On 26 Oc­to­ber, about more than 50 heav­ily-armed So­mali Is­lamic State (IS) fight­ers seized Qan­dala, a sparsely pop­u­lated town in So­ma­li­a’s Punt­land fed­eral state on a rugged moun­tain­ous coastal strip over­look­ing the Gulf of Aden. It was a small, but highly sym­bolic, step for­ward for the group and demon­strates again how armed ex­trem­ists ex­ploit state dis­or­der and lo­cal ten­sions to de­velop safe havens and re­build af­ter oth­er­wise de­bil­i­tat­ing de­feats. Un­less Punt­land treats this threat se­ri­ously and re­solves in­ter­nal ten­sions like that in the Qan­dala area and con­flicts with neigh­bour­ing fed­eral states, IS in So­ma­lia could grow in strength and desta­bilise much larger parts of So­ma­lia.

The takeover of Qan­dala comes one year af­ter the IS leader in So­ma­lia, Sheikh Ab­dulqadir Mu­min, de­fected from coun­try’s main Is­lamist group, Al-Shabaab, which is aligned with al-Qaeda. While Mu­min’s pledge of al­le­giance (bay’a) to IS over­all leader Abu Bakr al-Bagh­dadi failed to split Al-Shabaab, which re­mains a far larger Is­lamist in­sur­gent move­ment and still dom­i­nates ar­eas out­side gov­ern­ment con­trol in South and Cen­tral So­ma­lia, it did stir up in­ter­nal ruc­tions that now threaten to un­der­mine its or­gan­i­sa­tional and ide­o­log­i­cal co­he­sion.

IS’s ex­pan­sion to Qan­dala, 75km east of Bosaso, the main port of the So­mali fed­eral state of Punt­land, wins not just sym­bolic and pro­pa­ganda value for the small group, but also the lo­gis­ti­cal ad­van­tages of an out­let to the sea, new fi­nan­cial op­por­tu­ni­ties and bet­ter con­nec­tions to south­ern Yemen. How­ever, the move is not with­out op­er­a­tional risks, con­sid­er­ing its lim­ited mil­i­tary ca­pa­bil­i­ties and the su­pe­rior fire­power of the forces ar­rayed against it. This in­cludes the U.S., which has sig­nif­i­cantly stepped up its drone strikes across So­ma­lia in re­cent years.

The emer­gence of IS fac­tions rep­re­sents a se­ri­ous threat to ji­hadist unity in So­ma­lia – the im­por­tance of which was un­der­scored by al-Qaeda’s leader Ay­man al-Za­wahri last year in the sec­ond in­stal­ment of his Is­lamic Spring video se­ries and re­it­er­ated by Al-Shabaab’s cur­rent Emir Ahmed Diriye “Abu Ubaidah” in his first recorded au­dio mes­sage re­leased in the sum­mer.

Al-Shabaab’s lead­ers have so far re­sisted bids by IS to switch their al­le­giance from al-Qaeda. Al-Shabaab’s se­cu­rity and in­tel­li­gence wing, Am­niyat, has been hard at work quash­ing IS sym­pa­this­ers and fac­tions op­er­at­ing in south­ern So­ma­lia. Many sus­pected IS sup­port­ers have ei­ther been ar­rested or killed, among them the promi­nent Al-Shabaab com­man­der, Abu Nu’­man Sakow. This purge co­in­cided with the So­mali Fed­eral Gov­ern­men­t’s (SFG) own anti-IS sweeps, which led to the ar­rest of four sus­pected pro-IS mil­i­tants op­er­at­ing in In­terim South West Fed­eral State in Sep­tem­ber 2016.

Clan Dy­nam­ics

The IS fac­tion’s suc­cess in Qan­dala, in the Bari re­gion, ex­ploits clan griev­ances and the gov­ern­men­t’s lack of abil­ity to con­sol­i­date its foothold in Punt­land since Oc­to­ber 2015, when IS leader Mu­min went into hid­ing to be­gin re­cruit­ing and train­ing his IS fac­tion. Qan­dala is also home to lo­cal IS leader Mu­min’s clan (Ma­jer­teen Ali Sale­ban), as well as other mi­nor­ity clans in­creas­ingly ag­grieved by per­ceived mar­gin­al­i­sa­tion by the Punt­land gov­ern­ment.

The largest ac­tive clan mili­tia is led by the for­mer Bari re­gion gov­er­nor, Ab­disamad Mo­hamed Galan, an out­spo­ken critic of the cur­rent Punt­land ad­min­is­tra­tion. He hails from the same clan fam­ily as Sheikh Mu­min and en­joys the sup­port of other mi­nor­ity clans. He and other armed clans in the Bari re­gion op­er­ate largely out­side the con­trol of the Punt­land gov­ern­ment.

De­spite ter­ri­to­r­ial gains in South and Cen­tral So­ma­lia, Al-Shabaab has so far also failed to gain a sig­nif­i­cant foothold in Punt­land. In March 2016, Punt­land’s lo­cal para­mil­i­tary “Darawi­ish” forces, fight­ing along­side those of the Gal­mudug In­terim Ad­min­is­tra­tion (GIA), thwarted an at­tempt by Al-Shabaab to in­fil­trate the Mudug coast, in­flict­ing heavy losses. Al-Shabaab was ap­par­ently pur­su­ing ri­val IS-af­fil­i­ated fac­tions hid­ing in the Go­lis Moun­tains. The fol­low­ing month, IS re­leased a pro­pa­ganda video show­ing mil­i­tants train­ing for com­bat. Re­cruit­ment also in­creased from around 30 this time last year to roughly 200.

Ex­ploit­ing Dis­or­der

De­te­ri­o­rat­ing re­la­tions be­tween Punt­land and the GIA helped en­able IS to grow. Both ad­min­is­tra­tions en­gaged in heavy fight­ing in the his­tor­i­cally di­vided city of Galkayo in No­vem­ber 2015, and large-scale armed com­bat re­sumed in Oc­to­ber 2016, killing more than 50 civil­ians, wound­ing hun­dreds and dis­plac­ing tens of thou­sands. A new SFG, African Union (AU), UN and Eu­ro­pean Union (EU) bro­kered cease­fire agree­ment was signed in Galkayo on 13 No­vem­ber af­ter a United Arab Emi­rates-bro­kered cease­fire col­lapsed.

Both sides de­ploy pro­pa­ganda and dis­in­for­ma­tion, and ac­cuse each other of sup­port­ing Al-Shabaab. In Au­gust 2016, the GIA ac­cused Punt­land of pro­vid­ing mil­i­tary fa­tigues to Al-Shabaab, and Punt­land ac­cused the GIA of fa­cil­i­tat­ing two deadly Al-Shabaab sui­cide bomb at­tacks in Galkayo that killed more than twenty peo­ple. The lat­est fight­ing was trig­gered by a Sep­tem­ber 2016 U.S. airstrike that it ad­mit­ted killed ten GIA troops. GIA ac­cused Punt­land of dup­ing the U.S. into launch­ing the at­tack.

Punt­land’s se­cu­rity forces are now se­verely over­stretched, polic­ing the long fron­tier with South and Cen­tral So­ma­lia, keep­ing an eye on re­bel­lious clans in Sool and Sanaag (re­gions also claimed by neigh­bour­ing So­ma­liland), or bat­tling hos­tile armed groups in Galkayo (against GIA forces), in Gal­gala Moun­tains (against Al-Shabaab) and in Qan­dala (against Galan’s mili­tia).

This tur­bu­lence has given IS the space to re­or­gan­ise and op­er­ate more freely than they had be­fore. Mu­min was un­til now a mar­ginal fig­ure, un­able to at­tract a sig­nif­i­cant fol­low­ing. His bold takeover of Qan­dala along a strate­gic stretch of the coast­line co­in­cides with the rise of IS in Yemen and is cer­tain to raise his pro­file and per­haps also his abil­ity to at­tract re­cruits and fund­ing.

The prospect of an em­bold­ened IS poses an ad­di­tional se­cu­rity worry for the au­thor­i­ties in Punt­land and the neigh­bour­ing states. Such threats can no longer be dis­missed as in­signif­i­cant; a con­certed and multi-pronged re­sponse by both the fed­eral gov­ern­ment and its mem­ber states is now ur­gently re­quired – at the top of which must be a gen­uine po­lit­i­cal ini­tia­tive to ad­dress lo­cal clan griev­ances, build in­clu­sive lo­cal gov­er­nance in­sti­tu­tions and find a last­ing so­lu­tion to the re­newed armed hos­til­i­ties in Galkayo.