In the early 2010s, a select group of Somalia's allies came together to form C6+, a forum to discuss how best to support the country's state-building process. Including the African Union, Kenya, Ethiopia, the US, the UK, and the EU, the platform was intended to coordinate responses and help steer Somalia's fragile political settlement towards a more devolved, consensus-oriented model after years of riven violence. Its legacy is certainly mixed, and though it has often been accused of absenteeism, members of the C6+ did eventually help steer an accommodation in 2021 amid Mohamed Abdullahi Farmaajo's attempts to unilaterally extend his term. And being one of the few remaining checks on the federal government, it also happens to be Villa Somalia's latest target in its campaign to dismantle any dissenting voices.
Somaliland's regional diplomatic blitz continues. Having travelled to Djibouti and Kenya at the end of May, Somaliland President Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi 'Irro' is anticipated to depart for Ethiopia in the immediate future. Barring some minor stumbles in Kenya, Somaliland successfully conducted two diplomatic visits, with Irro meeting both Djiboutian President Ismail Omar Guelleh and his Kenyan counterpart, William Ruto, and securing a range of agreements. Stabilising Somaliland's relationship with neighbouring Djibouti against the backdrop of Mahmoud Youssouf having assumed the African Union Commission Chair was particularly significant. But for Somaliland, with Ethiopia remaining its preeminent trading and diplomatic partner, the stakes of such a visit are far higher, coming in the wake of a complicated few months for the long-standing Addis-Hargeisa ties.
Puntland's kinetic anti-Islamic State-Somalia (ISS) operations in the Al-Miskaad Mountains are nearing their conclusion. Launched in February, 'Operation Hilaac' (Lightning) has sought to degrade the key Daesh node led by Abdulkadir Mumin-- designated by the US as a global leader within the extremist group. Puntland-driven and backed by US and UAE airstrikes, the operations have proven highly successful, seizing significant ISS bases and inflicting considerable casualties on the jihadists, including the Head of Immigration and Foreign Fighters, Ahmed Musa Said, last month. With operations expected to soon begin winding down, Puntland officials have signalled a transition to stabilising the liberated territories, as well as looking ahead to the aptly-named 'Operation Onkod' (Thunder) offensive against Al-Shabaab in the Almadow Mountains.
Somalia's latest plunging crisis has divided not only the usual domestic political actors but the 'international community' as well - if such a thing even exists anymore. Though nominally on the same page in regard to fighting Al-Shabaab, foreign perspectives on the diagnosis of Somalia's ills – and the appropriate remedies -- have proven radically different. And since Al-Shabaab's dramatic territorial advances beginning late February, many of the international responses to the country's escalating political and security emergencies have been working at cross purposes with one another. Meanwhile, Villa Somalia's interactions with foreign partners have continued to vacillate between blatant rent-seeking and hypernationalism.
Over the weekend, Mahad Salad was returned to head up Somalia's National Intelligence and Security Agency (NISA). After a 14-month break, the Egyptian-trained former spy chief has returned to the position he held between August 2022 and April 2024. The restoration of Salad, who belongs to the Hawiye/ Habar Gidir/ Ayr sub-clan, comes amid twin threats to Villa Somalia-- the serpentine encroachment of Al-Shabaab on Mogadishu and the massing of political opposition in the capital. Historically lenient towards the jihadist group, Salad is unlikely to afford the same generosity to the government's opposition as the head of NISA, as his predecessor did. Simultaneously, the removal of Abdullahi Mohamed Ali 'Sanbaloolshe,' could seriously undermine the ongoing ma'awiisley operations by his Hawaadle sub-clan against Al-Shabaab in Hiiraan, one of the few forces leading the frontline resistance.
For a government whose slogan was "not one inch" just a few months ago, it might have been more apt to have adopted "not that inch." On 22 April, last year's secret bilateral Somalia-Türkiye oil and gas deal emerged after its submission to the Turkish parliament, revealing that Mogadishu had ceded immense potential profits and sovereignty for pennies. Signed during the geopolitical fallout of the Somaliland-Ethiopia Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) and harried through Somalia's parliament, the agreement points to further political and economic vandalism by the current federal administration and its desire to monopolise Somalia's sovereign rents and national resources. While insisting that Addis would have "not one inch" of Somali coastal territory, Mogadishu has offered every centimetre of the country to foreign powers.
Murder in Laas Aanood: SSC-Khaatumo admits Al-Shabaab presence Al-Shabaab has reared its head once again in the town of Laas Aanood in the Sool region. On 20 April, Farah Aidid Jama 'Bariis'– an Ethiopian security expert with the Garowe consulate in Puntland– was abducted, tortured, and murdered before his body was dumped the following day in the Gooja'ade valley near Laas Aanood. For the first time, SSC-Khaatumo officials have acknowledged the presence of Al-Shabaab units within the town, having strenuously denied it for over two years. And while details over Bariis's murder remain murky, it comes at an awkward moment for the riven administration, coming so shortly after the much-heralded visit of Somali PM Hamza Abdi Barre to Laas Aanood.
Fiddling While Middle Shabelle Burns On Tuesday in Mogadishu, hundreds of people, mostly students, were bussed into Shangani to line up and obtain voter ID cards in a highly choreographed affair. Among the first in line was the mayor of Mogadishu, participating in a stunt that Villa Somalia continues to frame as the next step to achieving the first national one-person, one-vote (OPOV) elections since 1967. But rather than realising the long-thwarted democratic aspirations of the Somali people, it is simply another damaging spectacle, just as PM Hamza Barre's trip to Laas Aanood was, that further diminishes the chance of any positive outcome from the upcoming 'national dialogue' process. With Al-Shabaab having seized Adan Yabaal in Middle Shabelle and a host of other strategic locations this morning, Villa Somalia is fiddling while Rome burns.
Painting Disputed Laas Anood 'Blue' Over the weekend, Somalia's PM Hamza Abdi Barre travelled to the disputed town of Laas Anood in the Sool region in what was billed as a 'historic' visit by Mogadishu and nationalist media-- the first by a sitting PM to the municipality in decades. Dozens of federal lawmakers and senior government ministers joined Barre on the highly choreographed visit, which had been trailed weeks in advance to the delight of hardline unionists and displeasure from Puntland and Somaliland.
Al-Shabaab at the Nexus of Terrorism and Crime The nexus between terrorism and criminal activity has always been hazy. Criminal groups have long deployed violence for a litany of reasons, while at times wielding 'terrorist' tactics to intimidate and coerce. In the late 1980s, for instance, the Colombian Medellin Cartel, headed by the notorious narcotrafficker Pablo Escobar, famously bombed an Avianca passenger jet, killing 107 passengers and crew, as well as a government building in Bogota, in which 57 people were killed and more than 2,200 injured.
No More Blank Cheques Last Friday, the head of the US Africa Command (AFRICOM), General Michael Langley, testifying to the US Senate Armed Services Committee, confirmed that Islamic State-Somalia (ISS) had relocated its global command hub to Puntland. Emphasising how ISS was developing its "global footprint" from Somalia, he warned that if left unchecked, the jihadist group could pose direct threats to US national security. This acknowledgement by the head of AFRICOM was a mark of just how consequential ISS, led by Emir Abdulkadir Mumim, has become within Daesh's architecture. And while perhaps bad news for the counter-terror fight in Africa, Langley's statement on ISS and the subsequent offers a glimmer of hope for an embattled Mogadishu, which fears that the new American administration may be inclined to turn its back on Somalia.
Cheap Talk: No Signs of National Unity A distinct lack of urgency surrounds Somalia's supposed 'emergency national dialogue.' On the eve of Eid, Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud (HSM) reluctantly announced a national dialogue process in the face of collapsing security across the Shabelles and the growing threat to Mogadishu from Al-Shabaab. The Hawiye national opposition, Jubaland President Ahmed Madoobe and others have cautiously welcomed the offer, though they have sought greater clarity on a number of points, not least the scope of discussions. In the week since the announcement, however, Villa Somalia seems to have reverted to 'business as usual', exhibiting the same myopic and unilateral behaviour that precipitated the country's current crisis.
Sheegow, the Bantu, and the cost of injustice In August 2023, government forces forcibly arrested General Sheegow Ahmed Ali, the only senior government officer who hailed from the Jareer Weyne minority, at his home in Mogadishu. Accusing Sheegow of operating a militia, four people were killed in the ensuing violence between security forces and his bodyguards, while over a dozen were also injured. The separate treatment of the popular leader proved highly controversial amongst the long-ostracised Jareer Weyne, triggering protests in both the capital and Beledweyne. Nevertheless, Sheegow was sentenced to 10 years in prison by a military court that November and has remained in jail since. But with Al-Shabaab sweeping across Lower and Middle Shabelle in recent weeks and reports of Sheegow's ill health, the importance of the former official could be returning to the fore.
Somalia's Last Chance Saloon At the 11th hour, with Al-Shabaab literally at the gates of Mogadishu and only under immense international pressure, has Somalia's President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud reluctantly reached out to the national opposition. On 30 March, exactly one year after forcing sweeping constitutional amendments through parliament that all but eviscerated the federation, the president called – through gritted teeth - for a national conference to forge "unity" in the face of looming defeat and possible state collapse. Villa Somalia has pushed the country's fragile, transitional political model to the brink, with the jihadists having taken ready advantage of the chaos. But while the prospects of talks have been tentatively welcomed in some corners, their parameters remain unclear. What is apparent, though, is that the federal government will have to abandon its monopolistic constitutional and electoral agenda if it is to stall Al-Shabaab's advance and begin patching up Somalia's elite political consensus.
As Al-Shabaab continues to advance ever closer to the Somali capital, and the threat of Mogadishu's capture appears increasingly real, the jihadist group has telegraphed neither its purposes nor political demands. While plenty of comparisons may have been made to the sudden fall of Damascus at the hands of Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) earlier this year, there are several key differences, not least the careful recalibration of the Syrian group's image away from its jihadist roots. Al-Shabaab, on the other hand, has displayed little willingness to consider any ideological concessions or negotiations since it first emerged over 20 years ago. For a rebel group that believes it is on the cusp of victory, Al-Shabaab remains obdurately inscrutable, leaving its opponents and onlookers to divine its true intentions.
Another day and more territory in central Somalia falls to Al-Shabaab. Just this morning, in the Masjid Ali Gadud district, jihadist fighters launched a dawn raid on a Somali National Army (SNA) base, seemingly overrunning the camp and killing several government soldiers. Across the Shabelles, Al-Shabaab is continuing to dictate the battlefield, and with the extremists' progress unmistakable, the threat to Mogadishu continues to grow. Yet Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud's government remains waiting for a foreign deus ex machina rather than consider conceding political ground within the Abgaal and at the national level to halt their advance.
A powerful caucus of Hawiye clan chiefs is conducting discreet talks with Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud in Mogadishu to defuse Somalia’s worsening political crisis, aggravated in recent weeks by the ongoing Al-Shabaab offensive in the Shabelle Valley and the attempted encirclement of the Somali capital, Mogadishu. The initiative is still in its infancy, the details still somewhat hazy, and there is no guarantee it will succeed, but it does certainly offer a realistic prospect of ending the escalating divisions and political stalemate in Somalia.
Last Saturday, 15 March, a young man named Mohamed Jama Gahnug doused himself in fuel and set himself ablaze in Berbera, Somaliland, after – though accounts differ – being ignored by his girlfriend. Just a couple of days later, in the same city, another man, Ali Mohamed Abdalle, consumed poison following an argument with his partner. Both men survived, though Gahnug suffered severe burns, and Abdalle is still recuperating in the hospital. The two men’s extreme reactions to rejection in just a handful of days have reignited widespread discussions about love and tragedy in Berbera – after all, is Berbera not the quintessential home of tragic love, the city of Elmi Boodhari’s epic ancient romantic tale?
Al-Shabaab's offensive momentum continues across central Somalia. Yesterday morning, as President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud travelled to Mogadishu's airport to depart for Adan Yabaal in Middle Shabelle, a major improvised explosive device (IED) was remotely detonated near his presidential convoy. Thankfully, the president was unharmed, but the explosion pulled down buildings at the Ceel-gaabta junction and wrecked a bulletproof SUV in the convoy. Several people were consequently killed in the blast, including two journalists, Mohamed Abukar Dabashe and Sultan Ayub Wardhere, while a number of presidential red berets were also injured. The condemnation of the attack in Mogadishu was swift, with the UK calling it a "cowardly act."
Over the weekend, large groups of Al-Shabaab fighters infiltrated areas close to the Somali capital Mogadishu, the bulk of them in the direction of Afgooye. Local media reported Al-Shabaab (AS) ‘sightings’ two nights in a row in multiple locations such as Ceelasha Biyaha and Sinka Dheer. According to local sources, Al-Shabaab reassured the public it had no intent to trigger fighting and ‘harm civilians’ or ‘change people’s lives’. The aim, Al-Shabaab told the residents of these districts, was to take over Mogadishu and create a ‘just Islamic state based on Islamic sharia.’ It would seem AS’s tactics are partly psyops, the aim being to project soft power, reassure civilians, and demonstrate confidence and reach. However, these types of deep incursions into enemy territory from multiple directions may also signal a far bolder military strategy: to steadily take control of Mogadishu as Somalia’s feckless federal government unravels.