Escalating / Middle East
Iran-Israel/US War
Iran struck US Gulf bases and hit a Hormuz vessel as both sides returned to Doha talks to salvage the.
Al-Shabaab has been fighting to overthrow Somalia's government and impose Islamist rule since 2006, when it emerged from the wreckage of a US-backed Ethiopian invasion that toppled the Islamic Courts Union.
The deeper collapse goes back to 1991, when the Somali state dissolved and never fully reassembled. The group formally joined al-Qaeda in 2012 and now taxes businesses, telecoms, and charcoal exports across southern Somalia for over $100 million a year. Against it stand the Federal Government, African Union troops from Ethiopia, Kenya, Burundi, and Uganda, and a US air campaign that has run more than 500 strikes since 2007.
Al-Shabaab has no state sponsor and is still standing.
Turkey's deployment of its first overseas deep-sea drilling vessel off the Somali coast marks the clearest phase shift in Somalia's external dimension: the conflict has moved from security-vacuum management into active resource-frontier competition.
It matters because the war continues to tie down the main belligerents, pull in outside backers, and shape the security balance across Africa.
Weekly net escalation pressure, last 90 days
Turkey's offshore drilling deployment is the clearest signal that Somalia's conflict has crossed from security-vacuum management into active resource-frontier competition.
Egypt's Red Sea strategy is the most structurally layered external play: the AUSSOM troop commitment, the Eritrea maritime agreement.
The AU's institutional accountability gap is a structural drag on counterinsurgency: estimated peacekeeper deaths in Somalia may reach 8,000 with no public fatality data, documented deployment of combat-unready troops.
Al-Shabaab taxation network extracts an estimated $100M+ annually from businesses, telecommunications, and charcoal exports across southern Somalia.
Turkey-trained Somali National Army units, produced through Ankara's Mogadishu military base.
Turkey's deep-sea drilling vessel off the Somali coast operationalizes accumulated security and infrastructure leverage into active offshore energy extraction.
Egypt's 15,000-troop AUSSOM deployment functions as Cairo's primary instrument for consolidating Red Sea influence and countering Ethiopia's Somaliland access.
Egypt-Eritrea maritime transport agreement establishes a new Red Sea shipping corridor, extending Cairo's interlocking coastal-state alignment network.
PRO-GOVERNMENT
Ethiopia, Kenya, Burundi, Uganda troops
Escalating / Middle East
Iran struck US Gulf bases and hit a Hormuz vessel as both sides returned to Doha talks to salvage the.
Escalating / Global
Washington and Beijing race to lock in supply chains, legal coercion tools, and Pacific access as the structural competition hardens.