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.
It is now official: Somalia’s National Security Adviser (NSA) Hussein Sheikh Ali, aka “Hussein Ma’alin’ has stepped down. On his X (formerly Twitter) handle, Hussein described himself as “former” NSA. On Sunday evening, the Office of the Prime Minister put out a short statement to say Mukhtar Mohammed Hassan has been appointed acting National Security Adviser. Mukhtar is not well-known and the assumption of many is that he will be a placeholder until a suitable replacement is found. Both Hussein and Villa Somalia remain reticent in explaining what exactly happened and why the changes are being made.
In December 2023, the final elements of the UN Security Council sanctions regime were lifted on the Somali federal government. Mogadishu's celebrations were rapturous, with President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud declaring that Mogadishu could now "purchase any weapons needed" and that "friendly nations and allies" could hand over the "necessary weapons without any limitations or restrictions." After years of lobbying, the final albatross around the neck of the federal government was to be lifted, and the Somali National Army (SNA) handed the heavy firepower required to conquer Al-Shabaab once and for all. Of course, over 18 months on, quite the reverse has happened, with Al-Shabaab having swept across much of central Somalia since February-- despite the glut of Egyptian and Turkish weapons donated to Villa Somalia in the past year. And Puntland's seizure of the MV Sea World, a Comorian-flagged vessel carrying Turkish arms and armoured vehicles last week, has thrown the question of the lifting of the arms embargo back into the open.
Of any region in the world, the Horn of Africa is home to some of the oldest, richest, and varied religious traditions, featuring sites such as the Masjid al-Qiblatayn in Zeila and artefacts from the ancient Axumite kingdom in Tigray. For centuries, faith has and continues to play an integral part in the daily lives of most within the region, with Islam and Christianity the two dominant religions today. And in turn, spiritual life has naturally shaped the politics of the Horn, with elites having long grappled with how best to accommodate, co-opt, or suppress religious movements and identities. Over the centuries, this has encompassed Muslim leaders couching their fight in the rhetoric of jihad as well as the 'civilising' expansion of the Orthodox Christian Ethiopian Emperors into neighbouring regions in the 19th century.
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.
Every Thursday, Somalis can tune into Radio Andalus, an Al-Shabaab-affiliated radio station, to listen in to a jihadist commander wax lyrical about their upbringing and commitment to the cause. In one such recent interview with Al-Shabaab's appointed Banaadir Governor, Muse Abdi Arraale, he recounts his life, having grown up in Hargeisa before joining Waxda Al-Shabaab Al-Islamiyya (Islamic Youth Unity group) as a teenager and being imprisoned by the Siad Barre regime. Explicitly tying himself to groups beyond Al-Qaeda proper, such interviews represent an attempt to both position these extremist commanders in Somalia's Islamist history as well as humanise them. Increasingly tapping into discourses of Somali nationalism, Al-Shabaab's prolific propaganda output remains among the most sophisticated of any insurgent group. The London-based Tech Against Terrorism, which monitors extremist online content, assesses that Al-Shabaab is "the largest single producer of terrorist material on the internet."
Somalia's Al-Shabaab jihadist armed insurrection has entered its 18th year with no let-up in violence or any sign the conflict is close to a resolution. Indeed, Al-Shabaab is resurgent and remains as lethal as ever, having displayed its continued prowess after sweeping across much of central Somalia in its Ramadan offensive-- and beyond-- earlier this year. But what allows Al-Shabaab to thrive is not solely the ability to project military power or deploy intimidatory violence, but also the often under-reported, extensive and insidious rent-seeking and control of local economies as well.
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.
The ongoing Ugandan-led 'Operation Silent Storm' to dislodge Al-Shabaab from three key bridge towns in Lower Shabelle represents essentially a rehash of the 'Operation Badbaado' (Salvation) campaign, conducted between 2019 and 2020. Coming after the Al-Shabaab Ramadan offensive earlier this year that routed Somali National Army (SNA) positions across Lower and Middle Shabelle, Operation Silent Storm marks the first concerted effort to dislodge the jihadists from their advanced positions toward Mogadishu. And while much has already been made of the intense fighting at Sabiid by Villa Somalia, in reality, the operations are limited in scope and appear likely to repeat the mistakes of its predecessors, even if it disrupts a route for the jihadists into Mogadishu. Re-establishing a string of bunkered Forward Operating Bases (FOBs) in Awdheegle, Bariire, and Sabiid manned by a hollowed-out and demoralised SNA will not turn the tide against Al-Shabaab.
The ongoing Ugandan-led 'Operation Silent Storm' to dislodge Al-Shabaab from three key bridge towns in Lower Shabelle represents essentially a rehash of the 'Operation Badbaado' (Salvation) campaign, conducted between 2019 and 2020. Coming after the Al-Shabaab Ramadan offensive earlier this year that routed Somali National Army (SNA) positions across Lower and Middle Shabelle, Operation Silent Storm marks the first concerted effort to dislodge the jihadists from their advanced positions toward Mogadishu. And while much has already been made of the intense fighting at Sabiid by Villa Somalia, in reality, the operations are limited in scope and appear likely to repeat the mistakes of its predecessors, even if it disrupts a route for the jihadists into Mogadishu. Re-establishing a string of bunkered Forward Operating Bases (FOBs) in Awdheegle, Bariire, and Sabiid manned by a hollowed-out and demoralised SNA will not turn the tide against Al-Shabaab.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.