The Supremacy of Puntland Forces in Mountain Warfare

There is a temptation to explain Puntland’s recent battlefield successes in the Cal Miskaad mountains through weapons, foreign air support, or the weakness of its adversaries. Each explanation contains part of the story. None adequately explains why Puntland forces have repeatedly entered terrain that armed movements regarded as sanctuary, remained there under sustained pressure, and displaced organizations that had spent years constructing defensive networks among mountains, valleys and caves.

The stronger explanation is historical. Puntland has accumulated an unusual form of military experience: prolonged familiarity with warfare in the mountains of northeastern Somalia.

“Supremacy” should therefore be understood carefully. Puntland does not possess some universal superiority in mountain warfare, nor have its forces escaped serious losses. The evidence supports a narrower and more important conclusion. Within northeastern Somalia, Puntland has developed a substantial comparative advantage in fighting sustained ground campaigns in mountainous terrain. That advantage has emerged through experience, territorial familiarity, institutional continuity, local intelligence and an ability to combine indigenous ground forces with external technological support.

The Cal Miskaad campaign of 2024–25 made this advantage visible.

The Islamic State in Somalia had every reason to consider the mountains an effective sanctuary. A United Nations Panel of Experts reported that by late 2024 the organization had established a fortified base in the Cal Miskaad mountains and possessed a fighting force exceeding 1,000 men, at least 60 per cent of whom were foreign fighters. Its arsenal included machine guns, rocket-propelled weapons, mines, explosive devices and more than 100 uncrewed aerial vehicles. The mountains offered caves, difficult approaches and access to coastal routes. [1]

This was therefore not a police operation against a handful of fugitives. Puntland was confronting an entrenched military organization that had deliberately selected the terrain because the terrain favored the defender.

Yet the offensive that Puntland launched in December 2024 progressively displaced the Islamic State from much of this sanctuary. Reuters reported in February 2025 that Puntland forces had already captured approximately 250 square kilometres and at least 50 militant positions in the Golis mountain system. [2] A subsequent United Nations assessment described a five-month campaign in which Puntland security forces killed about 200 Islamic State fighters and arrested more than 150. [3] By the second half of 2025, the UN Panel of Experts concluded that the Islamic State branch had suffered substantial degradation. [4]

These results matter because mountain warfare normally advantages the weaker defender. Mountains reduce the usefulness of numerical superiority. They obstruct observation, fragment forces, complicate communications and make movement difficult. A small organization that understands the ground can use caves, ridges and concealed approaches to survive against a considerably larger force. The Cal Miskaad mountains had performed precisely this function for militant organizations for years.

Puntland’s achievement was therefore less about conquering mountains than about progressively denying the mountains their political and military function as sanctuary.

Open-source map of the 2025 Puntland offensive against Islamic State — Map: open-source depiction of the 2025 Puntland offensive against Islamic State. BorysMapping via Wikimedia Commons using OpenStreetMap data. The Commons record notes that the map may contain errors; it is included for geographic context, not as an official operational map.

A military tradition built through experience

The origins of Puntland’s present capability predate the Islamic State campaign.

Puntland security forces have fought armed movements in the Golis and Galgala mountain systems since at least 2010. United Nations reporting from 2013 documented Puntland security forces conducting ground operations around Galgala, including movements on foot through mountainous terrain. The UN Monitoring Group concluded at the time that sustained pressure from Puntland security services had inflicted severe setbacks on Al-Shabaab’s northeastern organization. [5]

The campaign continued.

A renewed Puntland offensive in 2014 displaced Al-Shabaab from Galgala town. When UN investigators visited the area in February 2016, they found that the northeastern Al-Shabaab force had declined substantially from earlier levels. Around 850 personnel drawn from several Puntland security organizations were then stationed in and around Galgala. The insurgents retained the ability to conduct asymmetric attacks, while their capacity to confront Puntland forces directly had been reduced. [6]

The significance of this history is cumulative.

An army that fights once in mountains has participated in a mountain campaign. A security system that spends fifteen years operating in the same interconnected mountain environment begins to accumulate institutional knowledge. Officers learn what the terrain permits. Units become accustomed to physical hardship. Governments learn the financial and political costs of sustaining distant operations. Intelligence services develop relationships with communities inhabiting the approaches to militant sanctuaries.

Personnel change. Governments change. Equipment changes. Some experience disappears with individual soldiers. Yet institutional memory can persist.

The Cal Miskaad campaign was consequently not Puntland’s first encounter with an adversary seeking refuge in inaccessible highlands. It represented another stage in a much longer security history.

The home-ground advantage

The most important Puntland advantage may be the least technological: these are Puntland’s mountains.

Foreign fighters can learn terrain. Militant organizations can construct elaborate local networks. Islamic State spent years establishing itself in Bari. Geography, however, is also social.

Mountains contain communities, grazing areas, wells, settlements, family connections, commercial routes and histories of movement. Information about this landscape circulates through people as much as through maps.

A locally rooted security force therefore possesses a potential advantage that imported military technology cannot reproduce easily. Soldiers, police, officials and communities can situate military activity inside a wider body of local knowledge.

This advantage should not be romanticized. Local knowledge is fragmented. Clan relationships can assist governments in one area and constrain them in another. Communities may cooperate, remain neutral or accommodate whichever armed actor appears capable of surviving. The state must continually convert geographic familiarity into political cooperation.

Puntland nevertheless possesses something the Islamic State cannot manufacture quickly: an administrative and social presence that predates the insurgency and can remain after a particular battle ends.

This distinction is fundamental to counterinsurgency.

Militants can occupy a cave. A state can occupy the political geography surrounding the cave.

Ground forces remain decisive

Air power has been important. It would be inaccurate to describe Operation Hillaac as an exclusively Puntland military achievement.

United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) conducted repeated strikes against Islamic State positions during 2025, including targets in the Golis Mountains and cave complexes southeast of Bosaso. AFRICOM later described a two-week August operation involving multiple strikes against Islamic State leadership sanctuaries in the Golis Mountains. [7] United Arab Emirates support was also reported during the campaign.

Air power changes the battlefield. It can destroy fixed facilities, restrict concentrations of fighters and impose enormous costs on leadership networks.

It cannot permanently govern terrain.

Aircraft leave. Ground forces remain.

The political significance of Puntland’s campaign therefore lies in the relationship between external military technology and local ground power. Foreign partners supplied capabilities that Puntland could not reproduce at equivalent scale. Puntland forces supplied the territorial component that foreign aircraft could never provide.

This distinction explains much about the campaign’s effectiveness.

Technology amplified a locally generated military effort rather than replacing it.

The price of the campaign

Any description of Puntland’s mountain-warfare capability must acknowledge the cost.

The 2025 UN Panel of Experts reported that Puntland security forces had suffered approximately 241 soldiers killed and more than 900 injured by early October, citing confidential official reporting. [8] Those figures illustrate how misleading a simple triumphalist account would be.

Mountain warfare punishes attackers.

Even a force that ultimately gains territory may pay heavily for it. The defender can disperse, conceal itself, exploit difficult ground and return to asymmetric warfare after losing fixed positions.

The casualties also reveal something about Puntland’s campaign that battlefield maps cannot show. The administration demonstrated an ability to continue an expensive operation over many months despite significant losses.

Military effectiveness involves more than winning engagements. It includes the institutional capacity to recruit, supply, pay, medically support, reinforce and politically sustain forces over time.

Here lies a connection between warfare and state building.

A government incapable of sustaining soldiers cannot maintain territorial control merely because its fighters are courageous. A government that can repeatedly mobilize resources, absorb casualties and maintain an extended campaign possesses a degree of state capacity that becomes visible through war.

From sanctuary to contested ground

The clearest measure of Puntland’s achievement may therefore be conceptual.

For years, militant organizations treated the northeastern mountains as spaces into which government authority became progressively weaker. The deeper an armed group moved into the mountain system, the greater its expectation of survival.

Operation Hillaac challenged that assumption.

By 2026, the United Nations still assessed Islamic State in Somalia as resilient. Remaining cells exploited caves, difficult terrain and smuggling routes, and senior leaders were reported to remain in the Cal Miskaad area. The organization had been degraded rather than erased. [9]

That distinction matters.

The military significance of Puntland’s campaign is therefore not that every militant disappeared. It is that terrain previously regarded as a reliable strategic sanctuary became contested and increasingly penetrable.

This represents a considerable change in the balance between state and insurgent power.

Puntland's real advantage

Puntland’s mountain-warfare advantage ultimately rests on five mutually reinforcing elements: accumulated combat experience, knowledge of local terrain, political and community networks, the institutional ability to sustain ground forces, and selective integration of foreign intelligence and air power.

Remove any one of these and the campaign becomes considerably harder.

The lesson extends beyond Puntland.

Sophisticated aircraft cannot substitute for a government capable of holding territory. Large armies cannot automatically defeat smaller forces embedded in difficult geography. Local knowledge alone cannot overcome fortified positions supported by mines and modern communications.

Effective mountain warfare emerges from combinations.

Puntland has spent more than a decade assembling such a combination, initially through conflict with Al-Shabaab in Galgala and subsequently through confrontation with the Islamic State in Cal Miskaad.

The result is a military institution unusually adapted to the security geography it confronts.

Its strongest claim to superiority therefore lies neither in weapons nor rhetoric. It lies in repeated evidence that Puntland forces can enter terrain chosen by insurgents precisely because it is difficult to penetrate, sustain an extended campaign there, absorb substantial losses, integrate outside capabilities without surrendering the ground war to outsiders, and progressively restore state presence.

In the mountains of northeastern Somalia, that is the form of military advantage that matters most.