Inside ISIS resurgence – and the former Briton heading it

The challenges for the Puntland forces are immense.  

The journey to reach the entrance to the mountains is long and arduous. The road is of poor quality, mostly dirt track and treacherous, and has been known to take 18 hours, made worse by checkpoints and fears about roadside bombs buried by the militants.  

We are given a lift in one of the army’s few helicopter medevacs, getting us there in a few hours and avoiding areas where the extremists are believed to be hiding and from where they could launch ground-to-air attacks.  

As we land at the forces’ Turmasaale forward operating base at the entrance to the Cal Miskaad mountains, we see dozens of tents in a rocky, dusty barren landscape, ringed by armed vehicles and troops.  

There’s a makeshift field hospital with less than a handful of beds – and our places on the helicopter are immediately taken by fresh casualties who clamber on board. The helicopter is a lifeline to them. 

From here, troops face difficult terrain. Their journeys are often on foot and up rocky, steep trajectories.  

There are no roads, only occasional dirt tracks, and they often make their way along dry riverbeds.  

The vehicles often break down, and they inch along, with an advance team of deminers walking ahead of the convoy, sweeping the tracks for bombs buried by militants and booby traps hidden in coarse bushes.  

Soldiers use camels or donkeys to carry weapons and equipment – and ferry out the dead and injured.  

The hunt for water is constant. It is steaming hot and the forces we are with try to aim for communities where there are wells or large tanks, where the villagers have gathered rainwater for months before. Water is handed out like nectar and distributed sparingly.  

The terrain has proved to be the perfect hideout for an extremist group focused on regrouping, recruiting and planning terror attacks.  

They’ve been embedded in these mountains for years now, taking over remote poor communities and displacing thousands of people.  

There have been hundreds of casualties on both sides since Puntland’s army launched an offensive against ISIS last December. The army says it has killed at least 600 ISIS fighters.