Somalia Significant Activities (SIGACTs), 2016–2019

High-fidelity conflict microdata are essential for understanding the dynamics of war in fragile and conflict-affected countries. Somalia is a particularly important case, given the horrific humanitarian toll of decades of fighting and the vast resources the African Union and U.S. forces expended in the country. The U.S. Department of Defense has never released a record of combat in Somalia, though U.S. forces compiled Significant Activities — SIGACTs — reports while deployed there. Through a data-sharing agreement with NATO, I obtained a successor record of SIGACTs covering conflict in Somalia from 2016 through April 2019. These records, known as INDURE, document combat in a recent phase of the war, offering unparalleled insight into how al-Shabaab regrouped in the years following the African Union’s AMISOM intervention. The maps below report district-level counts of four event types, one for each year of coverage.

Key references