Gedo has long served as a useful barometer for the health of relations between Nairobi, Mogadishu, and Addis. Straddling the tri-border Mandera Triangle, the Mareehaan-dominated region of Jubaland has been a key staging post for Al-Shabaab's continued infiltration into Kenya and Ethiopia for years. And as such, both Nairobi and Addis have a vested stake in Jubaland as a security buffer zone against the jihadists, developing close ties with key political actors within Gedo and the southern Federal Member State-- which they helped co-establish in 2013. Over a decade later, with Hassan Sheikh Mohamud back at the helm in Mogadishu, the focus has returned to Gedo, as he has resorted to a well-known destabilising playbook by attempting —and failing —to wrest the Mareehaan into Villa Somalia's orbit. But amid the government's months-long campaign to destabilise Gedo, including seizing Garbahaarey and Luuq from control of Jubaland to carve out Darood tents for its rigged elections, Addis has remained silent-- until now.
Since the collapse of the Somali state in the 1990s, the country's private sector has played a particularly prominent role in service delivery, flourishing in the cracks left by the absence of a central government. In this space of the ungoverned economy, those providing essential utilities — such as healthcare — were assumed by businesses and economic cartels, which have reaped immense profits in turn amid the vacuum. However, in the years since, as the state-building process has gradually attempted to deliver or centralise such services, the incestuous relationships between business cartels and rent-seeking politicians have persisted. And in the meantime, the fractured and uneven nature of healthcare providers in Somalia continues to pose severe dangers to the population.