and target selection. IS-Somalia operates with a small, specialized force of 900 to 1,500 fighters and relies heavily on foreign operatives. Al-Shabaab, which fields tens of thousands of members, enjoys superior cohesion, morale, and territorial depth.
IS-Somalia favors asymmetric, high-impact attacks, including assassinations, small explosive devices, and the increasingly common use of weaponized commercial drones. Its adoption of unmanned aerial systems offers a technological edge enabled by its external financing and low-cost lethality model. Al-Shabaab, meanwhile, conducts large-scale military operations, including sieges on bases, complex assaults on hotels, and strikes against government and security convoys.
Their targets reflect these differences: IS-Somalia attacks FGS officials, Puntland forces, civilians, and Al-Shabaab itself, while Al-Shabaab primarily targets government structures, ATMIS peacekeepers, and local leaders aligned with the state. The overall conflict persists in a prolonged stalemate, with Al-Shabaab maintaining the strategic advantage due to its territorial holdings and widespread local embeddedness.
In terms of recruitment, IS-Somalia pursues a transnational strategy, drawing from across Africa and the Middle East while producing propaganda in Somali, Amharic, Oromo, and Swahili to appeal to diverse groups and attract both funds and fighters. Al-Shabaab, in contrast, relies on localized recruitment driven by clan dynamics, local grievances, and forced conscription, especially in Bay, Bakool, and Gedo. This divergence reflects their broader strategic identities: one rooted in Somalia’s internal landscape, the other functioning as a globalized node of a wider insurgent movement.