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.
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.
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.