MOGADISHU, SOMALIA – The African Union mission tasked with holding back al-Shabaab is running out of money, and the timing could hardly be worse. AUSSOM funding for 2026 stands at zero in confirmed pledges, even as the insurgents press a fresh offensive across central Somalia. The shortfall is a security cliff, and communities in Middle Shabelle and Hiiraan stand at its edge. Furthermore, the AUSSOM funding gap widens while Villa Somalia spends its political energy fighting federal states rather than the jihadists. In short, the wall against al-Shabaab has grown dangerously thin.
A Budget That Never Arrived
The numbers tell a blunt story. According to the IPI Global Observatory, the mission needed roughly 196 million dollars for 2025, yet confirmed pledges reached only about 48.6 million. Arrears from earlier years already total nearly 94 million, a liability tracked by Amani Africa. A high-profile financing event in New York last September produced no substantial new pledges, with the United Kingdom offering 22 million and the African Union confirming 20 million already promised. Consequently, the AUSSOM funding gap simply rolled forward into 2026 with no plan to close it.
The stipend math compounds the problem. Troop-contributing countries are paid about 1,000 dollars per soldier each month, and the European Union has historically covered most of that bill. Yet Brussels has been trimming its share since 2022. Therefore, the mission now depends on donors who are quietly stepping back. The AUSSOM funding model, built on Western generosity, no longer matches Western appetite.
A Hollowed-Out Force
The logistical backbone is fraying too. A United States decision in August 2025 canceled roughly a quarter of the budget for UNSOS, the UN office that supplies fuel, rations, and air support to the mission. That single cut removed around 130 million dollars in support. As a result, even the troops already on the ground face thinner supplies, fewer rotations, and aging equipment. The AUSSOM funding crisis is hollowing out the force from the inside.
Gaps in foreign troops translate quickly into gaps on the map. Burundian contingents are due to leave Middle Shabelle, and Egyptian troops meant to replace them have been delayed. Meanwhile, fighting in that region has intensified between al-Shabaab and federal forces. A handover conducted without money or planning risks opening exactly the kind of vacuum the group exploits. Notably, a budget line in New York becomes a frontline in Somalia.
The insurgents are already moving. Al-Shabaab has recaptured towns across the south and center since 2025, a danger flagged in its study on the group’s edge after the ATMIS exit. The pattern has only hardened, as earlier warnings about the consequences of the ATMIS withdrawal now play out under a successor mission with even less cash. Indeed, the African force is contracting at the precise moment the threat is expanding. The AUSSOM funding collapse could hardly have come at a worse hour.
The Somali army cannot yet fill the space alone. It still leans heavily on UNSOS for logistics, the same support now being cut. Thin that margin is, including the scramble to give the mission basic air assets for the fight. Without those enablers, ground troops lose mobility, evacuation, and resupply. In other words, the AUSSOM funding squeeze degrades the national army as surely as it degrades the African one.
A Drawdown by Default
The likeliest outcome is a drawdown driven by budgets rather than by conditions on the ground. UN Security Council Resolution 2809 has already asked the African Union to produce plans that account for the missing money. Analysts at the Combating Terrorism Center expect the mission to shrink toward a patchwork of bilateral deployments. Ethiopia would hold parts of Gedo, Bay, Bakool, and Hiiraan, while Kenya keeps positions in Lower Juba, and Turkey takes on more near the capital. Yet a constellation of national armies answering to their own capitals is not a coherent counterinsurgency. Accordingly, command fragments precisely when unity matters most. The AUSSOM funding question, in effect, has become a question about whether the mission survives in any recognizable form.
The political backdrop makes the danger sharper. Hassan Sheikh’s constitutional gambit has consumed the government’s attention, pulling elite units toward domestic rivals and away from the jihadist front. Donors, meanwhile, increasingly tie their patience to political dialogue that Mogadishu has not delivered. Therefore, the AUSSOM funding collapse and the federal infighting reinforce each other, each deepening the opening for al-Shabaab.
The mission’s formal withdrawal is not due to begin until 2028, yet the money is disappearing now. A force built to buy Somalia time is losing the very resource that bought it. When the scaffolding comes down before the building can stand, the structure does not pause. It falls toward the patient enemy that has waited two decades for exactly this moment.
The collapse has since reached its decision point. Washington announced on 1 July that it would block UN funding for the mission, the African Union Commission called urgent consultations, and troop contributors scheduled military and police chiefs for 29 July, defence ministers for 30 July and an extraordinary heads of state summit in Kampala for 31 July. Three options are reportedly before them: hold the mission at strength, cut troop numbers, or plan a phased withdrawal. Somalia’s federal government arrives at that meeting without the political agreement its partners asked for.
