For the past year and a half, al-Shabaab has continued to take advantage of the ongoing political and security turmoil between Somalia’s federal government, regional state administrations, and other powerful social groups, including the country’s clans and sub-clans and minority groups. Militarily, the jihadi-insurgent group retains significant capabilities to launch a range of attacks targeting both military and “soft” targets, including major suicide-vehicle bombings inside the most secure areas of the country such as central Mogadishu. In 2017, the group also overran a number of African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) and Somali government military bases and forcefully reasserted itself in the northern Puntland region. Meanwhile, the Islamic State in Somalia, al-Shabaab’s main jihadi competitor, continues to lag behind it in terms of numbers, military capabilities, and media reach, though there are recent signs that the Islamic State-Somalia has been able to penetrate more deeply into the Afgooye area to the west of the capital and outside of its Puntland base. T he election of Somali President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed “Farmajo” in February 2017 was greeted with hopes that he would be able to bring about real political change and improvements in national secu- rity. He vowed to defeat the al-Shabaab insurgency and secure the country in two years and called on the insurgents to surrender, offering them amnesty. 1   a Despite his promise and signs of some political headway between the Somali federal and Somali regional state governments, together with a notable increase in di- a President Farmajo promised that those insurgents who surrendered would be rehabilitated and trained to both rejoin mainstream Somali society and be ready for regular employment. rect U.S. military involvement on the ground since the start of the Trump administration, the situation in Somalia remains unsettled and al-Shabaab today is arguably in the strongest and most sta- ble organizational and territorial state that it has been in since the group’s “golden age” between 2009 and early 2011. b In 2017, the militant group continued to carry out deadly attacks throughout the country including in its most secure area, central Mogadishu. It also dramatically reasserted its territorial reach by moving back into spaces abandoned by AMISOM and Somali government forces and continuing to launch coordinated, mass attacks on enemy military bases throughout 2017. In addition to maintaining relatively strong organizational and operational stability and reach—complete with the capable Am- niyat internal security apparatus, the frontline Jaysh al-Usra, and the domestic Jaysh al-Hisba security forces—al-Shabaab in 2018 also continues to take advantage of ongoing political infighting and the often competing interests of the country’s different political and social actors including clan/sub-clan leaders, politicians, and businesspeople. Al-Shabaab’s emir, Ahmed “Abu Ubayda” Umar, succeeded the late Ahmed Godane upon the latter’s death in a U.S. airstrike on September 1, 2014. The group’s senior leadership and civil regional administrators and military commanders have re- mained largely loyal despite a period of severe internal dissension between 2012 and 2014 and the rise of the Islamic State and its attempts, which began in earnest in 2015, to set up its own foothold in Somalia. This article examines al-Shabaab’s organizational state, includ- ing its strengths and potential weaknesses, through an analysis of b Since the start of the Trump administration, the United States has carried out over 40 airstrikes against al-Shabaab and Islamic State-Somalia. In early 2018, there have also been signs of some political progress between the Somali federal and regional state governments on a number of issues, including security cooperation, resource sharing, and preparations for national elections scheduled for 2020. If this early progress is successfully sustained and expanded, it may lead to an improvement in the overall security situation by increasing stability and luring away the support or continued acquiescence by local leaders and communities to al-Shabaab’s presence and operation as an insurgent organization and proto-state. There have also been positive signs in Kenya, chiefly the recent reconciliation meeting between bitter rivals for the presidency, President Uhuru Kenyatta and opposition leader Raila Odinga. See Eric Schmitt, “Under Trump, U.S. Launched 8 Airstrikes Against ISIS in Libya. It Disclosed 4,” New York Times, March 8, 2018; Jason Burke, “Somali citizens count cost of surge in US airstrikes under Trump,” Guardian, January 23, 2018; “Somalia chides its regions for cutting ties with Qatar,” Al Jazeera, September 22, 2017; Stig Jarle Hansen and Christopher Anzalone, “After the Mogadishu Attacks: Will the Weakened Al Shabaab Rise Again?” Foreign Affairs, November 3, 2017; “Jawari challenges opposition MPs to oust him through the ballot,” Garowe Online, March 18, 2018; George Obulutsa, “Kenya’s president and opposition leader pledge to heal divisions,” Reuters, March 9, 2018; and Kate Hairsine, “Political confusion reigns in Kenya after Odinga, Kenyatta deal,” Deutsche Welle, March 13, 2018. Black Banners in Somalia: e State of al-Shabaab’s Territorial Insurgency and the Specter of the Islamic State By Christopher Anzalone 12 CTC SENTINEL MARCH 2018 Christopher Anzalone is a research fellow with the International Security Program at the Belfer Center for Science and Interna- tional Afairs at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and a Ph.D. candidate (ABD) at McGill University. He has written extensively on al-Shabaab and Somalia, political Islam, and jihadi organizations in East Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia and authored a major NGO report on the role of media and information operations in al-Shabaab’s insurgency, “Continuity and Change: The Evolution and Resilience of Al- Shabab’s Media Insurgency, 2006-2016.” Follow @IbnSiqilli