Another week, and the federal government's destabilising antics have threatened to tip yet more of the country into open conflict. Never mind Al-Shabaab seizing Mokoqori in Hiiraan and routing the Hawaadle ma'awiisley, Villa Somalia's attention remains trained on pressing ahead with its unilateral one-person, one-vote (OPOV) agenda. In recent months, an increasingly central plank of this has become SSC-Khaatumo, the Dhulbahante-dominated administration in the contested Sool region, with its interim president Abdikhadir Ahmed Aw-Ali 'Firdhiye' a prominent member of the new Justice and Solidarity Party (JSP). In exchange, an unconstitutional federal member state-formation process has been accelerated, attempting to 'merge' Sool-based SSC-Khaatumo with a fringe group from the Warsangeli-majority Sanaag region, similarly claimed by both Puntland and Somaliland
After months of climbing tensions, Somalia's federal government and the so-called 'national opposition' are now tentatively engaged in dialogue. Last week, the second round of talks took place at Villa Somalia, with renewed hope for a breakthrough on a roadmap for the federal elections scheduled for May 2026. Meanwhile, the newly established National Dialogue Forum should further help diminish the potential for violence on the streets of Mogadishu. Yet, the bonhomie between President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud and the coalition Somali Salvation Forum (SSF), led by former President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, cannot mask the fact that the road ahead will be fraught with hurdles as Villa Somalia continues to press ahead with its destabilising electoral agenda.
Strolling through Galkacyo in Puntland and Kismaayo in Jubaland in the early 1990s, it was not uncommon to see young Somalis wearing t-shirts adorned with 'Galkacyo and Kismaayo are free' or words to a similar effect. Amid the rampaging forces of General Mohamed Farrah Aidid in central Somalia, the t-shirts neatly encapsulated a sentiment of broader pan-Darood solidarity at a moment of intense political instability and armed conflict in the Hawiye-dominated centre of the country. As Mark Twain once said, 'History doesn't repeat itself, but it does often rhyme,' and the warming ties between Jubaland and Puntland over thirty years later in opposition to Mogadishu have echoes of the early days of the civil war amidst the broader strained Hawiye-Darood relations today.
Disarmament, demobilisation, and reintegration (DDR) in Somalia has long been a politically fraught and contested process. With more guns than people and dozens of militias operating outside any formal chain of command, DDR presents one of the more pressing stabilisation challenges. While Somalia’s federal government struggles to establish a modicum of control over its own weapons and ammunition, and the international community has invested countless millions trying to disarm and demobilise Somalia’s armed factions from the top down with little success, Somaliland and Puntland demonstrate that effective demobilisation and sustainable peace are possible if they are locally driven and preceded by a political settlement.
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.
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.
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.
Puntland's military operations against the Islamic State-Somalia (ISS) in the rugged Al-Miskaad mountains are now well underway. After several months of preparations in 2024, the northern Federal Member State (FMS) is deploying considerable forces as part of Operation Hilaac (Lightning) to quash the influential jihadist wing located near the port city of Bosasso.
In late November, the Puntland Maritime Police Force (PMPF) informed the European Union's anti-piracy naval force, EUNAVFOR Atalanta, that pirates may have hijacked a Chinese-owned fishing vessel off the northern coast of Somalia.