PEACE & SECURITY DESK
THE ANNUAL PEACE SECURITY REPORT
SOMALIA AND THE HORN OF AFRICA
2025–2026 Edition — Covering Developments from August 2025 to August 2026
Al-Shabaab’s Stalemate · The AU Mission at a Crossroads · Ethiopia-Eritrea Tensions
Sudan’s Spillover · The Return of Red Sea Piracy · A Drought-Driven Humanitarian Emergency
Hangool Institute | August 2026
About This Report
The Annual Peace & Security Report is a yearly review of the principal peace and security developments across Somalia and the wider Horn of Africa. This edition covers the twelve months from August 2025 to August 2026, a period marked by a hardening military stalemate between the Somali government and al-Shabaab, an existential funding crisis for the African Union’s stabilization mission, a deepening constitutional rupture between Mogadishu and its federal member states, rising war risk between Ethiopia and Eritrea, a third year of catastrophic civil war in Sudan, the resurgence of piracy in the Gulf of Aden, and a drought emergency pushing millions of Somalis toward famine conditions.
The report draws on open-source reporting, statements from governments and regional bodies, and analysis published by research organisations tracking the region, including the International Crisis Group, the UN Security Council Report, the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, ACAPS, OCHA, UNHCR, IOM, and regional outlets such as Garowe Online, Hiiraan Online, and the Horn Review, among others cited throughout. Its purpose is to give policymakers, researchers, journalists, and practitioners a single, structured reference point for the year’s developments and a considered view of the risks ahead. A full source list appears at the end of the report.
This is a synthesis of publicly available reporting current as of August 2026; fast-moving situations — particularly the Ethiopia-Eritrea standoff, the AU mission’s funding status, and Somalia’s electoral timetable — may have moved on by the time of reading, and readers are encouraged to verify the latest developments against primary sources.
Executive Summary
The year to August 2026 has been defined less by decisive shifts than by the entrenchment of stalemates — military, political, and financial — across Somalia and the Horn of Africa, even as the pressures bearing down on the region’s institutions have intensified. Six themes stand out.
Somalia’s war with al-Shabaab has reverted to a stalemate. A government offensive that began in 2022 and once promised al-Shabaab’s defeat by 2024 was substantially reversed by a February 2025 insurgent counter-offensive; by mid-2025 territorial control had returned to roughly 2022 lines, with the Somali National Army hampered by desertion, corruption, and an estimated 20,000 of 44,000 payroll soldiers actually active.
The African Union’s stabilisation mission faces an existential funding crisis. Washington notified the AU on 1 July 2026 that it will end its financial support for AUSSOM after 31 December 2026, ending nearly two decades of US backing and forcing the AU to weigh a scaled-down regional force or a lighter political mission in its place, even as troop contributors such as Uganda press for a defined exit strategy.
Somalia’s federal project is fragmenting further. President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud’s push for direct “one person, one vote” elections has collided with Puntland’s and Jubaland’s rejection of the federal government’s authority; Puntland formally withdrew recognition of the federal administration after the president’s mandate lapsed on 15 May 2026, and a US delegation subsequently bypassed Mogadishu to deal with Puntland directly.
War risk between Ethiopia and Eritrea has climbed sharply. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s public ambitions for Red Sea access and questioning of Eritrean sovereignty, set against Eritrean rapprochement with a fractured Tigray, have produced troop movements, intercepted arms shipments, and warnings from analysts that conflict could erupt “either accidentally or through Ethiopian aggression,” even as Addis Ababa fights a separate, intensifying Fano insurgency in Amhara.
Sudan’s civil war is entering its fourth year with no resolution in sight, and its effects are spilling outward. Roughly 14 million people are displaced internally and 4 million have fled abroad, mediation efforts have stalled, and the Sudanese Armed Forces and Rapid Support Forces are increasingly backed by rival regional patrons — including an Ethiopia that now leans toward the RSF, in tension with Egypt and Eritrea.
Maritime insecurity and a drought-driven humanitarian emergency compound the region’s fragility. Piracy off the Horn of Africa has surged back from six incidents in 2023 to two dozen in a single quarter of 2026, alongside intermittent Houthi attacks on shipping; on land, failed rains have pushed 6.5 million Somalis into crisis-level hunger or worse even as the 2026 humanitarian appeal was cut by 40 percent against rising need.
| AT A GLANCE — KEY FIGURES – 6.5 million Somalis facing crisis-level hunger or worse as of March 2026; 1.8 million children acutely malnourished. – AUSSOM authorised strength fell from 12,626 to 11,146 troops between phases in 2025; US funding ends 31 December 2026. – Sudan’s war has displaced ~14 million people internally and driven ~4 million into neighbouring countries. – Piracy incidents off the Horn rose from 6 in 2023 to 22 in 2024, with 24 attempted or actual incidents recorded in a single quarter of 2026. – Somalia’s federal government mandate lapsed 15 May 2026, triggering Puntland’s formal withdrawal of recognition. – The 2026 Somalia Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan seeks $852 million — a 40% reduction on 2025’s ask, itself only 26% funded. |
1. Somalia’s War With Al-Shabaab: A Reset Stalemate
| KEY DEVELOPMENTS – February 2025: al-Shabaab launches a surprise counter-offensive, reversing most of the government’s 2022–24 gains. – By July 2025, al-Shabaab had retaken Middle Shabelle (April) and Hiraan (July); Lower Shabelle held thanks to US and Turkish air support. – Territorial control has reverted to approximately 2022 lines, with neither side able to force a decisive outcome. – The Somali National Army struggles with desertion, corruption and uneven federal-state coordination. |
Somalia’s counter-insurgency campaign has come full circle. In August 2022, the federal government launched a major offensive against al-Shabaab, capitalising on a local uprising by the Hawadle clan in Hiraan region. Backed by clan militias known as macawisley, government forces pushed al-Shabaab out of large parts of central Somalia by early 2023, recapturing most of Hiraan and Middle Shabelle. Officials in Mogadishu spoke confidently of the group’s total defeat by mid-2024.
That confidence proved premature. In February 2025, al-Shabaab launched a surprise counter-offensive that unwound most of the government’s gains within months: Middle Shabelle fell back under insurgent control by April, and Hiraan followed in July. A parallel push toward Lower Shabelle, closer to the capital, met stiffer resistance from a combination of Somali and African Union forces reinforced by US and Turkish air power, and largely stalled. The net effect, by the middle of 2025, was that the conflict’s territorial map had reverted to roughly where it stood in 2022: the government holds coastal areas of Galgaduud and Mudug, while al-Shabaab controls much of inland central Somalia and retains strongholds in Middle Juba.
Al-Shabaab’s resilience reflects a deliberate strategic evolution rather than luck. Since 2023–24 the group has renewed its military and intelligence leadership, negotiated non-aggression arrangements with some of the same macawisley militias that had previously fought it, and in areas it has retaken shown relative restraint toward civilians and existing government infrastructure — a marked change from earlier scorched-earth tactics, apparently designed to reduce local resistance and ease its return. The group has also worked to exploit grievances over the uneven distribution of patronage and resources that followed the 2022–23 offensive, and has continued to infiltrate the Somali security forces to gather intelligence and stage insider attacks.
On the government side, the macawisley strategy that delivered early successes ultimately collapsed under its own weight: fraud and corruption in militia recruitment and payment, an inability to hold recaptured ground without a sustained military presence, poor coordination between the federal government and federal member state forces, and political infighting — especially over elections and constitutional reform — all sapped the campaign’s momentum. The Somali National Army’s underlying capacity problems compound the difficulty: of roughly 44,000 soldiers on the payroll, an estimated 20,000 are believed to be genuinely active, training programmes have often run for as little as six months, desertion has claimed more than half of the cohorts trained in 2022–23, and corruption is estimated to divert 30 to 40 percent of military supplies — in some documented cases as much as 90 percent.
Analysts, including the International Crisis Group, argue that only a political settlement can ultimately end the conflict, while recommending in the interim that Mogadishu strengthen training and retention, deepen cooperation with often-reluctant federal member states, invest in state-level security forces capable of holding ground after federal advances, and explore humanitarian access and political dialogue in al-Shabaab-controlled areas. Absent such reforms, the current military impasse — a stalemate that has effectively erased three years of gains — appears likely to persist.
2. The African Union Mission at a Crossroads
| KEY DEVELOPMENTS – UN Security Council Resolution 2809 (2025) reauthorised AUSSOM; authorised strength fell from 12,626 troops in Phase 1 to 11,146 in Phase 2 (July–December 2025). – 1 July 2026: the United States notified the AU it will end funding for AUSSOM after 31 December 2026, closing out nearly two decades of US support. – The AU is weighing a scaled-down East African Standby Force operation or a lighter political/technical mission as successors. – Uganda, the largest troop contributor, is pressing for a defined exit strategy; other contributors are divided on how to proceed. |
The African Union Support and Stabilisation Mission in Somalia (AUSSOM), successor to ATMIS and the long-running AMISOM before it, spent the year under acute strain. The UN Security Council reauthorised the mission through Resolution 2809 in late 2025, but the mission’s authorised troop strength was already being drawn down — from 12,626 in the mission’s first 2025 phase to 11,146 in the second phase running from July to December 2025 — spread across five operational sectors from Mogadishu to Gedo.
The more consequential blow landed on 1 July 2026, when the United States informed the African Union that it would cease funding AUSSOM after 31 December 2026. The decision ends nearly twenty years of continuous US financial backing for the AU’s Somalia operations, dating back to the African Union Mission in Somalia’s original deployment. Washington cited the Somali federal government’s failure to take full ownership of its own security functions, while pledging not to veto the mission’s renewal at the UN Security Council — even as it moves to block UN-facilitated logistical support that the mission has relied on. AU officials and outside analysts alike describe the mission as having reached, in the words of one assessment, “the ceiling of what a military intervention alone can achieve”: two decades of international military engagement have degraded but not defeated al-Shabaab, Somali security forces remain unprepared to fully assume responsibility, and the predecessor ATMIS mission’s accumulated debts illustrate the limits of the AU’s own capacity to sustain such operations indefinitely.
With the funding cliff now fixed on the calendar, the AU Peace and Security Council is weighing two broad paths forward: a smaller, regionally led force built around the East African Standby Force framework that would retain a core of troop-contributing countries, or a lighter-footprint political and technical mission that emphasises support to Somali-led political processes over sustained combat operations. Neither option has been finalised, and the debate has exposed real divisions among the mission’s own troop contributors. Cameroon and Gabon have told AU military planners that “every peace support operation eventually reaches a conclusion,” urging Somalia to build independent capacity; Uganda — the largest contributor of troops to the mission across its various iterations — has begun openly demanding clarity on an exit timeline, stating plainly that it “can’t keep in Somalia forever,” and hosted an extraordinary 2026 summit of troop-contributing countries to work through the mission’s future. Ethiopia, by contrast, has pledged continued support, while Morocco has indicated it will consult further before committing to a position.
The stakes of this debate are difficult to overstate. AU officials warn that losing UN logistical support would create serious difficulties simply maintaining existing bases and operations across southern and central Somalia, at precisely the moment the Somali National Army’s own capacity gaps — detailed in the previous chapter — remain unresolved. Whatever shape the successor arrangement takes, it will need to be settled well before the 31 December 2026 funding deadline if a security vacuum is to be avoided.
3. The Islamic State Front in Puntland
| KEY DEVELOPMENTS – Puntland forces have waged a sustained campaign against Islamic State–Somalia Province (ISS) in the Cal Miskaad mountains since late 2025. – Operations intensified from mid-April 2026, reaching their highest monthly tempo since November 2025. – ISS has shown resilience, striking Bosaso and reoccupying some previously cleared positions during operational pauses. – US airpower in Somalia has increasingly refocused toward al-Shabaab even as the ISS campaign continues. |
While al-Shabaab dominates the national security narrative, Puntland has spent much of the past year fighting a distinct and smaller insurgency: Islamic State–Somalia Province (ISS), based in the rugged Cal Miskaad mountains of the Bari region. Puntland’s own security forces, rather than the federal government, have led this campaign, framing it as a defence of Puntland’s territory and, by extension, of the wider region against an ISS presence that has occasionally punched above its numerical weight — including as a financing and facilitation hub for Islamic State affiliates elsewhere.
Puntland forces intensified operations against ISS from mid-April 2026 onward, reaching their highest monthly operational tempo since November 2025, with officials describing major gains and periodically declaring the group close to being cleared from its mountain strongholds. Yet the group has proven resilient: reporting through the year describes ISS reconstituting its presence after Puntland operational pauses, including an attack on the port city of Bosaso and the reoccupation of positions previously declared cleared. This pattern — territorial gains followed by insurgent regeneration during lulls — echoes the broader dynamic seen in the federal government’s campaign against al-Shabaab, suggesting that holding cleared terrain remains as difficult a challenge for Puntland as it has been for Mogadishu.
The United States has continued to conduct air and, at times, ground-support operations against ISS in Puntland alongside its longer-running campaign against al-Shabaab further south, though reporting from mid-2026 suggests Washington has been refocusing its Somalia air campaign more heavily back toward al-Shabaab — a reminder that US resources devoted to the Puntland front are neither unlimited nor guaranteed to remain at current levels.
4. Somalia’s Political and Constitutional Crisis
| KEY DEVELOPMENTS – President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud has pushed for direct “one person, one vote” elections in 2026, replacing the indirect clan-based system. – Puntland and Jubaland have rejected the process; Jubaland’s own 2024 state elections triggered armed clashes with federal forces. – The president’s term formally expired 15 May 2026; Puntland responded by withdrawing recognition of the federal government. – A US delegation subsequently engaged Puntland directly, bypassing Mogadishu — a marker of Somalia’s growing political fragmentation. |
Somalia’s central political story of the past year has been the collision between President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud’s push for direct “one person, one vote” elections — the first genuinely nationwide universal-suffrage vote in over fifty years — and the resistance of Somalia’s federal member states and much of the political opposition to a process they view as centralising power in Mogadishu’s hands. The reform, embedded in a package of constitutional amendments, would replace the indirect, clan-weighted selection system that has governed Somali politics for decades.
Puntland withdrew from the constitutional consultations as early as 2023 and has remained outside the process since, viewing it as a unilateral power grab by the federal government. Jubaland went further: its leader, Ahmed Madobe, defied federal authority by holding his own state-level presidential election in November 2024, triggering armed clashes between Jubaland and federal forces in December 2024 and again in July–August 2025. On the opposition’s other flank, a coalition of former presidents and prime ministers formed the Somali Salvation Front in May 2025, arguing that a rushed transition to the new electoral system would unfairly advantage the sitting president. Mogadishu made some concessions in August 2025 — restoring parliamentary selection of the president and lowering the threshold for political organisations to register as national parties to 10 percent parliamentary support — but Puntland remained excluded from the negotiations, and no broad consensus has since emerged. District-level elections missed their original June 2025 deadline, and by late 2025 only a pilot vote in Mogadishu had been scheduled, with the process gradually expanding through the following months amid reports of significant voter turnout even as donor patience with Somalia’s governance frictions visibly thinned.
The crisis reached a new pitch on 15 May 2026, when President Mohamud’s constitutional mandate formally expired. Puntland responded by formally withdrawing its recognition of the federal administration — not merely a procedural objection but a direct challenge to the government’s legitimacy. The rupture has had visible international consequences: a US delegation subsequently bypassed Mogadishu altogether to engage Puntland directly on security and political matters, a signal that at least some external partners now treat effective authority in Somalia as genuinely decentralised rather than concentrated in the federal capital. Inside the security establishment, the strain has also revived old debates: former National Intelligence and Security Agency chief Fahad Yasin has publicly argued for reconsidering negotiations with al-Shabaab, an implicit rebuke of a purely military strategy that critics say has produced diminishing returns.
Read together, these developments point less to a sudden state collapse than to what regional analysts have called “the deepening institutionalisation of fragmentation”: federal authority in Somalia is increasingly negotiated, contested, and territorially uneven, with power distributed across a network of semi-autonomous political entities rather than concentrated in a single centre. How — or whether — the one-person-one-vote process can proceed without Puntland’s and Jubaland’s participation is likely to be the central question for Somali politics through the remainder of 2026.
5. Somaliland’s Diplomatic Gambit
| KEY DEVELOPMENTS – Israel recognised Somaliland’s independence on 26 December 2025; Foreign Minister Gideon Saar visited Hargeisa on 6 January 2026. – Somalia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the African Union condemned the move; some Somalilanders welcomed it as a step toward broader recognition. – The move is widely read as tied to Somaliland’s strategic position near Houthi-threatened shipping lanes and the port of Berbera. – It follows — and compounds tensions from — Ethiopia’s 2024 memorandum of understanding with Somaliland over Red Sea port access. |
The self-declared republic of Somaliland, unrecognised internationally since its 1991 break from Somalia, secured its most significant diplomatic breakthrough in decades on 26 December 2025, when Israel formally recognised its independence. Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar travelled to Hargeisa on 6 January 2026 to formalise the relationship, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu framing the move within the “spirit of the Abraham Accords.” Analysts read the decision as driven substantially by strategic calculation: Somaliland’s location astride some of the busiest and, since 2023, most contested maritime routes in the world, its Red Sea-adjacent port at Berbera, and the opportunity to build regional leverage against Houthi threats and demonstrate value to Washington.
The reaction across the region was sharply negative. Somalia’s federal government, which regards Somaliland as an integral part of its own territory, protested the move, and it drew condemnation from Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and the African Union. Within Somaliland itself the reception was more mixed but often favourable, with many hoping Israeli recognition might open the door to recognition by other states after three decades of diplomatic isolation. Some Israeli commentators, meanwhile, have characterised the move more critically — one former ambassador described it as Netanyahu “expanding the theatre of conflict” rather than making a considered long-term strategic commitment, noting that broad Israeli public awareness of Somaliland itself remains minimal.
The recognition also lands on top of an already unresolved dispute dating to January 2024, when Ethiopia signed a memorandum of understanding with Somaliland reportedly trading port access and, controversially, potential recognition of Somaliland’s statehood for Ethiopian use of a stretch of Somaliland coastline for naval and commercial purposes. That agreement has never been fully implemented and remains a persistent irritant in Ethiopia-Somalia relations, discussed further in the following chapter — but it set a precedent, since followed by Israel, of external powers dealing directly with Hargeisa on security and access questions in ways that further complicate Mogadishu’s claim to represent a unified Somali state.
6. Ethiopia and Eritrea: A Powder Keg in the Horn
| KEY DEVELOPMENTS – Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has repeatedly signalled ambitions to secure Ethiopian access to the Red Sea, alarming Eritrea over its port of Assab. – Eritrea and a Tigrayan “old guard” faction that ousted the Pretoria deal’s signatory in March 2025 have drawn closer since mid-2024. – January 2026: Ethiopia says it intercepted Eritrean-supplied ammunition destined for Amhara Fano militias via Tigray; troop movements followed in February. – Analysts warn direct hostilities could erupt “either accidentally or through Ethiopian aggression” absent de-escalatory steps. |
Of all the region’s flashpoints, the deteriorating relationship between Ethiopia and Eritrea carries the gravest risk of interstate war. Its roots lie in the November 2022 Pretoria agreement that ended the catastrophic 2020–22 war fought in and around Tigray between Ethiopia’s federal government, allied Eritrean forces, and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF). That accord ended the fighting but fractured rather than consolidated the wartime coalition: Eritrea’s President Isaias Afwerki, who had sought the TPLF’s total defeat, viewed the settlement’s terms as too lenient, while Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s subsequent and increasingly public statements about Ethiopia’s need for Red Sea access — describing landlocked Ethiopia’s status as a “geographic prison” that must end — have been read in Asmara as a direct threat to Eritrean sovereignty over the port of Assab.
The picture has been complicated further by an internal Tigrayan split. The TPLF’s “old guard,” led by Debretsion Gebremichael, opposed the Pretoria deal’s terms and, in March 2025, orchestrated the removal of Getachew Reda, the TPLF figure who had signed the agreement and subsequently led Tigray’s interim regional administration. The federal government installed General Tadesse Werede, an ally of Getachew, as interim regional president in April 2025, but old-guard figures steadily gained influence within his administration over the following year. At the same time, Tigray and Eritrea — recent wartime enemies — have moved toward a rapprochement dating to mid-2024 Dubai talks, sharing an interest in backing Sudan’s army against the UAE-supported Rapid Support Forces and a common wariness of Addis Ababa; a “people-to-people” engagement initiative (tsimdo) produced temporary border openings through 2025.
Tensions escalated through a series of concrete incidents over the year. Armed clashes, claimed by both Tigrayan and Amhara forces, broke out in the Tselemti district in January 2025. In September 2025, Abiy declared that Ethiopia’s loss of Red Sea access “will be corrected”; the following month he publicly questioned the legal basis of Eritrea’s 1993 independence — an extraordinary statement from a sitting Ethiopian prime minister. In January 2026, Ethiopia announced it had intercepted a shipment of ammunition it said Eritrea had supplied to Amhara Fano militias via Tigrayan territory, and by early February significant Ethiopian troop movements were reported in the country’s north.
The Crisis Group and other analysts identify several unresolved flashpoints that keep the risk of war elevated: the still-unresolved Amhara occupation of Western Tigray, federal budget constraints squeezing the Tigray regional administration, the TPLF’s likely exclusion from Ethiopia’s 2026 elections, and Ethiopia’s own deepening entanglement in the Sudan war (discussed in Chapter 8), which has pushed Addis Ababa and Asmara toward opposite sides of that conflict as well. Analysts caution that “absent de-escalatory steps, direct hostilities could erupt, either accidentally or through Ethiopian aggression,” and point to Kenya and South Africa as potentially significant mediators, alongside broader international engagement from the United States, China and European powers to help deter military escalation. For now, all parties appear to recognise the catastrophic costs a renewed war would carry — a recognition that has so far provided a fragile brake on escalation, even as rhetoric and military preparations continue to intensify.
7. Ethiopia’s Internal Fronts: Amhara and the Fraying Pretoria Deal
| KEY DEVELOPMENTS – Fano militia attacks in Amhara rose over 50% quarter-on-quarter from March 2026, threatening transit routes to Bahir Dar. – Ethiopia’s election board announced on 26 May 2026 that voting would not proceed in at least 8 of Amhara’s 138 constituencies for the 1 June federal elections. – In early May 2026, the TPLF reinstated its pre-war regional government in Tigray, sidelining the federal-backed administration and effectively ending the Pretoria peace agreement’s implementation. – Ethiopia’s National Defence Force is now stretched across simultaneous Fano and Tigray-related fronts while attempting to organise national elections. |
Beyond the risk of war with Eritrea, Ethiopia’s federal government has spent the year fighting to contain an intensifying domestic insurgency in Amhara, the country’s second-most populous region. The ethno-nationalist Fano militias, which took up arms against federal forces after the 2023 dissolution of regional special forces, sharply escalated operations from March 2026 onward, with monthly attack rates rising more than 50 percent compared with the preceding quarter and fighting increasingly contesting towns along major routes to the regional capital, Bahir Dar.
The insurgency has directly targeted Ethiopia’s political calendar. Fano’s strongest factions declared that any vote held under current conditions would be illegitimate and warned residents against participating in federal elections scheduled for 1 June 2026. Ethiopia’s electoral board confirmed on 26 May 2026 that voting would not take place in at least eight of Amhara’s 138 constituencies because of the security situation — a rare and significant admission of the state’s inability to guarantee electoral access across a major region.
The Amhara front has also undercut the Pretoria peace framework governing federal relations with Tigray. Federal forces and the TPLF have remained locked in a military standoff since February 2026, and in early May the TPLF reinstated its pre-war regional government, effectively sidelining the federal-backed interim administration installed after the 2022 peace deal and placing Tigray outside effective federal control — including with respect to the 2026 elections. Ethiopian military planners must now weigh finite resources across at least three simultaneous demands: suppressing the Fano insurgency, managing the standoff with a re-assertive TPLF, and preparing for the possibility of confrontation with Eritrea described in the previous chapter — a combination that leaves the federal government’s overall military posture increasingly stretched.
8. Sudan’s War and Its Regional Shockwaves
| KEY DEVELOPMENTS – As of April 2026, Sudan’s army holds Khartoum, the central Nile corridor and the east including Port Sudan; the RSF dominates western Darfur and parts of the south, with the main front in Kordofan. – An estimated 14 million people are displaced internally and roughly 4 million have fled to neighbouring countries; over 20 million face acute food insecurity, with famine conditions in parts of the country. – A US-led “Quad” (with Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE) truce roadmap proposed in September 2025 was rejected by the Sudanese army. – Ethiopia has tilted toward the RSF, putting it at odds with Egypt and Eritrea, which back the Sudanese army — a growing proxy dynamic layered on top of the region’s other tensions. |
Now in its fourth year, Sudan’s civil war between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) remains the single largest humanitarian catastrophe touching the Horn of Africa, even though its battlefields lie largely outside the region as narrowly defined. As of April 2026, the army held Khartoum, the central Nile corridor, and the eastern regions including the wartime capital Port Sudan, while the RSF dominated western Darfur and parts of the south; the main active front has settled in Kordofan, in west-central Sudan, with neither side able to force a decisive breakthrough.
The human toll is difficult to overstate. Sudan is widely described as the site of the world’s worst current humanitarian crisis: roughly 14 million people have been displaced within the country and close to 4 million have fled across its borders, while more than 20 million people — over half the population — face acute food insecurity, with famine conditions confirmed in several areas. Reporting throughout the year has documented widespread sexual violence against women and systematic targeting of men for killing or forced recruitment. In February 2026, the UN refugee agency launched a $1.6 billion appeal to support Sudanese refugees across seven neighbouring countries, underscoring the scale of the regional burden.
Diplomatic efforts to end the war have made little headway. A US-led “Quad” grouping — including Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — proposed a roadmap in September 2025 envisaging a humanitarian truce followed by permanent ceasefire negotiations, but the Sudanese army rejected the framework, fearing it would lock in the RSF’s territorial gains. The absence of a shared vision for how the war should end has undermined even limited truce efforts, and US diplomatic bandwidth has been further strained by a separate Middle East conflict that intensified from February 2026 onward.
For the Horn of Africa specifically, the war’s most consequential effect has been the hardening of a regional proxy dynamic layered on top of the tensions described in Chapters 6 and 7: Ethiopia has increasingly tilted toward supporting the RSF, placing it at odds with Egypt and Eritrea, both of which back the Sudanese army, while Chad, South Sudan and Yemen already contend with direct spillover from the fighting. This alignment matters well beyond Sudan’s borders — it threads through, and potentially compounds, the same Ethiopia-Eritrea rivalry already straining under the weight of the Red Sea access dispute, raising the possibility that Sudan’s war and a future Horn of Africa conflict could become mutually reinforcing rather than separate crises.
9. Maritime Insecurity: The Red Sea and the Return of Piracy
| KEY DEVELOPMENTS – Houthi attacks on shipping, ongoing intermittently since October 2023, paused after an October 2025 Gaza ceasefire before threats resumed in June 2026. – The UN Security Council’s Resolution 2812 maintains a monthly-reporting mandate on Houthi attacks amid continued Council divisions. – Piracy off the Horn of Africa has surged: from 6 incidents in 2023 to 22 in 2024, with 24 attempted or actual incidents recorded in a single quarter of 2026 and the regional threat level raised to “substantial”. – Analysts suspect informal links between Houthi networks and resurgent Somali pirate groups, including possible intelligence-sharing and weapons transfers. |
The waters off the Horn of Africa — the Red Sea, the Bab el-Mandeb strait, and the Gulf of Aden — have remained one of the world’s most contested maritime spaces through the year. The Iran-backed Houthi movement has continued its intermittent campaign of attacks on commercial shipping, ongoing since October 2023 and originally framed as solidarity action over the war in Gaza. Attacks paused for a period after an October 2025 Gaza ceasefire but resumed in the form of renewed threats against Israeli-linked shipping in June 2026, following confirmed strikes in the second half of 2025, including an attack on the Liberia-flagged bulk carrier Scarlet Ray on 31 August 2025. As of mid-2026 the situation remained fluid, with the UN Security Council renewing a mandate under Resolution 2812 requiring monthly reporting on further Houthi attacks — a process complicated by continuing divisions on the Council, with Russia and China resisting expanded pressure on the Houthis while Western members push for stronger measures.
Running alongside the Houthi threat, and drawing less international attention, has been a sharp resurgence of piracy off the Somali coast — a phenomenon many had assumed largely defeated after its peak in the early 2010s. The numbers tell the story starkly: piracy incidents rose from just six in 2023 to 22 in 2024, and the upward trend has continued into 2026, with the International Maritime Organization recording 24 attempted or actual incidents of piracy and armed robbery in the region in a single recent three-month period alone. The Joint Maritime Information Center has raised its threat assessment for the area to “substantial.” Specific incidents through mid-2026 illustrate the trend: the Palau-flagged bulk carrier Lady Naeima was attacked in the Red Sea on 6 July 2026; an attempted attack on the St. Vincent and Grenadines-flagged MV Golden Arsenal occurred roughly 300 nautical miles east-northeast of Djibouti on 2 July 2026; and between April and May 2026 three vessels — the MT Honour 25, the Eureka and the Sward — were hijacked outright, with 44 seafarers held captive.
Analysts attribute the resurgence to a combination of factors: naval and international attention has been drawn toward tensions around the Strait of Hormuz and broader Iran-related maritime friction, thinning the presence available to deter Somali piracy specifically, while some assessments suggest informal links between Houthi networks and pirate groups — including possible intelligence-sharing and weapons transfers — may be providing pirates with both cover and capability, with one Iranian military commander warning of a coordinated “security belt” response by Iran-aligned actors stretching from Hormuz to Bab el-Mandeb. Whatever the precise mechanism, the practical effect is the same: shipping through one of the world’s most economically vital corridors again faces a dual threat from state-adjacent missile and drone attacks and from a rapidly reconstituting piracy economy on the Somali coast.
10. Humanitarian Crisis and Climate Shocks
| KEY DEVELOPMENTS – Failed Deyr rains in late 2025 triggered an early warning alert on 8 December 2025 and a deepening drought through the 2026 Jilaal dry season. – 6.5 million Somalis — roughly one in three — faced crisis-level hunger or worse by March 2026, including 2 million in IPC Phase 4 (Emergency). – 1.8 million Somali children under five suffered acute malnutrition in 2026, of whom roughly 500,000 faced the severe form of the condition. – The 2026 Somalia humanitarian appeal seeks $852 million — a 40% cut from 2025’s ask, itself only about 26% funded — reaching under half of those in need. |
Somalia’s security crisis has unfolded against the backdrop of a deepening humanitarian and climate emergency. The failure of the October–December 2025 Deyr rains prompted an early warning alert on 8 December 2025 and set the stage for a punishing 2026 Jilaal dry season from January through March, with food insecurity projected to peak in March. By that point, an estimated 6.5 million Somalis — close to one in three people in the country — faced crisis-level hunger or worse, including roughly 2 million people in IPC Phase 4 (Emergency) conditions, with projections that 5.5 million would remain in crisis through the middle of 2026 even assuming the subsequent April–June Gu rains performed near their historical average.
The toll on children has been especially severe: an estimated 1.8 million children under five experienced acute malnutrition in 2026, of whom approximately 500,000 faced the severe form of the condition, which carries a substantially elevated risk of mortality without urgent treatment. Displacement linked to the drought has continued to grow, adding new arrivals to settlements already strained by years of recurrent shocks and, in southern and central regions, by active conflict and access constraints tied to the al-Shabaab insurgency described in Chapter 1.
The response has been hampered by a widening gap between need and funding. Somalia’s 2025 Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan received only around $370 million against a stated requirement of $1.4 billion — roughly 26 percent funded. Reflecting this reality rather than a reduction in need, the 2026 plan requests $852 million, a 40 percent cut from the prior year’s ask, and targets reaching only 2.4 million people — less than half of those estimated to require assistance. Humanitarian organisations have warned pointedly against “weaponising aid” amid the funding shortfall, a reminder that access and impartiality concerns compound the purely financial constraints facing the response. Taken together with the parallel funding retrenchment affecting AUSSOM (Chapter 2) and the wider Sudan refugee appeal (Chapter 8), Somalia’s drought emergency is unfolding within a broader regional pattern of declining international aid commitments set against rising humanitarian need.
11. Regional Security Cooperation and Diplomacy
| KEY DEVELOPMENTS – Somalia, Kenya and Djibouti held talks in September 2025 on a joint approach to countering al-Shabaab. – The US Africa Command-led Justified Accord 2026 multinational exercise ran across Kenya, Tanzania and Djibouti. – Regional forums, including a 2026 Horn of Africa Security Dialogue, have focused explicitly on “navigating regional resilience and security in an era of declining international aid.” – Kenya continues to host a substantial Somali refugee population, including at the Dadaab complex, amid renewed drought-driven arrivals. |
Even as national and bilateral crises have dominated headlines, regional security cooperation has continued in parallel, if unevenly. In September 2025, Somalia, Kenya and Djibouti held talks aimed at coordinating a joint approach to the fight against al-Shabaab — an acknowledgment that the group’s cross-border reach, including into Kenya’s northeastern counties, requires cooperation beyond Somalia’s own borders. The US Africa Command’s annual Justified Accord exercise, held in 2026 across Kenya, Tanzania and Djibouti, provided a further venue for multinational military coordination and training, reflecting continued — if not unlimited — US military engagement with regional partners even as broader US funding support for AUSSOM specifically was being withdrawn.
Djibouti’s position as host to multiple foreign military bases, including US, French, Chinese and other installations, continues to anchor much of the region’s external security architecture, giving it an outsized diplomatic role relative to its small size. Kenya, meanwhile, has continued to carry a significant share of the humanitarian burden generated by instability in Somalia and beyond, hosting a large and growing Somali refugee population, including at the long-standing Dadaab refugee complex, which has seen renewed arrivals driven by the 2025–26 drought described in Chapter 10.
The tone of regional security discussions through the year has shifted noticeably. Where earlier dialogues often centred on how to sustain or expand international support for regional missions, 2026 forums — including a Horn of Africa Security Dialogue convened around the explicit theme of “navigating regional resilience and security in an era of declining international aid” — reflect a growing regional recognition that international funding for peace operations, humanitarian response and counterterrorism support across the Horn is contracting, and that African states and institutions will need to plan accordingly rather than assume current support levels will continue.
Outlook: Risks and Scenarios for the Year Ahead
Several interlocking pressures are likely to define the region’s trajectory over the coming year, and their cumulative effect is a Horn of Africa with less external support to draw on precisely as internal pressures intensify.
The AUSSOM funding cliff
The 31 December 2026 end of US funding for AUSSOM is the single most consequential known date on the region’s calendar. Whether the African Union and its partners can stand up a viable successor arrangement — whether a leaner regional force or a political mission — before that deadline will materially shape al-Shabaab’s room for manoeuvre and the Somali government’s ability to hold current lines, let alone regain lost ground.
Somalia’s electoral collision course
With Puntland having withdrawn recognition of the federal government and Jubaland maintaining its own parallel track, the one-person-one-vote process faces a fundamental legitimacy problem that technical fixes are unlikely to resolve. A negotiated settlement that brings federal member states back into the process would meaningfully de-risk the year ahead; continued stalemate risks further entrenching Somalia’s fragmentation, with knock-on effects for the counter-al-Shabaab campaign given the need for federal-state military coordination.
Ethiopia-Eritrea war risk
The combination of Ethiopian rhetoric on Red Sea access, Eritrean-Tigrayan rapprochement, and documented arms transfers and troop movements constitutes the most acute state-on-state conflict risk in the region. Mediation efforts by Kenya, South Africa and international partners will be tested over the coming months; a miscalculation on either side, particularly amid Ethiopia’s simultaneous Amhara and Tigray fronts, could prove difficult to contain once begun.
Sudan’s war without end
Absent a fundamental shift in the calculus of Sudan’s external backers — chiefly Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and, increasingly, an Ethiopia now aligned with the RSF — the war shows no sign of resolution. Its continuation guarantees further displacement into an already strained Horn of Africa humanitarian system and sustains the proxy dynamics now layered onto the region’s other rivalries.
Maritime and humanitarian pressure
The piracy resurgence and continued Houthi threat both stem in part from constrained international naval attention; unless that attention returns, the upward trend in incidents recorded through 2026 is likely to continue. On land, the outcome of the April-June 2026 Gu rains and the adequacy of a humanitarian appeal already cut by 40 percent will determine whether Somalia’s drought emergency stabilises or deteriorates further into the second half of 2026 and beyond.
Taken together, these risks share a common thread: a region whose crises are increasingly interconnected — through shared borders, competing patronage networks, and overlapping proxy relationships — is confronting a period of declining international engagement and funding across nearly every one of its major security and humanitarian responses. How Somali, Ethiopian, Sudanese, and regional institutions adapt to that reality, more than any single military or diplomatic development, is likely to be the defining story of the year ahead.
Methodology and Sources
This report was compiled through a review of open-source reporting, official statements, and publicly available analysis current as of August 2026. It draws on reporting and analysis from, among others, the International Crisis Group, UN Security Council Report, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), UNHCR, the International Organization for Migration (IOM), ACAPS, the UN Meetings Coverage service, the African Union Support and Stabilisation Mission in Somalia (AUSSOM), the Institute for Security Studies (ISS Africa), the Institute for International and Strategic Studies (IISS), the FDD’s Long War Journal, the Africa Center for Strategic Studies via Critical Threats, the US Africa Command, Al Jazeera, VOA, the Associated Press wire and regional outlets including Garowe Online, Hiiraan Online, the Horn Review, and Somalia Today, among other sources referenced in the underlying research. Figures on troop strengths, displacement, food insecurity and piracy incidents reflect the most recent publicly reported data available at time of writing and are subject to revision as situations evolve.
Given the fast-moving nature of several of the situations covered — particularly the Ethiopia-Eritrea standoff, the AU mission’s post-2026 funding arrangements, and Somalia’s electoral timetable — readers should treat time-sensitive details as a snapshot as of August 2026 and verify current status against primary and news sources before relying on them for time-critical decisions. This report does not constitute intelligence analysis or a predictive forecast; risk assessments in the Outlook section reflect a synthesis of publicly available expert commentary rather than original modelling.
