Somalia appears on the brink of another seismic political change. Under growing political strain and losing ground to a resurgent Al-Shabaab, the possibility of Mogadishu's fall or negotiated capitulation to the jihadists in the coming months continues to grow. With Al-Shabaab rapidly taking advantage of the growing political chaos, Somalia's transitional federal project is more imperilled than ever. The country's regression from a fragile state to a failing one seems increasingly inevitable.
The first phase of Al-Shabaab's offensive surge culminated yesterday morning in a devastating complex attack on a hotel in Beledweyne. At least 10 people were killed after the jihadists detonated a car bomb before storming the Qaahira Hotel, targeting a meeting of Gaalje'el elders who were mobilising clan militias in western Hiiraan against Al-Shabaab. The intention was clear—to violently disrupt the assembling of ma'awiisley against Al-Shabaab in Hiiraan and to intimidate clans contemplating resistance.
Once again, Somalia is quietly heading towards a large-scale humanitarian catastrophe. Intersecting threats of rising conflict and worsening drought are estimated to push an additional one million people into 'crisis' levels of food insecurity between April and June 2025. The prospect of 4.4 million people at IPC Level 3 hunger could arguably not come at a worse moment, with the international aid and development architecture paralysed by the savaging of USAID. In 2022, Somalia narrowly avoided famine due to coordinated humanitarian efforts, but it is unlikely to receive such assistance this time around.
Somalia's incumbent political elite remains engaged in a grand national self-construal project to recast the image of the country. At the enterprise's core is the notion that Somalia is 'rising' or 'risen,' and the narrative is becoming ever more feverish and urgent. It is partly animated by 'positive psychology'; the desire, perhaps, to project a 'positive image' of Somalia and boost Somali self-esteem, but it is also driven by a negative impulse – hostility to the 'fragile state' lens through which most of the world views Somalia.
The final domino for Villa Somalia's ill-conceived one-person, one-vote (OPOV) elections may be about to topple. After multiple false starts, it now appears that over two years since his term expired, South West State President Abdiaziz Laftagareen plans to conduct his own indirect regional elections absent from the federal government. With Darood-majority Puntland and Jubaland having withdrawn from the federation, only South West remained as the only non-Hawiye majority Federal Member State (FMS) tied to the OPOV plans, offering Villa Somalia a fig leaf of legitimacy. But with pressure still mounting on President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud and the country badly adrift, Laftagareen appears to be poised to secure his position for the foreseeable future-- with Ethiopian support.
Yesterday, Al-Shabaab demonstrated just how potent it remains. Just 18 miles from Mogadishu, Al-Shabaab fighters stormed the town of Bal'ad, which lies on the arterial road from the capital to Jowhar in Hirshabelle. As Ethiopian PM Abiy Ahmed touched down in Mogadishu in the morning, four mortar projectiles were launched by the jihadists toward Aden Adde International Airport, injuring several civilians. Meanwhile, at least 5 South West State soldiers were killed in an IED blast near Huddur in Bakool, and an explosion at a restaurant in Mogadishu's Kahda district wounded several people.
In November 2012, Somalia's federal parliament invited then-Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu to address MPs, a gesture of respect only accorded someone deemed a 'special friend' of the Somali nation. The event was considered a way of thanking Türkiye for its swift and impressive humanitarian response to the large-scale famine in Somalia a year earlier, which claimed over 250,000 lives. In 2011, PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan travelled to Mogadishu with his wife to rally humanitarian support-- the first visit of a head of state from outside of Africa in decades. A photo of a distraught Erdogan and his wife clutching two Somali children at an emergency facility for victims, flanked by then-President Somali Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, helped jolt the Muslim world into action. Türkiye convened a summit of Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) states and raised over USD 300 million for emergency relief.
Over the weekend, Somalia's federal government and Ethiopia finally agreed to the composition and deployment of Ethiopian National Defence Forces (ENDF) in Somalia, both bilaterally and under the African Union Support and Stabilisation Mission in Somalia (AUSSOM) auspices. In a signing ceremony in Mogadishu on Saturday, Ethiopia's spy chief, Redwan Hussein, and ENDF Chief of Staff Berhanu Jula signed a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) with their Somali counterparts, which is expected to regulate the operational mandate of Ethiopian forces moving forward.
Much of the federal government's electoral agenda hinges on South West State President Abdiaziz Laftagareen. The regional leader, inserted into his position in Baidoa in December 2018, is the only remaining senior 'elected' non-Hawiye politician still aligned with the federal government. For much of 2024, Laftagareen played a careful balancing act between Addis-- upon which his security depends-- and Mogadishu-- the distributors of his political budget. Where he aligns himself in the coming months regarding the model for South West's long-overdue regional presidential elections could prove the final domino for the growing opposition against Villa Somalia's constitutional and electoral rewrites.
Last week, Transparency International released its annual Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) for 2024. Once again, Somalia remained mired at the bottom of the table, alongside Venezuela and South Sudan. Only the latter ranked lower than Somalia, which scored just 9 out of 100 in the rankings-- a drop of -2 from 2023. Despite promises of reform, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud's administration has again become notorious for its corruption, as was the case during his first term between 2012 and 2017.
On Saturday, after several rounds of secret voting in Addis Ababa, Djiboutian Foreign Minister Mohamoud Ali Youssouf was elected to serve as the next African Union (AU) Commission Chair. He defeated former Kenyan PM Raila Odinga, who dropped out in the 6th round after successive neck-and-neck ballots, with the long-serving Kenyan opposition leader ahead in the first two rounds. Following the elimination of the Madagascan candidate, however, Youssouf inched ahead, and it soon became apparent that Raila would be unable to obtain the 2/3s required of the 49 AU member states.
Between 2010 and 2016, over 6,000 Somali children were forcibly recruited into armed groups, and 2,000 in 2018 alone — the highest number recorded globally. Some were as young as 8. Since the collapse of the state in the early 1990s, Somalia has served as an example of how instability and social fragmentation can fuel the exploitation of children in conflict. Today, Al-Shabaab is widely regarded as the most culpable of Somalia's myriad armed forces for their indoctrination and abduction of children into their ranks.
The federal government has taken another leaf out of the Mohamed Abdullahi Farmaajo playbook– attempting to break up MP and opposition meetings in Mogadishu. In January, a missive was sent out to several hotels to inform them that any such meetings are banned without prior federal approval. And on Monday, federal MP Dahir Amin Jesow accused Villa Somalia of directing soldiers to break up a hotel gathering of 5 opposition parties in Mogadishu. As Villa Somalia lauds the opening of the registering of political associations and the promise of 'one-person, one-vote' (OPOV) elections, it is simultaneously working to choke the country's fragile civic and democratic space. The need for a transitional political arrangement only continues to grow.
Reports of a government offensive in the Hiiraan region recall the heady days of the 2022 ma'awiisley offensive against Al-Shabaab that left the jihadists bloodied and on the back foot. At that time, community defence forces from the Hawaadle rose up against Al-Shabaab in protest against the group's pitiless 'taxtortion' during a time of brutal drought, and succeeded in dislodging the extremists from significant parts of Hiiraan, Middle Shabelle and Galmudug. Known as the 'ma'awiisley' for the typical 'ma'wiis' (sarongs) that Somali men wear, it was a clan and community-led offensive that the fresh Hassan Sheikh administration eagerly appropriated as a 'success story' for the federal government. Today, once again, scenes of young men with AK-47s battling Al-Shabaab along the Shabelle River valley are being touted as a token of Villa Somalia's counterterrorism zeal.
Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud's attempts to mimic his predecessor, Mohamed Abdullahi Farmaajo, continue to fragment the country. In late 2019 and early 2020, the disruptive president and his spy chief, Fahad Yasin, deployed hundreds of federal troops and National Intelligence and Security Agency (NISA) operatives to the Gedo region of Jubaland, having been unable to dislodge regional President Ahmed Madoobe from Kimsaayo after his re-election in August 2019. Alongside security forces, cash was poured in to leverage the Mareehaan-dominated districts of Luuq, Dollow, Beled Hawo, Garbaharey and Bardheere away from Madoobe's Ogaadeen-majority administration. Sporadic deadly violence erupted between federal and regional troops as Al-Shabaab expanded and consolidated its presence in Gedo, which has not diminished since.
Puntland's 'Operation Hilaac' (Lightning) continues to progress against the Islamic State-Somalia (ISS)-- and with a new partner. On 1 February, the Trump administration ordered its first drone strikes on an ISS position in the Al-Miskaad mountains near Dhasan village, one of the jihadist's key command-and-control bases. It was the fourth set of strikes of the offensive overall, with the UAE having also conducted three others against the extremist group. According to US President Donald Trump on social media, the strikes targeted a senior ISS operational leader, though his identity remains unconfirmed.
President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud's plans to impose a patently unworkable one-person, one-vote (OPOV) model are pushing Somalia to the brink. The country is deeply fractured, with Jubaland and Puntland disengaged from Mogadishu and a host of others resistant to Villa Somalia's Islamist centralising agenda. The national opposition is vowing to resist a perceived choreographed plan by the Somali president to either rig dubious OPOV polls or seek a term extension. Meanwhile, rumours are rife in Mogadishu that clans are stocking up on arms and militias are mobilising. There are fears the growing political strain could trigger the fragmentation of the military and security services.
In 2022, during Somalia's prolonged drought, temperatures regularly exceeded 32°C, displacing over a million people and killing thousands. While the increasing regularity of Somalia's ever-more extreme drought-flooding cycles is generally understood, one of the more overlooked climate threats —known as 'wet bulb temperature' (WBT)— is likely to have a significant impact on the country.
The troubles of the latest African Union peacekeeping mission in Somalia rumble on. Nearly a month since its supposed launch, the funding black hole remains, numbers and composition of the troop-contributing countries (TCCs) are undecided, and the domestic political wrangling continues. Though the African Union Support and Stabilisation Mission in Somalia (AUSSOM) nominally began on 1 January 2025, even the UN Security Council Resolution 2767, adopted at the end of December, has allowed 6 months for the "realignment of troops and the transfer of locations." In other words, though the signage may have been changed, AUSSOM remains a shamble, and the security auspices bleak.
On 25 January, dignitaries from Somalia, Djibouti, Kenya, and Ethiopia gathered in Dire Dawa in Ethiopia's Somali region to celebrate UNESCO's recognition of Xeer Issa, the customary legal system of the Issa clan, as "intangible cultural heritage." Headquartered in Paris, UNESCO's enshrining of Xeer Issa, rather than any of its other Somali counterparts, has been in part driven by its study and promotion by francophone Djiboutians. While it has been asserted that Xeer Issa is a particularly sophisticated example of oral Somali jurisprudence, which is debatable, UNESCO's recognition also raises questions about singling out a particular sub-clan when innumerate variations exist in all Somali-speaking regions.