The Geopolitical Perils And Diplomatic Realities Of Recognizing Somaliland – OpEd https://www.eurasiareview.com/21092026-the-geopolitical-perils-and-diplomatic-realities-of-recognizing-somaliland-oped/

Mogadishu’s Dysfunction Is Somaliland’s Best Argument In Washington – OpEd https://www.eurasiareview.com/21092026-mogadishus-dysfunction-is-somalilands-best-argument-in-washington-oped/

Salah Mohamed Ali’s Huddur & the History of Southern Somalia is a 2005 English-language history of Huddur—also spelled Hudur or Xudur—and the wider political, social and administrative development of southern Somalia. The first edition was published in Cairo by Nahda Bookshop Publisher and runs to 540 pages, according to the book’s Google Books record and WorldCat catalog entry.

The book’s importance lies in its decision to place Huddur at the center of a broader national history. Rather than treating the town as a remote provincial settlement, Ali presents it as a point from which to examine the history of Bakool, the inter-riverine regions and southern Somalia’s contribution to the making of the Somali state. Because the complete text is not readily available online, the discussion below is a thematic assessment based on bibliographic records, searchable catalog information and corroborating historical sources—not a chapter-by-chapter summary.

Huddur in southern Somali history

Huddur is the administrative capital of Bakool Region and an important town in southwestern Somalia. A United Nations–Habitat urban profile describes it as a historic trade center and records a sequence of political affiliations linking the area to the Ajuran Empire, the Geledi Sultanate and, eventually, Italian Somaliland. The same profile states that Huddur became the center of Bakool Region and Huddur District after Somali independence in 1960.

Some details in this traditional chronology should be treated cautiously. The UN-Habitat profile states that the area was incorporated into Italian Somaliland in 1910 following the death of Sultan Osman Ahmed. That date is useful as a reference point, but it should not be presented as an uncontested account of the precise process by which Italian authority expanded over the region. Colonial incorporation was generally gradual and involved treaties, military pressure, administrative extension and changing relations with local authorities.

The broader historical point, however, is well supported: European colonialism did not enter a political vacuum. Huddur and the surrounding inter-riverine regions already contained established communities, religious networks, commercial routes and systems of authority. Local political life was shaped by traditional leaders, religious figures, elders and community institutions long before the creation of modern colonial districts.

Authority before colonialism

The history of Huddur challenges the assumption that political organization in southern Somalia began with colonial administration. Local authorities exercised influence over land, migration, security, dispute settlement, religious life and relations between communities. Their authority did not necessarily take the form of a centralized state, but it was nevertheless politically meaningful.

Malaaqs, sultans, religious scholars and elders operated through different sources of legitimacy. Some relied on lineage and customary authority; others drew influence from religious learning, control of trade routes, mediation or the ability to mobilize followers. These institutions continued to operate alongside colonial officials after the establishment of Italian rule.

Colonial governments therefore did not simply replace existing authority with a modern bureaucracy. They classified communities, drew administrative boundaries, appointed intermediaries and introduced new security structures. In doing so, they changed the balance among local leaders and altered relations between rural communities and emerging towns.

Italian and British rule

Huddur’s modern history was shaped first by Italian expansion and later by the British Military Administration during and after the Second World War. Italian rule brought new forms of administration, taxation, policing and military control. It also connected inland towns more closely to wider colonial systems centered on Mogadishu and other administrative and commercial centers.

The transition from Italian rule to British military administration represented a major political change, but it did not end foreign control. British officials inherited and reorganized parts of the colonial system while operating within the wartime and postwar politics of the region. The changing administrations affected local officials, security arrangements and the political opportunities available to Somali communities.

These developments are important because colonial rule was not experienced uniformly across Somalia. The experience of Huddur differed from that of Mogadishu, the coastal towns and the northern territories. Inland communities encountered colonialism through district officials, military stations, local intermediaries, taxation, trade and disputes over authority.

International trusteeship and independence

The political future of southern Somalia was also shaped by international decisions after the Second World War. The former Italian colony became a United Nations Trust Territory under Italian administration, creating a transitional framework that was intended to prepare the territory for self-government and independence.

The trusteeship period encouraged the growth of schools, administrative institutions and political organizations, although its objectives and implementation remained contested. It also created a setting in which Somali nationalists could organize, debate constitutional questions and demand independence.

Huddur was connected to these developments through administrative networks and political parties. The town’s history illustrates that the transition to independence was not simply a process directed from Mogadishu. Political change reached inland districts, where local leaders, activists, religious figures and communities interpreted nationalism through their own political and social experiences.

Southern participation in nationalism

The struggle for Somali independence involved political movements from across the territory. The Somali Youth League was the most prominent nationalist organization, but it was not the only party active in the southern regions.

The Hizbia Dighil Mirifle, commonly known as HDM, was established in 1947 and represented many communities in the inter-riverine regions. Scholarly sources describe it as a counterweight to the politically dominant Somali Youth League and note that its support was concentrated particularly among Digil and Mirifle communities. In 1956, the organization changed its name to Hizbia Dastur Mustaqil al-Somal, or HDMS.

The party’s history is especially relevant to Huddur and Bakool because it demonstrates that southern communities were active participants in the political struggles of the late colonial period. HDM was not merely a local association. It had national objectives and participated in debates about representation, constitutional arrangements and the future organization of the Somali state. At the same time, its regional social base reflected the political importance of the inter-riverine communities.

This history complicates accounts that portray Somali nationalism as the achievement of a single city, party or region. Nationalist politics developed through interaction between national organizations and local political structures. Traditional leaders, merchants, religious authorities, educated activists and community representatives all contributed to that process.

Regional diversity and national unity

The history of Huddur also demonstrates the diversity of southern Somalia. The region included pastoral communities, agricultural populations, riverine settlements, trading centers and towns that became colonial administrative headquarters. These communities differed in language, livelihood, political organization and historical experience.

The inter-riverine regions were particularly important because of their agricultural production, settled communities and distinctive social institutions. Huddur’s history cannot be understood solely through the political experience of Mogadishu or the coastal ports. Nor can it be reduced to a single clan or administrative category. Its development involved overlapping identities, economic relationships, religious networks and political authorities.

Recognizing this diversity does not weaken the idea of Somali nationhood. It explains how national identity was constructed. Somalia emerged through the interaction of many local histories rather than from one uniform political experience.

Correcting historical marginalization

One of the book’s principal contributions is its effort to correct the marginalization of southern local histories. When places such as Huddur, Baidoa, Luuq and Bardhere appear only as peripheral locations, their contributions to political mobilization and state formation are overlooked.

A town-centered history can restore that missing agency. It can show how colonial policies were experienced locally, how political parties organized beyond the capital, how traditional authority interacted with modern administration and how national ideas were adapted to local conditions.

This perspective remains relevant to contemporary debates about federalism, representation and institutional reform. Many political disputes in Somalia are also disputes about historical recognition: whose leaders mattered, whose communities participated in independence and whose experiences shaped the state. A fuller national history cannot resolve those disputes by itself, but it can provide a more accurate foundation for discussing them.

Conclusion

Salah Mohamed Ali’s Huddur & the History of Southern Somalia is best understood as a regional history with national implications. Its subject is Huddur, but its historical concerns extend to Bakool, the inter-riverine south, colonial administration, political organization and the emergence of Somali nationalism.

The book’s central significance is its insistence that southern Somalia was not a passive or peripheral space. Huddur had its own political authorities, religious institutions, economic networks and historical experiences. Its communities encountered colonial rule, participated in political movements and contributed to the transition toward independence.

The available evidence supports the book’s broad historical importance, but some specific claims require careful qualification. The 2005 publication, Cairo imprint, English-language first edition and 540-page length are confirmed by bibliographic records. Huddur’s association with the Ajuran and Geledi political traditions and its later incorporation into Italian Somaliland are reported by UN-Habitat, although the exact chronology and mechanisms of incorporation should be distinguished from established fact. The formation of HDM in 1947 and its later transformation into HDMS are corroborated by scholarly and reference sources.

The strongest conclusion is therefore a measured one: Somalia was built through many local histories, and Huddur provides an important example of how one inland town can illuminate the political formation of an entire country.

US and European experts on the region warn recognition of breakaway Somaliland

Synthesizing Ground Analysis by Markus Virgil Hoehne & Diplomatic Perspectives from Ambassador David Shinn

Author Context: Markus Virgil Hoehne is a social anthropologist at the University of Göttingen who has researched Somali issues for 25 years. Ambassador David Shinn is a former U.S. Ambassador to Ethiopia (1996–1999) and Adjunct Professor at George Washington University.

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Introduction: The Case Against Recognition

Washington’s own record of intervention in the Horn of Africa—rather than arguments originating from Mogadishu—provides the strongest case against recognizing Somaliland. While proponents frame recognition around American strategic imperatives, an examination of regional conflict dynamics, historic foreign policy missteps, and diplomatic precedents demonstrates that legal recognition would destabilize the Somali Peninsula and trigger active warfare.

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The Flaws in Geostrategic Justifications

Arguments in favor of recognition, such as those advanced by Steven A. Cook, base their position on geostrategic objectives—specifically confronting the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the Houthis, as well as securing freedom of navigation through the Red Sea, the Suez Canal, and the Strait of Hormuz.

However, advocates rely on the naïve assumption that internal opposition in eastern Somaliland can be resolved through peaceful dialogue.

• Long-Standing Opposition: Opposition from eastern clans is deep-rooted; Somaliland never maintained effective control over eastern territories, with the exception of Lasanod between 2007 and 2022.
• Armed Defeat & The North East State: Armed rebellion emerged in the east as early as 2009, and in 2023, local clan militias defeated the Somaliland army in Lasanod, leaving parts of the city destroyed by shelling. Following this defeat, eastern clans formed a new administration—the North East State (NES) of Somalia—headquartered in Lasanod and recognized by Mogadishu.
• Somali National Army Presence: In August 2026, the Somali prime minister visited Lasanod to discuss establishing a Somali National Army (SNA) base.
• Limits of Legitimacy: Members of the Dhulbahante and Warsangeli clans in the east are predominantly Somali unionists, whereas the Isaaq clan generally supports Somaliland. Consequently, Somaliland President Irro’s authority effectively ends around Oog, an Isaaq town 85 kilometers west of Lasanod.

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Diplomatic & Policy Realities: Ambassador David Shinn’s Assessment

Complementing Hoehne’s ground-level analysis, veteran U.S. diplomat Ambassador David Shinn provides critical context regarding Washington’s executive policy and international diplomatic norms:

• Deferral to the African Union: Amb. Shinn emphasizes that the United States and Western powers consistently defer to the African Union (AU) on matters concerning African boundary changes and state sovereignty. Unilateral U.S. recognition remains highly unlikely without prior AU consensus or movement from key African nations.
• Risks to U.S.–Somalia Relations: Shinn warns that formal recognition of Somaliland would throw a severe wrench into Washington’s diplomatic and security relationship with the Federal Government of Somalia, endangering vital counterterrorism coordination in Mogadishu.
• Understanding the “Dual-Track” Policy: While the U.S. engages practically with Hargeisa on trade, development, and civil society, Shinn clarifies that this engagement is designed to foster stability within a Somali federal framework, not serve as an endorsement of formal independence.

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The Destabilizing History of U.S. Interventions

Concerns that Somalia is inherently a “fount of terrorism, piracy, and extremism” rely on quasi-colonial logic that portrays Somalis as incapable of maintaining political order. In reality, many of Somalia’s crises since 1991 have been co-produced by the United States and its regional allies.

1. Operation “Restore Hope” (1992–1994): U.S. intervention fueled markets of violence by elevating certain warlords into political partners while designating others as villains. Attempting to arrest Mohamed Farah Aideed led to the 1993 “Black Hawk Down” battle in Mogadishu, leaving 18 U.S. Marines dead and foreclosing direct U.S. military engagements abroad for years.
2. Indirect Interventions & Warlord Financing: Washington subsequently turned to indirect actions, financing local warlords under the premise of counterterrorism.
3. The 2006 Ethiopian Invasion: In December 2006, the U.S. strongly supported a brutal Ethiopian military intervention in Somalia, resulting in thousands of civilian deaths in Mogadishu.
4. The Expansion of al-Shabaab: The carnage caused by U.S.-backed Ethiopian and African Union forces led Somalis across the Horn—including volunteers from Hargeysa in Somaliland—to view al-Shabaab as a legitimate defender of the Somali nation. Before late 2006, al-Shabaab numbered only a few hundred fighters; counterterrorism operations expanded the group into thousands.

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Comparative State Formation: Somalia vs. Rwanda

The contrasting outcomes of foreign intervention in Somalia and non-intervention in Rwanda highlight how external military operations disrupt organic state formation:

• Rwanda (1994): During the 1994 genocide, the UN and U.S. refused to intervene, leading to the loss of at least 800,000 lives. Ex-post, non-intervention allowed Paul Kagame’s Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) to end the genocide and establish a stable state. Despite authoritarian practices and human rights concerns, Rwanda became a primary U.S. partner, demonstrating that geopolitical interests routinely supersede human rights considerations in Washington’s strategic alignments.
• Somalia: Repeated external interventions perpetuated conflict, fractured local governance, and prevented organic post-conflict stabilization.

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Conclusion: Why External Recognition Threatens Regional Peace

Any attempt by Washington to legally recognize Somaliland against the resistance of the Somali federal government and unionist eastern clans constitutes another destabilizing external intervention. As both Hoehne’s ground analysis and Shinn’s diplomatic assessment demonstrate, unilateral recognition would fail to secure regional peace, strain key partnerships in Mogadishu, and risk sparking a major new war across the Somali Peninsula.

Baidoa, Sept. 18, 2006: The Day Suicide Terror Came To Somalia – OpEd https://www.eurasiareview.com/18092026-baidoa-sept-18-2006-the-day-suicide-terror-came-to-somalia-oped/

Irro’s Washington Charm Offensive Couldn’t Paper Over Somaliland’s Empty Hands – OpEd https://www.eurasiareview.com/17092026-irros-washington-charm-offensive-couldnt-paper-over-somalilands-empty-hands-oped/

Mogadishu, The Eternal Nain: A Chronicle Of A Capital That Never Learns – OpEd https://www.eurasiareview.com/16092026-mogadishu-the-eternal-nain-a-chronicle-of-a-capital-that-never-learns-oped/

Somalia’s Wasted Reunification Opportunities: Blame Mogadishu, Not Hargeisa – OpEd https://www.eurasiareview.com/15092026-somalias-wasted-reunification-opportunities-blame-mogadishu-not-hargeisa-oped/

Somalia’s Federal Experiment Is Failing Again: Confederation Is The Model It Has Never Tried – OpEd https://www.eurasiareview.com/15092026-somalias-federal-experiment-is-failing-again-confederation-is-the-model-it-has-never-tried-oped/

Recognition For Rent From Unowned Property: Inside The Ethiopia-Somaliland Land Grab – OpEd https://www.eurasiareview.com/10092026-recognition-for-rent-from-unowned-property-inside-the-ethiopia-somaliland-land-grab-oped/

The Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia and Somaliland:
Reaffirming their longstanding solidarity, fraternity and friendship,
Committed to foster a close partnership that would contribute to peace and security in the Horn of Africa and the broader region,
Desiring to encourage closer economic cooperation and to promote conditions of economic stability and well-being,
Considering their common concern in the maintenance of peace and security in the Horn of Africa,
Having resolved to conclude this Memorandum of Partnership and Cooperation,
Agree as follows:
ARTICLE I
The relationship between the parties shall be based on the principles of good faith cooperation and partnership for the advancement of mutual interests.
The purpose of this Memorandum of Understanding is to identify the major fields of cooperation and provide a framework to govern their overall engagement and partnership.
ARTICLE II
The Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia shall extend recognition to Somaliland immediately after the designated area stipulated under Article X of this agreement. The parties shall coordinate their political efforts and outreach to stakeholders in the lead up to this determination.
The contracting parties shall hold regular consultations through the Joint Ministerial Platform established pursuant to this Memorandum of Understanding, and through other modalities as necessary, to harmonize and coordinate their views in international forums to advance common objectives and positions. They shall also cooperate in the areas of foreign service and diplomacy.
ARTICLE III
The contracting parties shall cooperate in trade and investment by developing physical infrastructure linkages to increase the flow of trade and investment.
The parties shall jointly invest in and develop the facilities and infrastructure necessary for the utilization of the Berbera Port, including a railway and a highway. The modalities and detailed arrangements for such joint investment shall be provided in subsequent agreements to be concluded by the parties.
The Berbera railway, as necessary to be linked with other railway networks in the area, shall be prioritized by the parties in their joint infrastructure development efforts.
The parties shall enter into a bilateral trade and investment agreement to foster greater economic integration.
ARTICLE IV
The Contracting Parties shall cooperate in infrastructure, water and energy sectors.
The FDRE undertakes to use the Berbera port facilities, on competitive market terms that cannot be greater than the prevailing market rate, for not less than 10% of its annual import and export.
The FDRE shall supply electricity to Somaliland on competitive market terms that cannot be greater than the prevailing market rate.
The detailed terms and conditions for the undertakings indicated in Article IV (2) and (3) shall be negotiated and agreed upon by the parties.
ARTICLE V
The Contracting Parties shall cooperate in the agricultural sector through training and capacity building in small scale irrigation, watershed development, food security and disaster management, control of trans-boundary animal and plant diseases, surveillance and control of livestock, fish and crop diseases and pests, exchange of experience in agricultural extension and rural development, environmental management and afforestation programs, and any other fields that may be mutually agreed upon.
ARTICLE VI
The contracting parties shall cooperate in the health sector and work in collaboration in building the capacity of health professionals and medical practitioners, malaria control, epidemiological surveillance, research, exchange of health professionals for the purpose of sharing new techniques and technologies, experience sharing in the provision of primary health care, nutrition and immunization, and any other fields that may be mutually agreed upon.
ARTICLE VII
The Contracting Parties shall cooperate in the education sector through capacity building and experience sharing at all levels of education and training, including technical and vocational education; the promotion of higher education; and promotion of alternative basic education, as well as any other fields that may be mutually agreed upon.
ARTICLE VIII
The Contracting Parties shall cooperate in the cultural sector through the exchange of cultural troupes, artifacts, experts and information sharing, as well as exchange of experiences on indigenous knowledge preservation and utilization; promotion of cooperation between national museums, libraries and archives, as well as exchange of delegations, publications and expert visits; preservation and restoration of cultural heritage, and any other fields that may be mutually agreed upon.
ARTICLE IX
The Contracting Parties shall cooperate in the defense and security sectors. This cooperation shall include but is not limited to: military training, education and technical assistance; exchange of information on defense, security and intelligence matters; countering terrorism and combating organized and transnational crimes; and any other fields and technical arrangements that may be mutually agreed upon.
ARTICLE X
Somaliland shall provide a 50-year lease of a coastal area with a 20 km width along the coast and a 20 km length inland (hereinafter referred to as the “leasehold area”) near eastern Lughaya to the FDRE for the establishment of a naval base and the development of commercial maritime facilities.
The leasehold area shall include the maritime zones adjacent to the coastline on which a coastal state might exercise jurisdiction in accordance with the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, as well as a land corridor from the Ethiopian border to the coastline.
The land corridor shall include a highway and a railway going from the border to the naval base and maritime facilities. A map and GPS coordinates of the leasehold area shall be annexed to this Memorandum of Understanding.
The FDRE shall exercise full control and jurisdiction over the leasehold area. The FDRE shall not sublease, transfer control, assign territory or pledge to a third party.
The leasehold area shall be transferred over to Ethiopia within 30 days from the signing of this Memorandum of Understanding.
In lieu of rent for the lease indicated under sub-article 1 of this Article, the FDRE shall grant Somaliland shares in Ethiopian Airlines. The number of shares to be granted shall be agreed upon between the parties. These shares may not be sold, transferred, assigned, pledged, or encumbered to a third party.
Upon expiry of the period stipulated under sub-article 1 of this Article, the parties shall negotiate in good faith the terms for the extension of the leasehold, taking into account the investment of the FDRE in the leasehold area.
ARTICLE XI
The contracting parties hereby establish a Joint Ministerial Platform to oversee implementation of this agreement.
The Joint Ministerial Platform shall meet at least twice a year; it may hold extraordinary meetings as it may deem necessary.

———-

Editor’s Note
The document above is presented as the full text of the Memorandum of Understanding for Partnership and Co-operation signed by the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia and Somaliland in Jan. 1, 2024. Neither government has released an official text of the agreement. Ethiopian and Somaliland officials have offered differing and at times conflicting accounts of its contents since the signing, and independent researchers tracking the accord have noted more than a year that no authoritative version has been made public.
WDM obtained this document through sources it regards as reliable. Its provenance could not be independently corroborated through public or official channels at time of posting. It is published for reference and analysis on that basis, and readers should treat its specific terms — including the leasehold dimensions, compensation mechanism and recognition clause — as unconfirmed pending an official release by either party.

Somalia’s Crisis Is Systemic, Not Personal: The Case For Collective Accountability – OpEd https://www.eurasiareview.com/08092026-somalias-crisis-is-systemic-not-personal-the-case-for-collective-accountability-oped/

Puntland Is Not A Platform – OpEd https://www.eurasiareview.com/07092026-puntland-is-not-a-platform-oped/

Garowe, Puntland, Somalia — Said Abdullahi Deni did not come to Puntland’s presidency to make Puntland stronger. He came to make himself bigger.

For too long, that was the operating logic of his administration. Mogadishu shaped his political imagination, and Mogadishu remained the measure of his ambition. Puntland gave him the office, the security structure, the public budget, the political platform, and the parliamentary influence needed to pursue national power. Yet he often governed as if Garowe were merely a temporary headquarters for a future campaign in Villa Somalia.

Puntland was not treated as the mission. It was treated as the machinery.

That is why the first half of Deni’s presidency often felt politically busy but institutionally thin. The cabinet functioned less like a forum for serious collective government and more like an extension of the presidency. Ministers were expected to execute rather than deliberate. Independent judgment became risky. Policy coordination depended too heavily on the president’s immediate circle, while capable officials and experienced political figures were left outside the room.

That is not a cabinet. It is a chain of command.

Puntland’s parliament, meanwhile, has too often been treated as an obstacle to manage rather than an institution to respect. A legislature exists to scrutinize budgets, question ministers, investigate failures, and force the executive to explain itself. But a government that sees scrutiny as hostility will always prefer compliant legislators to independent ones. It will seek acquiescence rather than accountability.

That is not stability. It is institutional suffocation.

The same pattern has affected Puntland’s regional administrations. Mudug, Bari, Nugaal, Karkaar, Sanaag, Haylaan, and the other regions cannot be governed permanently by instructions issued from Garowe. Local authorities need predictable mandates, administrative capacity, transparent funding, and enough political space to respond to their communities. Yet the presidency has repeatedly favored central control over durable local empowerment.

A state cannot be built from the capital alone.

The federal presidential campaign exposed the weakness of this political model. When Deni sought the presidency of Somalia, he expected the federal parliamentarians associated with Puntland to stand behind him. He expected political allies elsewhere to repay support with loyalty. But at the critical hour, they did not.

The result was not merely defeat. It was exposure.

Deni had invested in politicians. He had not built political conviction. He had cultivated a network of transactions. He had not created a constituency prepared to defend a shared national project. When the calculations changed, the alliances changed with them.

This is the truth he had to learn: political loyalty purchased through patronage is temporary by design.

Since then, Deni has changed—at least in appearance, and perhaps in part by conviction. He has traveled more widely. He has met traditional elders in Mudug and Bari. He has spoken more cautiously and reacted less explosively in public. His administration has put greater emphasis on the Puntland Defence Forces, an institution that deserves sustained investment, professional command, clear civilian oversight, and reliable support for its personnel.

These are positive signs. But they are not enough.

The Puntland Defence Forces cannot become another instrument of presidential politics. A serious security sector requires professional recruitment, accountable command structures, regular pay, logistical planning, parliamentary oversight, and a clear separation between state security and factional loyalty. If security institutions serve a president rather than the law, they may protect power for a while—but they will not protect the state.

Puntland’s public finances require the same seriousness. Citizens have a right to know how revenue is raised, how contracts are awarded, how budgets are spent, and whether public resources are advancing public priorities. The administration cannot demand public trust while treating budget transparency as a privilege granted at its convenience. A state that collects revenue must also account for it.

Puntland also needs more than road tours, speeches, and carefully managed gatherings. It needs functioning schools, dependable health services, viable local councils, water infrastructure, job opportunities for young people, and an economic strategy that turns its coastline, livestock, fisheries, trade routes, and potential natural resources into public prosperity rather than elite advantage.

The president’s regional visits matter only if they produce institutions that remain after the motorcade leaves.

Deni’s deeper problem is that he appears to trust loyalty more than competence. Experienced civil servants, respected elders, capable politicians, and independent policy professionals complicate presidential power because they ask questions. They challenge assumptions. They insist on procedures. They remember past failures. They do not always clap on command.

That is why they are indispensable.

Instead, the administration has too often elevated inexperienced aides and political messengers whose strongest qualification is personal loyalty. Energy is useful; youth is valuable. But neither is a substitute for judgment, expertise, or institutional memory. Puntland cannot be governed through an echo chamber of people whose careers depend on never telling the president “no.”

This is not strength. It is fear disguised as control.

Deni’s political roots may partly explain the instinct. His links to the Islah current and his previous service in Hassan Sheikh Mohamud’s first administration placed him in political environments where hierarchy, discipline, and internal loyalty carried great weight. But no political tradition excuses the weakening of public institutions. No movement culture justifies treating criticism as sabotage.

Puntland has outgrown politics of personal command.

Its future depends on a stronger parliament, a credible cabinet, empowered regional administrations, a professional security sector, transparent public finances, and a civil service that serves the public rather than the president’s inner circle. These are not abstract reform slogans. They are the difference between a functioning state and a personal administration.

Deni now has an opportunity that many leaders never receive: failure has forced him to reconsider his purpose. He can turn that failure into maturity. He can appoint serious people, tolerate criticism, open government, strengthen institutions, and leave Puntland more capable than he found it.

Or he can continue to rule through personal networks, political suspicion, centralized control, and a circle of loyal dependents.

The first choice would establish a legacy.

The second would confirm the worst judgment of his presidency: that Puntland was never a homeland to govern, only a platform to use.

Puntland is not a route to Mogadishu. It is not a consolation prize after Mogadishu. And it is not a private kingdom for any president.

— WDM Editorial Board

Turkey In Somalia: From Lifeline To Power Broker – OpEd https://www.eurasiareview.com/06092026-turkey-in-somalia-from-lifeline-to-power-broker-oped/

“Ismaaciil adiga mooyee, Adoogeen Haaji mooyee, Ayeydeen Dhoofa mooyee, Uduufaa meesha joogtee.

“Ismaaciil ogadada, udgoonaa ogadaadu, ma sixin baa lagu agloolay.”

“Ismaaciil, were it not for you, were it not for your father, Haji, were it not for your grandmother, Dhoofa — no fragrance would linger in this place. Ismaaciil, the sweetness of your scent — is it not the fragrance of your own body wrapped in good-smelling ghee?”

A WDM Editorial

There is a particular kind of sleep that overtakes a region when its capital grows fat while its periphery grows quiet. Nugaal is drifting into that sleep. Someone needs to ring the alarm before whole towns become little more than names on an old administrative map.
Look at the map, if anyone in the planning offices still bothers to.
Nugaal is not Garowe. Nugaal is Garowe, Eyl, Dangorayo, Sinujiif, Buurtiinle and the rangelands and coastline that give the region its economic, historical and strategic meaning. Yet ask many young Puntlanders today to name the towns of Nugaal, and the answer quickly collapses into one word: Garowe. Full stop. The rest increasingly resemble administrative footnotes.
Eyl: History Without Investment
Eyl deserves better, if only because history refuses to let it disappear quietly. This ancient port, once known as Illig, served as capital of the Dervish movement under Sayyid Mohammed Abdullah Hassan from 1905 until Taleh took over that role in 1909. It later became known internationally, less happily, as a hub of Somali piracy in the 2000s. Its location, fishing grounds, maritime heritage and surrounding livestock economy should make it one of Puntland’s more interesting coastal development centers.
Instead, Eyl is too often treated as a postcard. It is remembered when politicians need a photograph of Puntland’s heritage, mentioned when speeches require a little historical seasoning, and forgotten when budgets and investment priorities are drawn up.
A coastal town cannot live on nostalgia. Eyl needs roads, fisheries infrastructure, reliable electricity, communications, water systems, health services, schools and an economy capable of keeping its young people there. Otherwise, every speech praising Eyl’s history becomes an obituary delivered in installments.
Dangorayo and Sinujiif: From Towns to Coordinates
Dangorayo and Sinujiif are in an even more precarious position, because they do not carry Eyl’s historical name recognition. These settlements once anchored local economies and communities in Nugaal’s interior. Increasingly, they risk becoming waypoints: places people drive through on their way to somewhere with better services, electricity and jobs.
That is how towns disappear without physically disappearing. First the professionals leave. Then businesses follow. Young families relocate. Government offices thin out. Schools struggle. Investment stops. Eventually the settlement remains on the map while its economic purpose migrates elsewhere. A town reduced mainly to a road sign has become a coordinate. That should worry Nugaal.
And Then There Is Buurtiinle
Whenever questions arise about Nugaal’s development outside Garowe, Buurtiinle is often produced as evidence that the region still has another growing urban center. But Buurtiinle complicates the argument rather than rescuing it.
Administratively, Buurtiinle belongs to Nugaal. Economically and socially, however, its trade and family ties have long run at least as strongly toward Mudugh and Galkayo as toward Garowe — a pattern residents and traders in the area describe, though it deserves fuller documentation than a single editorial can offer. Trade, livestock movement and commercial activity do not necessarily obey administrative boundaries drawn on government maps.
The map says Nugaal. The marketplace often looks south. That distinction matters. Using Buurtiinle’s growth to demonstrate balanced development across Nugaal risks flattering the regional ledger without confronting the condition of the towns whose economic orientation is unmistakably tied to Nugaal itself. Set Buurtiinle aside for a moment and ask the harder question: what is happening to Eyl, Dangorayo and Sinujiif? The answer is considerably less comfortable.
A Region Becoming a City-State
Here is the arithmetic nobody should be afraid to run. A region consisting of one rapidly expanding capital surrounded by stagnating settlements is gradually ceasing to function as a region. It is becoming a city-state with rural appendages.
That should be especially uncomfortable in Puntland, of all places. Puntland has spent nearly three decades arguing, often correctly, that Somalia cannot be governed by concentrating political authority, public spending and economic opportunity in Mogadishu. It has defended federalism precisely because excessive centralization impoverishes the periphery while feeding the center.
How, then, can Puntland condemn Mogadishu for centralization while tolerating the same pattern inside its own regions? A government cannot spend Monday accusing Villa Somalia of swallowing the country and Tuesday congratulate itself while Garowe swallows Nugaal. Centralization does not become federalism merely because it happens in Garowe rather than Mogadishu. The contradiction is obvious.
The Garowe Magnet
Garowe’s growth is not the problem; its success should be welcomed. The problem begins when the capital grows instead of the region, rather than with it.
The mechanism is straightforward. Government institutions attract civil servants. Civil servants attract housing. Housing attracts shops, schools, restaurants, clinics and construction. International organizations and aid groups follow the government. Private capital follows purchasing power. Universities, hotels and service industries then reinforce the cycle. The capital becomes a magnet, and without deliberate regional policy, everything else becomes iron filings.
That is why development cannot simply be left to gravity. Every new government institution built in Garowe strengthens Garowe, while every neglected road to Eyl weakens Eyl. Every major service concentrated in the capital becomes another reason for families elsewhere to relocate there. Eventually officials point to Garowe’s expansion as evidence that Nugaal is developing. It is not. Garowe is developing. Those are not the same thing.
The Satire Is Becoming Too Easy
One can already imagine the tourism brochure: “Welcome to Nugaal region. Population centers: Garowe, and several historically reported settlements believed to exist beyond the city limits.” Or perhaps the next regional development conference can simplify matters by hanging one large map of Garowe on the wall and labeling it “Nugaal.”
Eyl’s representative gives a speech about fisheries. Dangorayo asks for another road. Sinujiif requests basic services. Everyone applauds. Then another government building goes up in Garowe. Conference adjourned. That joke stops being funny when it starts resembling policy.
Development Must Fan Out
There is nothing mysterious about what needs to happen. Investment must deliberately fan outward from Garowe.
The road to Eyl should be treated as an economic corridor connecting Puntland’s political center with the Indian Ocean, not as a charity project for an isolated district. Fisheries development belongs on the coast. Livestock infrastructure belongs near producing communities. Health and education spending should follow population, geography and need, not proximity to government offices.
Dangorayo and Sinujiif need economic purposes beyond serving passing traffic. Eyl needs serious maritime and fisheries development. District governments need real budgets and authority rather than functioning as administrative messengers waiting for instructions and money from Garowe. Private investors should be drawn beyond the capital through land policy, infrastructure, incentives and reliable public services. And regional planning must start measuring success by what happens outside Garowe, not by counting buildings inside it.
Puntland Cannot Preach What It Does Not Practice
This is larger than Nugaal. Puntland’s political argument within Somalia rests heavily on decentralization, federalism and the right of communities to govern themselves rather than wait for everything to descend from a distant capital. That argument loses moral force when Puntland reproduces centralization internally.
A government cannot demand fiscal decentralization from Mogadishu while starving its own districts. It cannot complain that Somalia has become a Mogadishu city-state while allowing Nugaal to become a Garowe city-state. It cannot preach federalism nationally and practice centralism locally. The principle either travels all the way down, or it is merely political vocabulary.
Wake Up, Nugaal
The warning is straightforward: fan out from Garowe, or watch Nugaal contract around it. Eyl is not a museum. Dangorayo is not a rest stop. Sinujiif is not a road sign. And Nugaal is not another name for Garowe.
These communities do not need another conference promising that their turn is coming. They need roads, investment, functioning local governments, economic opportunity and a deliberate policy that treats regional balance as an obligation rather than a slogan.
Garowe should keep growing — bigger, richer, better. But its success must radiate outward instead of pulling everything inward. Otherwise, officials may someday discover they built a capital spectacularly well while quietly losing the region around it. And by then, there may be nobody left in the forgotten towns to attend the conference explaining what went wrong.
Wake up, Nugaal. A region cannot survive forever as one booming city surrounded by memories.

The Sultan’s Drones: Ankara’s Descent From Somali Patron To Villa Somalia’s Hired Gun – OpEd https://www.eurasiareview.com/04092026-the-sultans-drones-ankaras-descent-from-somali-patron-to-villa-somalias-hired-gun-oped/

By Ismail H. Warsame

Garowe, Puntland, Somalia -Somewhere in Ankara, someone should be asking a plain question: what is Turkey trying to win in Baidoa?
The reported facts are sobering without embellishment. Southwest State officials and residents around Baidoa have for months accused Turkish drones, and at times helicopters and F-16 fighter jets, of providing air cover for federal operations against forces loyal to ousted Southwest President Abdiaziz Hassan Mohamed, known as Laftagareen. On the night of Sept. 3-4, a drone struck the Doolow, Gedo region, home of Gen. Mahad Abdirahman Aden, known as “Shub,” a former federal police commander now politically opposed to Villa Somalia. His family says he survived. Local reporting citing residents at the scene describes deaths and injuries among those present, with one Somali-language outlet citing preliminary information that three people died. None of this is independently confirmed, and neither Villa Somalia nor Ankara has said who ordered or carried out the strike — a silence that has become Turkey’s signature posture in Somalia, the wordless shrug of an ally content to let the smoke answer the questions.
This satire needs no invention. Reality already wrote the punchline: a country that markets itself as patron saint of Somali reconstruction — the airport, the hospital, the scholarships — has become, in the eyes of a growing number of Somalis, subcontractor in a family feud among Somali elites over who sits in which regional palace.
The Loyalty Card Trick
The mechanism is simple. Ankara arrives with a training academy, a port concession, an energy deal, and a line of political credit extended personally to whoever occupies Villa Somalia. The relationship is framed as partnership with the Somali state. In practice it functions as a retainer with the man signing the paperwork. When that man’s rivals happen to be state governors he has fallen out with, Turkish drones stop distinguishing between al-Shabab, the enemy Ankara was invited to fight, and a Southwest State president whose offense was winning his own region’s vote.
One imagines the internal memo: “Mission: counterterrorism partnership.” One reads the results: a deposed president’s forces pushed to Baidoa’s edge; a former police commander’s family home hit in Doolow, hundreds of kilometers from the nearest al-Shabab stronghold worth the fuel. If this is counterterrorism, al-Shabab has disguised itself remarkably well as Somali federalism.
A Villa Somalia Discount Air Force
The pattern speaks for itself. Southwest State’s president was removed in March with reported Turkish air support. His forces were pushed back from Baidoa’s outskirts months later under further reported strikes. By September, drones attributed to the same posture hit the private residence of a general whose apparent crime is opposing Villa Somalia politically. Southwest State residents did not need this desk to notice; they burned the Turkish flag in the streets weeks ago. Ankara’s response has been more silence.
That leaves an uncomfortable proposition this newspaper has circled for months, through the M/V LUTUF affair, the Garmaal and Jiifle strikes, and the SOMTURK dispute under Article 54: Turkey has drifted from partner against al-Shabab to Villa Somalia’s discount air force against other Somalis. A partner defends a state’s sovereignty against external threat. A discount air force defends whoever pays the retainer against whoever does not. Ankara has spent a decade of goodwill blurring that line.
The Doolow Precedent
The Doolow strike deserves gravity, not satire alone. A strike on a private residence that reportedly killed a family member and narrowly spared its intended target, where the target’s apparent offense is political opposition rather than insurgency, is precisely the kind of episode international humanitarian law exists to scrutinize. Whether it meets the threshold of a war crime is for investigators with access to targeting data Ankara has, predictably, declined to share. What is already clear: a foreign air force striking a political rival’s home inside a sovereign state’s internal dispute is not a footnote. It is a precedent — one that could travel to Garowe or Bosaso the next time an official falls out of favor with whichever capital is lending the drones.
A Modest Proposal
If Ankara insists on remaining Somalia’s aerial guarantor, this newspaper offers, in the spirit of Swift rather than sincerity, a modest proposal: publish a price list. If a Turkish airstrike is now available to whoever controls Villa Somalia, Somalis deserve to know the rate and the terms, and whether regional states may place competing orders. Puntland has already found a less ambiguous path in its Aug. 2 basing arrangement with the United States at Bosaso, built on a defined counter-piracy mandate rather than an open tab against domestic rivals. The contrast should embarrass Ankara more than it appears to.
Somalia’s federal member states did not sign up for a foreign power adjudicating their succession disputes from 15,000 feet. Turkey did not build a decade of Somali gratitude to spend it bombing a retired general’s home in Gedo. Somalis are entitled to ask, again: who authorized this, under what law, and to what end?
The smoke over Doolow will clear. The question will not.
  

The Haud Betrayal: A 1956 File And The Template For Ethiopian Encroachment – OpEd https://www.eurasiareview.com/02092026-the-haud-betrayal-a-1956-file-and-the-template-for-ethiopian-encroachment-oped/

Garowe, Puntland, Somalia

By Ismail H. Warsame

Mohamed Affey has spent recent weeks recounting his years as a Kenyan diplomat and mediator of the Mbagathi Somali National Reconciliation Conference, 2002-2004, in a series of interviews with Juxa Video. The episodes cast Kenya as a steady, even-handed host guiding Somali actors to consensus. What Affey omits is how his own government’s conduct, and his own hand in it, nearly collapsed the conference before it produced anything at all.
This writer was present in Mbagathi during the period Affey now narrates from a distance. The record deserves correction.
The State House Maneuver
The signing ceremony Affey treats as a milestone did not take place in the Mbagathi conference hall, where negotiations had run for more than two years. It was moved to Kenya’s State House, and that relocation was not incidental.
There, Abdiqasim Salad Hassan and Mohamed Abdi Yusuf signed the Kenyan-drafted document in their official capacities as president and prime minister of the Transitional National Government. Abdullahi Yusuf was told to sign as an individual, not as president of Puntland State. It was a diplomatic maneuver engineered inside Kenya’s Foreign Ministry, designed to diminish Puntland’s standing at the moment Somalia’s transitional order was being finalized on paper.
This was not oversight. It bore the marks of then-Kenyan Foreign Minister Kalonzo Musyoka and Affey himself, the two officials most responsible for managing Kenya’s role as host. A mediator who omits the one episode that nearly ended the process he claims to have safeguarded is not offering an incomplete memory. He is offering a curated one.
The Walkout That Almost Was
Abdullahi Yusuf recognized the insult and moved to leave the conference outright, a step that would have removed Puntland’s leadership and thrown more than two years of negotiation into crisis.
Reversing that took considerable effort, much of it this writer’s own. Working through two trusted Kenyan contacts, Gen. Mohamud and Kenyan intelligence chief Shukri, this writer argued that Abdullahi Yusuf’s grievance was legitimate and that Kenya’s credibility as host was at stake. The two officers persuaded Abdullahi Yusuf to stay.
More significant than that immediate save was what followed. Mohamud and Shukri, once aware of Musyoka’s and Affey’s bias, committed to backing Abdullahi Yusuf for the remainder of the conference. Their influence reached Kenyan Presidents Daniel arap Moi and, later, Mwai Kibaki, and it became one factor in Musyoka’s eventual removal from Kenya’s Cabinet.
Why It Matters
Signing Abdullahi Yusuf in as a private citizen, stripped of his Puntland title, was an attempt to redraw the balance among Somalia’s transitional actors at the exact moment that balance was being formalized. Had it succeeded, and had Abdullahi Yusuf actually walked, the Mbagathi process and the Transitional Federal Government built on it might not have survived intact.
Affey’s version, delivered more than two decades on with no one present to contest it, recasts Kenya as an even-handed midwife to Somali unity. The fuller record shows a Foreign Ministry that tried, at a decisive moment, to diminish one of the conference’s principal actors, checked only by Kenyan officials who saw the maneuver and corrected course.
Silence on that episode, sustained across a multi-part interview series devoted to the conference, is not forgetfulness. It is a choice. This writer’s account is offered here as a firsthand participant’s record, with an invitation to other participants, Somali and Kenyan, to add what they witnessed.

Ismail H. Warsame is founder of Warsame Policy & Media Network (WAPMEN) and Warsame Digital Media (WDM). He served as founding chief of staff and director general at the Puntland State Presidency, 1998-2004, and was a participant in the Mbagathi Somali National Reconciliation Conference.

Somalia’s federal system is being tested on five fronts at once: the reach of federal authority, the legitimacy of constitutional amendments, security relations between Mogadishu and the states, fiscal federalism, and an increasingly disputed presidential mandate. None of these is a manufactured grievance. They are, as a matter of plain constitutional analysis, genuine problems of national statehood — and Puntland is now the state most directly forced to answer them.
Where Federal Authority Ends
The federal government in Mogadishu holds real constitutional powers, but those powers have limits. Foreign affairs cannot be used to bypass the Article 53 consultation requirement. National defense cannot become a blanket justification for military intervention in regional political disputes. Fiscal oversight cannot double as political punishment. Constitutional reform cannot let the center unilaterally redefine the powers of the Federal Member States. Universal suffrage cannot substitute for the federal agreement the system was built on. And parliamentary majorities cannot vote federalism itself out of existence. The task, in short, is separating federal capacity from federal domination.
Three Paths for Puntland
The study lays out three constitutional options open to Puntland:
Reconstructed federalism — the least disruptive path, requiring clear allocation of powers, rule-based fiscal federalism, constitutional protection of state autonomy, agreed security arrangements, limits on unilateral federal troop deployments, transparent resource-sharing, and an independent mechanism binding both Mogadishu and the states.
Confederation — if trust in conventional federalism has broken down beyond repair, common institutions could retain narrow functions (external defense, currency, citizenship, select foreign affairs, interstate commerce, international debt, maritime coordination) while most domestic authority shifts to the states.
Separation — the most consequential and least romantic option, raising hard questions on international recognition, citizenship, borders, public debt, currency, trade, security, airspace, maritime jurisdiction and the succession of federal assets and obligations. Its appeal, the study argues, will grow in direct proportion to how thoroughly the first two paths are foreclosed.
Seven Policy Recommendations
The study’s recommendations center on institution-building rather than confrontation: an independent federal dispute mechanism so neither Mogadishu nor Puntland is judge in its own cause; a negotiated federal security compact covering troop deployment, state consultation and command structures; formula-based, audited development financing insulated from political conflict; a higher amendment threshold for constitutional provisions touching state powers; a transparent legal accounting of the presidential mandate controversy, including the disputed applicability of the March 2026 amendments to the sitting president; a Puntland Constitutional Futures Commission to study the three options without predetermined conclusions; and continued strengthening of Puntland’s own rule of law and governance institutions, since its case for autonomy rests on demonstrating better governance, not merely more localized power.
The Eritrea Warning
The study draws a limited but pointed institutional parallel to the 1952–1962 Ethiopia–Eritrea federation, established under UN General Assembly Resolution 390(V) and dissolved by Ethiopia after a decade of eroded autonomy. The legal circumstances differ sharply from Puntland’s, and the lesson isn’t that Puntland is destined to repeat that history — it’s structural: when a political union depends on protected autonomy, dismantling that autonomy tends to radicalize rather than extinguish demands for self-government. The center centralizes to prevent fragmentation; the periphery reads centralization as proof autonomy can’t be trusted. Federalists become confederalists. Confederalists may become separatists.
The Bottom Line
Mogadishu holds legitimate national powers. Puntland holds legitimate constitutional autonomy. What Somalia lacks is a trusted institution to define the boundary between them. The study frames the stakes plainly: restore genuine federalism and Puntland has strong reasons to stay committed to Somali unity; let federalism become nominal and confederation becomes the rational response; foreclose both federalism and confederal accommodation, and separation becomes progressively more attractive. The greatest threat to Somali unity, the study concludes, may not come from those demanding autonomy — it may come from a center that, in the name of strengthening the state, dismantles the constitutional bargain that makes the state worth belonging to.

No Due Process At Sea: Turkey’s Unilateral Strikes And The Case For A U.S.-Puntland Alternative – OpEd https://www.eurasiareview.com/31082026-no-due-process-at-sea-turkeys-unilateral-strikes-and-the-case-for-a-u-s-puntland-alternative-oped/

Garowe, Puntland, Somalia

By Ismail H. Warsame

Before Puntland existed as a political concept, the territory it now occupies was a patchwork of self-governing sultanates. The Sultanate of Hobyo (Obbia) and the Majeerteen Sultanate (Migiurtinia), along with the Nogal region, operated as Italian protectorates under treaties signed in 1889 and 1905. Italian oversight, on paper, was nominal — local rulers, Sultan Ali Yusuf in Hobyo and Boqor Osman Mahmoud in the Majeerteen Sultanate, retained internal sovereignty and their own armed forces.
That arrangement changed under Cesare Maria De Vecchi, conte di Val Cismon, who arrived in Mogadishu on Dec. 8, 1923, as governor of Italian Somalia. De Vecchi found a colony his predecessor had described as bankrupt and largely outside Italian control. His five-year governorship, which he later chronicled in his own book, “Orizzonti d’Impero,” centered on one overriding goal: unifying and centralizing power across a territory then split between the southern Benadir coast, Oltregiuba and the still-autonomous sultanates of the north.
The Campaign of the Sultanates
What followed was the so-called Campaign of the Sultanates, launched under Decree-Law No. 1551 of July 10, 1925, and carried out in three distinct phases. Italian forces first moved on Hobyo, subduing it between September 1925 and January 1926. The Nogal region followed, falling between April and July 1926. The final and most difficult phase targeted the Majeerteen Sultanate itself, from November 1926 to February 1927. De Vecchi declared the campaign complete on Feb. 28, 1927.
Boqor Osman Mahmoud did not surrender easily. As Italian forces closed in, he initially attempted to flee toward Ethiopia by way of the British Somaliland Protectorate. British authorities, acting at Italy’s request, intercepted him and handed him over to Italian custody at Laaso Dawaco, near Bosaso. He was brought to Mogadishu along with nearly 400 relatives and supporters, bringing organized Majeerteen resistance to a formal end on Oct. 18, 1927.
To wage the campaigns, De Vecchi organized a new indigenous auxiliary force, the Dubat, initially deployed as border units to help secure the colony’s still-contested frontiers.
A record written by its own author
Historian Luigi Goglia’s assessment of the period, cited in the Treccani biographical dictionary, is unsparing: De Vecchi’s methods in Somalia carried the terroristic hallmarks of Fascist squadrismo, and his dismantling of indirect rule over Hobyo and the Majeerteen marked him as one of the harshest colonial administrators to serve in Italian East Africa. “Orizzonti d’Impero” is De Vecchi’s own account of that record — self-authored and, as one Italian archival note on the book observes, self-celebratory. His own framing of the campaign’s successes should be weighed against that independent historiography.
The episode remains a foundational one for understanding how the territory now known as Puntland was folded into a unified Somali colonial administration — and how the political and clan fault lines drawn or hardened in that period continue to shape the region’s relationship with Mogadishu today.

Editor’s note: Most of this account relies on secondary Italian historiography (Treccani, ANPI, HistoriaRegni, Italia Coloniale) describing the contents of “Orizzonti d’Impero,” rather than direct excerpts from the digitized PDF itself, which could not be retrieved in this research session. The account of Boqor Osman Mahmoud’s flight and interception at Laaso Dawaco was supplied separately and should be attributed to its originating source if this runs under byline. For direct quotation or page-specific citation from the book, consult the digitized copy at arcadia.sba.uniroma3.it/handle/2307/2796.

By Ismail H. Warsame

Garowe, Puntland, Somalia; Toronto, Canada — The Cameroon-flagged cargo vessel MV Lutuf, hijacked by pirates on Aug. 17 off the coast of Puntland’s Nugaal region, is free. On that single fact, Mogadishu and Garowe agree. On almost everything else, they do not — and the gap between their two accounts says more about the state of Somali federalism than the piracy episode itself.
Somalia’s federal Ministry of Defence announced Saturday that the vessel, also referred to in some reporting as MV Latuf, had been freed after a 10-day operation conducted jointly by Turkish and Somali forces. The ministry said four pirate boats were destroyed and 14 alleged pirates were killed before the remaining hijackers abandoned the ship, allowing federal and Turkish forces to take control. The operation, the ministry said, fell under the defense cooperation agreement between Mogadishu and Ankara aimed at strengthening Somalia’s maritime security. The ministry did not detail the condition of the crew.
Puntland’s Ministry of Security tells a different story. On Aug. 30, it confirmed the vessel and its crew had regained their freedom — but it explicitly rejected the claim of a joint military operation. According to Puntland officials, representatives of the federal government and Turkey instead facilitated a ransom payment to the group holding the ship. The ministry said it had monitored communications between federal officials and the hijackers that it alleges were aimed at arranging the payment, and it warned that ransom payments undermine the international campaign against piracy and invite further hijackings.
Editor’s note: The ransom claim comes from a single source — Puntland’s Ministry of Security — and has not been independently corroborated as of this writing. Likewise, the federal government’s account of a 14-pirate death toll and a four-boat engagement has not been verified by independent documentation. Readers should treat both versions as competing official claims pending further confirmation.
What is not in dispute is the timeline. The Lutuf left the Turkish port of Tekirdag in late July and was seized Aug. 17 in waters near Jiifle, in the Eyl district of Nugaal, Puntland. A local elder from the Jiifle community told the Associated Press that the vessel and crew had been freed, without confirming the mechanism of release.
This is not the first time Mogadishu and Garowe have offered irreconcilable narratives about a maritime security incident on Puntland’s coast this month. It follows the Garmaal drone strike (Aug. 18-20) and the Gaala’ood speedboat incident (Aug. 23), both carried out under Turkish unilateral action and both contested in their casualty figures. The pattern is now familiar enough to name: when a security incident occurs in Puntland’s waters, the federal government and its Turkish partner assert operational success, and Puntland’s own security establishment either disputes the account outright or notes it was conducted without coordination through Puntland’s maritime institutions.
That pattern matters beyond this single vessel. Puntland has argued consistently — and I have argued in these pages — that unilateral Turkish operations conducted in coordination with Mogadishu but without Puntland’s maritime authorities are counterproductive, regardless of their tactical outcome. If Puntland’s ransom allegation holds up, it would suggest the federal government misrepresented not just the operational details but the entire character of the release, telling the public a story of force projection when the actual outcome was a negotiated payment. If the ransom claim does not hold up, it nonetheless reveals how completely trust between Garowe and Mogadishu has broken down — to the point that Puntland’s security establishment is prepared to publicly contradict a federal claim of military success with no immediate corroborating evidence of its own.
Either way, the resurgence of piracy off Puntland’s coast — now intersecting with contested claims about how, and on what terms, hijacked vessels are actually being freed — deserves scrutiny independent of whichever capital’s press release arrives first. This essay will be updated as independent verification becomes available.

The Baidoa Trap: AUSSOM Risks Becoming Mogadishu’s Political Enforcer – OpEd https://www.eurasiareview.com/30082026-the-baidoa-trap-aussom-risks-becoming-mogadishus-political-enforcer-oped/

By Ismail H. Warsame
Garowe, Puntland, Somalia; Toronto, Canada

A memo does not normally announce a mission’s decline. But read closely, the African Union’s Aug. 21 directive authorizing the African Union Support and Stabilization Mission in Somalia (AUSSOM) to join the Federal Government of Somalia’s “military operations against the Al-Shabaab terrorist group and its affiliate militias/armed entities” in Southwest State does exactly that. It is the paper trail of a mission searching for relevance in the final months of a mandate it may not survive to be renewed.

The facts of AUSSOM’s predicament are not in dispute. The United States informed the African Union on July 1 that it would end financial support for the UN Support Office in Somalia (UNSOS), AUSSOM’s logistical backbone, once the mission’s current authorization lapses Dec. 31. Troop-contributing nations met in Kampala July 29-31 to lobby for an 18- to 24-month extension. The UN Security Council’s Resolution 2809, adopted Dec. 23, 2025, keeps AUSSOM’s 11,826 uniformed personnel funded only through year’s end, “in the face of intensified attacks by Al-Shabaab” it was meant to help defeat. China’s delegate to the council called the funding gap “unsustainable.” That is the mission’s real condition: a clock running out, a donor walking away and a survival case still unmade to the Security Council that will decide its fate by December.
Set the memo against that backdrop and its purpose sharpens. The Commission “expresses utmost concern” over what it calls “growing alliance between local armed militias and the Al-Shabaab terrorist group” around Baidoa, and authorizes AUSSOM to fight both under a single banner. But what is actually unfolding in Baidoa is not, by the public record, a terrorist insurgency. It is the unfinished business of a federal takeover. Somalia’s army seized Baidoa in March, forcing Southwest State President Abdiaziz Hassan Mohamed Laftagareen to resign days after he had been re-elected to a term Mogadishu called illegal. Federal-backed elections installed Sheikh Aden Mohamed Nur Madobe as his successor June 10. Laftagareen never accepted his removal, and his loyalists, camped outside the city since, have attacked it repeatedly — most recently on Aug. 17, when Somalia’s Ministry of Defense said “nearly 30 attackers” were killed in a raid it attributed to “a mix of Al-Shabaab militants and militias loyal to” Laftagareen. Laftagareen’s spokesman rejected the label outright. No independent source has confirmed that any of the attackers, let alone most of them, actually belonged to Al-Shabaab rather than to a rival Somali political faction that lost a fight for power and wants it back.

That distinction is not a technicality. It is the difference between a counterterrorism mandate and a mandate to help one side of an intra-Somali succession dispute crush the other. AUSSOM’s own rules of engagement are grounded in the AU’s Policy on the Protection of Civilians and international humanitarian law. This same memo instructs AUSSOM to “maintain political neutrality and impartiality” and “steer clear of any political infighting” — a safeguard that exists precisely to prevent the conflation now underway. A mission that brands an ousted state president’s militia as Al-Shabaab, then deploys under its counterterrorism authority to finish him off, has not steered clear of political infighting. It has volunteered to conduct it.
Meanwhile the war AUSSOM was actually built to fight has not paused to wait for Baidoa’s politics to resolve. In the vicinity of Mogadishu, Al-Shabaab has recovered much of the ground Somali forces took from it in Middle Shabelle in the 2022-2025 offensives, and clan militia in Hiiraan are holding the countryside largely on their own, without the mobilization that produced the government’s earlier gains. Mogadishu’s own offensive into Galmudugh stalled this year for the same reason: a failure to organize the Ma’awisley the way it once did in Hiiraan and Middle Shabelle. That is where AUSSOM’s mandate says its war is. Instead, in the season when its funding is most in question and its case to Washington and the Security Council most urgent, the mission is lending its counterterrorism authority to a fight over who governs Baidoa.

This is not an analysis offered lightly. It is a serious charge, and it deserves a serious answer from Addis Ababa: Is AUSSOM fighting Al-Shabaab, or is it fighting Laftagareen and calling him Al-Shabaab because that label survives budget season in New York in a way “Somali political succession dispute” cannot? The Commission’s memo does not answer that question. It assumes it. Puntland, which has watched Mogadishu dismantle federal member states one by one while brokering a security agreement of its own with U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) on Aug. 2, has every reason to ask it plainly, and every reason not to accept a mission’s survival as sufficient justification for how that mission chooses its enemies.

The same suspicious circumstances now extend beyond Baidoa. Southwest State’s Security Minister, Osman Isaaq Mohamed, has publicly called on Kenya to arrest Laftagareen and hand him over through Interpol to the Somali government, accusing him of responsibility for the recent Baidoa attacks. Mogadishu’s federal government has not itself made the demand, but the administration the minister serves is Mogadishu’s own creation, installed in Baidoa by federal troops and answerable to Mogadishu in all but name. Laftagareen, who resigned and fled to Nairobi on March 30 after being violently overthrown, has been based there since, and Kenyan authorities have granted him no formal status beyond refuge. No court, in Kenya or Somalia, has ruled on the allegations against him. Handing over a man ousted by force, on an unproven accusation timed to a military campaign against his own loyalists, would be unfair and unforgivable. Kenya must be careful to avoid drawing itself into Somalia’s quarrel.
Lost in the maneuvering over mandates, labels and extraditions are the residents of Baidoa and the wider Southwest State, who did not choose this fight and cannot escape it. A hospital official told The Associated Press that four civilians were killed and 98 wounded, including 28 women, in the Aug. 17 clashes alone. People of good will, in Somalia and beyond, should not wait for the politics to resolve before helping those caught in the crossfire.

AUSSOM’s mandate runs out Dec. 31. Whether it runs out with dignity or without it will depend on whether the mission spends its final months fighting the insurgency degrading Somalia’s countryside, or spends them helping Mogadishu finish off a domestic rival under borrowed authority. The Commission owes the Somali people, and its own troop-contributing states, a clearer answer than the one in this memo.

Puntland’s Quiet Confederation: While Mogadishu Fights Over A Broken Constitution, Garowe Has Already Moved On – OpEd https://www.eurasiareview.com/28082026-puntlands-quiet-confederation-while-mogadishu-fights-over-a-broken-constitution-garowe-has-already-moved-on-oped/

The Economist
Middle East & Africa | Irro’s gambit
“Somaliland wants to help secure the Red Sea”
Aug 20th 2026 | Nairobi

The Economist’s argument that Somaliland can help secure the Red Sea by trading military access and port facilities for recognition is more aspirational than credible. Somaliland does have strategic geography, an improving port at Berbera, and a leadership eager to leverage both for diplomatic gain. But the article overstates how much security influence a partially recognized entity can actually wield, and it underestimates the legal and political barriers that still define Somaliland’s place in the region.

Geography is not sovereignty

Somaliland’s coastline on the Gulf of Aden is undeniably valuable, and Berbera’s location gives it relevance in any discussion of Red Sea logistics or maritime security. Yet geography alone does not make a polity a dependable security partner in the way a recognized sovereign state can be. The article blurs the line between being strategically located and being politically capable of delivering binding security arrangements.

That distinction matters because Somaliland is still internationally disputed. Israel’s recognition in late 2025 made it the first country to formally recognize Somaliland, but the African Union immediately reaffirmed Somalia’s territorial integrity and called for that recognition to be revoked. In other words, Somaliland’s diplomatic status remains contested, and no amount of strategic self-promotion can erase that fact.

The Djibouti comparison fails

The article suggests Somaliland could become a new Djibouti, but that comparison is misleading. Djibouti hosts foreign military bases from recognized agreements backed by a sovereign government that is accepted by the international system, while Somaliland lacks the same legal standing and diplomatic depth. A base-hosting model depends not only on geography, but on legitimacy, enforceable contracts, and predictable external recognition.

Berbera may be expanding, and it may be attractive to outside powers, but that does not make Somaliland a substitute for Djibouti. Even if foreign governments quietly explore access there, a contested arrangement in Somaliland would remain politically fragile and easy to challenge by Mogadishu, the African Union, and regional rivals. The article treats possible interest as if it were settled capability.

Security leverage is overstated

The piece implies that Somaliland can contribute meaningfully to securing the Red Sea by offering bases to the United States and Israel. But Red Sea security is shaped by larger forces: the Houthi threat, Ethiopian maritime dependence, Gulf rivalries, U.S. strategy, and the Somalia-Ethiopia-Turkey-Israel web of competing interests. Somaliland can be one node in that system, but it cannot control the system.

The article also risks confusing symbolic diplomacy with operational readiness. A willingness to host foreign forces does not automatically translate into effective security provision, especially in a territory whose sovereignty is contested and whose neighbors view military entanglement there with suspicion. The result could be more instability, not less.

Recognition is not guaranteed

The strongest political claim in the article is that security cooperation will help unlock wider recognition. That is speculative at best. Somalia rejects Somaliland’s secession, the African Union rejects unilateral recognition, and broader international practice has so far held firm against endorsing Somaliland’s independence. Even Israel’s recognition did not change the basic reality that most states still treat Somaliland as part of Somalia.

So the article’s logic is inverted: it assumes that if Somaliland offers enough strategic value, recognition will follow. In practice, recognition is driven by international law, regional precedent, and geopolitical calculations that are far bigger than one port, one president, or one transactional security proposal. Somaliland may gain attention, but attention is not the same as statehood.

A more realistic reading

A fairer reading is that Somaliland is trying to convert its location into bargaining power. That is a rational strategy for a government seeking relevance, investment, and diplomatic visibility. But the article goes too far when it frames that strategy as evidence that Somaliland can help secure the Red Sea in a substantive, state-like way.

The better conclusion is simpler: Somaliland can offer geography, not guaranteed security; facilities, not sovereign authority; and political signaling, not recognition. The Economist piece is strongest as a report on ambition, but weak as an assessment of capability. Israeli recognition and Jewish lobbyists in the West cannot fake this reality on the ground.

The Unbalanced Approach Of Djibouti To The Somali Civil War – OpEd https://www.eurasiareview.com/27082026-the-unbalanced-approach-of-djibouti-to-the-somali-civil-war-oped/

Mogadishu’s Curse: Why Somalia Must Neutralize Its Capital Or Replace It – OpEd https://www.eurasiareview.com/26082026-mogadishus-curse-why-somalia-must-neutralize-its-capital-or-replace-it-oped/

Three Men Who Shaped Modern Somalia And A Selective Memory Of Its Sultanates: Which Way Should Puntland Go? – Analysis https://www.eurasiareview.com/25082026-three-men-who-shaped-modern-somalia-and-a-selective-memory-of-its-sultanates-which-way-should-puntland-go-analysis/

https://www.eurasiareview.com/25082026-three-men-who-shaped-modern-somalia-and-a-selective-memory-of-its-sultanates-which-way-should-puntland-go-analysis/

Garowe, Puntland, Somalia — Local reports say eight men were killed Sunday afternoon in an attack by a Turkish military speedboat at a coastal area known as Gaala’ood, located between Eyl and Garacad in Puntland’s Nugaal region. Neither Puntland authorities nor Turkish officials have commented on the incident.
If confirmed, the incident would mark a second deadly encounter in the same stretch of coastline within a week, following the August 18–20 drone strike near Garmaal that killed four men after a small boat delivered supplies to the hijacked cargo vessel M/V LUTUF. That earlier strike, also unconfirmed by Turkish authorities, prompted Puntland’s Ministry of Security to demand clarification and warn that unexplained foreign military operations in its waters could damage security cooperation with international partners.
Today’s reported incident differs in method from the earlier strike — local accounts describe a direct engagement by a speedboat rather than an aerial or drone strike — raising questions about whether foreign naval forces are now conducting closer-range operations along the coast in addition to aerial surveillance and strikes.
No details have yet emerged on the identities of those killed, whether they were fishermen or suspected pirates, or the precise circumstances of the encounter. Community elders in the Garmaal case strongly disputed that the earlier victims were pirates, insisting they were ordinary fishermen; similar disputes may arise here pending confirmation.

By Ismail H. Warsame

Garowe, Puntland, Somalia
There is a particular cruelty in discovery arriving decades after neglect. President Said Abdullahi Deni’s working visit to Mudugh region, now into its second week and still underway, has taken him from Galkayo through Balibusle and Seemade, with Jeriban and the port town of Gara’ad still ahead on the itinerary. This is not simply a tour of a neglected province. It is a double exposure, in the photographic sense: two images superimposed on a single frame, each one indicting the other. And its extended duration is itself part of the exposure — a president who has needed more than a week to traverse the scale of what his own state left unattended.
The first exposure is institutional. It is the record of every Puntland administration since the state’s founding under President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed in 1998 — a record of a region treated as peripheral to a state it helped build. The second exposure is human. It is the resilience of a community that gave Puntland its founding legitimacy in blood and sacrifice, and then was left to govern its own survival while Garowe looked elsewhere.

A debt older than the state
Mudugh’s claim on Puntland is not sentimental. It is foundational. The residents of this region were among the backbone of the Somali Salvation Democratic Front, the resistance movement that bore the weight of Siyad Barre’s repression in the 1980s and paid for it in displacement, imprisonment and death. When Puntland was declared in 1998, it was built on the political and military capital that communities like Mudugh’s had already spent.
That contribution did not end with the state’s founding. In the chaotic 1990s, as General Mohamed Farah Aideed’s United Somali Congress militia pushed into central Somalia, it was residents of Galkayo who stood in its way and defended the town against a force that had already shown what it could do to those who could not resist it. This was not a contribution asked for by any government. It was a community defending itself because no state existed yet to defend it — and later, because the state that did exist chose not to.
Mudugh’s community also resisted what is locally known as “Udub-riix” — a Somali term describing the slow, engineered displacement of one community from its native land by another, a hostile takeover of a locality achieved not by open conflict but by attrition. That the community had to organize against this quieter form of dispossession, in addition to militia incursion, is a measure of how many fronts it has had to defend at once, largely without state support.
That is the second exposure: a population that fought for Puntland’s creation and then, for the better part of three decades, was left to fend for itself in security, in basic services and in what the essay’s own framing rightly calls “a modicum of existence.” No state should require this level of self-reliance from the very communities that made its existence possible.

What the route reveals
The itinerary itself tells the story better than any communique could. Galkayo to Balibusle to Seemade, with Jeriban and the port town of Gara’ad still to come — this is not a ceremonial circuit. It is a transect through underdevelopment, each stop a data point in a pattern of dashed expectations, and the fact that a full week has not exhausted the list of neglected towns is itself the finding. A visiting president moving through these towns is, whether intended or not, conducting an audit of his predecessors and of his own government’s record to date. The evidence does not flatter any of them.
Gara’ad, still ahead on the route, will be instructive on its own when the president reaches it. It is one of five natural deep-sea ports in the Horn of Africa, alongside Djibouti, Berbera, Lamu and Mombasa — a  seaport that should place it among the region’s premier trade assets. Instead, Gara’ad has no outlet road adequate to receive and dispatch goods and services, leaving a deep-sea harbor stranded from the very trade routes it was built by nature to serve. A port town on Puntland’s coast should be an asset — a node of trade, revenue and connectivity to the region it serves. Instead it stands as a symbol of potential deferred, much like Bosaso’s own long-contested development has shown what happens when state attention is inconsistent and often reactive rather than planned. Coastal access without state investment is not an asset. It is a missed opportunity with a view, and whether Gara’ad’s stop produces more than another photograph will be a fair test of what this entire visit was for.

Discovery is not delivery
There is a temptation, common to visiting heads of state everywhere, to treat the act of witnessing as itself a form of remedy — as though acknowledgment discharges the obligation that neglect created. It does not. President Deni is, by this account, discovering both the spirit of Mudugh’s community and the scale of the state’s failure toward it, and he is still discovering it: the visit has not yet concluded, and its final leg through Jeriban to Gara’ad will determine whether this becomes a turning point or simply the longest photo opportunity in Puntland’s recent history. That discovery is necessary. It is not sufficient.
The honest question the essay poses — is it too little, too late — deserves an honest answer, and the answer is that it depends entirely on what follows the visit, not on the visit itself. A presidential convoy through backward towns of Balibusle and Seemade changes nothing structurally. What would change something is a resourced plan: investment in Gara’ad’s port capacity, security infrastructure that does not depend on communities arming and organizing themselves, and a budgetary commitment that treats Mudugh as a shareholder in Puntland’s prosperity rather than a periodic photo opportunity.
Puntland was not built by Garowe alone. It was built by the SSDF’s fighters and by the towns that stood against Aideed’s militia without being asked and without being paid. A state that forgets the ledger of its own founding does so at the cost of its legitimacy in the regions that underwrote it. Mudugh’s patience has already been extraordinary. It should not be mistaken for infinite.
Ismail H. Warsame is the founder of the Warsame Policy & Media Network (WAPMEN) and Warsame Digital Media (WDM). He served as founding Chief of Staff and Director General at the Puntland State Presidency (1998-2004) and is co-author of the 2019 WardheerNews policy paper calling for confederation and warning against constitutional term extension. He writes on Somali federal politics, Puntland governance and Horn of Africa security.

When you read WDM, ask yourself a simple question: did you pay for it? No. You didn’t. And yet you carry yourself like some silent saint — reading in the shadows, lips sealed, hands idle, eyes pretending to be innocent. What is this hypocrisy? You don’t pay, you don’t comment, you don’t share — yet you soak up the fire like a sponge and walk away as if glancing through a few paragraphs was a favor you did WDM.
Do you think WDM survives in your silence? Do you imagine that truth spreads itself while readers sit on their hands? This is the tragedy: our readers behave like the Somali opposition — thunderous in private WhatsApp groups, invisible in public stance. They consume, they nod in agreement over tea, but when it comes to standing up and being counted, they fold like a cheap umbrella in the first gust of wind.
This isn’t gratitude. It’s graveyard silence. You read essays meant to enlighten, to warn, to arm you with truth in a season of lies — and you don’t light a single candle of reaction. Not even the flicker of a “like.” Not even the courage of a simple share. You read, you nod to yourself in secret, and then you lock the truth away in your head like contraband, as if knowledge were something to hoard rather than something to spread.
What is your measure of gratitude — to scroll past and vanish? Do you think knowledge grows stronger buried under your mattress, untouched, unspoken? While you hide behind your silence, the enemies of truth are counting their blessings. Every reader who consumes and disappears is a small victory handed to them for free. Cowardice dressed up as neutrality is still cowardice.
Reading without engaging is like going to a wedding, eating the food, and sneaking out the back without clapping for the bride and groom. It is worse than that, even — it is like attending a funeral, sitting through the prayers, and refusing to say “Innaa Lillahi wa innaa ilayhi raaji’uun.” What kind of guest behaves this way? What kind of audience?
WDM writes so that Somalis — at home and in the diaspora, in Garowe and in Toronto, in Mogadishu and in Minneapolis — might see their politics more clearly than the propaganda machines want them to. But the truth was never meant to travel a one-way street. If you believe silence is neutral, you are mistaken. Silence is not neutrality — it is complicity with ignorance. It is betrayal of the very enlightenment you just quietly consumed and quietly walked away with.
So here is the challenge, plain and unadorned: break the chains of mute readership. If you can’t pay, at least react. If you can’t contribute, at least share. If you can’t fight for the truth in public, at least stand up in the small way available to you and clap. WDM does not ask for your blood, your money, or your name in lights. It asks for your finger on the “share” button — the smallest act of courage there is, and still too much for too many.
Remember this, and remember it well: reading in silence doesn’t make you a thinker. It makes you a ghost — present in the room, invisible in the struggle, and utterly unaccounted for when history asks who stood where.

A WDM Editorial

Garowe, Puntland, Somalia; Toronto, Canada
A social media post attributed to Ethiopia’s Institute of Foreign Affairs (IFA), reportedly showing Somaliland separated from or erasing Somalia, has again set off alarm across Somali social media. WDM has not independently viewed the clip in question, and readers should treat the specific image’s content and date as unconfirmed pending direct verification. What can be established, and what matters more than any single graphic, is the institutional and historical context the incident sits inside.
The pattern is real
This is not the first time. In May 2019, Ethiopia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs published a map that erased Somalia altogether while showing Somaliland as a separate entity. The ministry apologized within days, saying the map had “crept” onto its website and calling the error “unacceptable.” No one at the time offered a convincing account of how a map with that specific configuration, Somalia gone, Somaliland present, made it onto an official government platform by accident.
Seven years on, the recurrence of a similar visual from IFA lands differently. IFA is not a random commentator. By its own account, it operates as a think tank within Ethiopia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, tasked with shaping the country’s foreign policy positions. That institutional link is worth stating plainly rather than assuming: it means Mogadishu has standing to demand an official response, not just a deleted post, and it means Addis Ababa cannot dismiss the episode as the work of an unaffiliated blogger. It is also fair to note, for balance, that IFA’s own social media presence describes itself as “independent,” a tension between self-description and institutional reality that any formal Somali complaint should point to directly rather than paper over.
Why the timing matters
Whatever the truth of this specific image, it arrives against a documented sequence that gives it weight:
January 2024: Ethiopia signed a memorandum of understanding with Somaliland for Red Sea access, which Somaliland’s leadership described as including Ethiopian recognition in exchange for a 50-year lease. Mogadishu called it a violation of its territorial sovereignty.
December 11, 2024: Under Turkish mediation, Ethiopia and Somalia signed the Ankara Declaration, in which both governments “reaffirmed their respect and commitment to one another’s sovereignty, unity, independence, and territorial integrity,” with any Ethiopian sea access to be negotiated while respecting Somalia’s territorial integrity.
Ongoing: Ethiopia remains one of AUSSOM’s principal troop contributors, with roughly 2,500 personnel authorized under the mission, a security relationship Mogadishu still needs even as it disputes Addis Ababa’s conduct elsewhere.
A map that dissolves Somalia’s borders, published by an institution sitting inside the same ministry that signed Ankara, does not square with the spirit of that declaration. Whether the specific image reflects deliberate signaling or institutional carelessness, the recurrence itself is the story: this is the second documented instance of an official Ethiopian platform erasing Somalia while recognizing Somaliland, not an isolated glitch.
What actually works
The instinct to demand expulsion of Ethiopian troops or a severed embassy is understandable and, on the present facts, premature. Ethiopia’s AUSSOM presence is a security cost Somalia still needs while its own forces mature, not a favor Addis Ababa is extending. Trading that leverage away in anger would cost Mogadishu more than it costs Addis Ababa.
The more durable response is institutional:
A formal démarche, not a social media statement, demanding written correction from both IFA and Ethiopia’s Foreign Ministry, citing Ankara explicitly and requiring the archive itself be corrected.
A standing cartographic verification unit inside the Foreign Ministry, tasked with monitoring Ethiopian government, African Union, and commercial airline materials for recurring sovereignty errors, with each instance dated and archived for AU and UN reference.
Keeping tracks separate. Bilateral maritime negotiations with Ethiopia should proceed on their own track, distinct from AUSSOM’s security architecture. Conflating the two hands Addis Ababa a lever it should not have.
Closing the internal gap. As long as Mogadishu-Hargeisa dialogue stays frozen, external actors will keep exploiting the ambiguity. Sovereignty is asserted abroad, but it is secured, or lost, at home.
For the Somali public and diaspora, the useful response is documentation over amplification: archive the material, report it through official channels, and press diaspora representatives to reaffirm the Ankara framework rather than call for unilateral escalation. Somali GIS experts, historians, and legal scholars producing authoritative multilingual maps, in Somali, English, Arabic, Amharic, and Turkish, would do more to settle this argument permanently than any volume of outraged reposting.
Firmness on sovereignty and discipline in defending it are not in tension. They are the only combination that has ever worked.

Editor’s note: This piece synthesizes and fact-checks a WAPMEN subscriber discussion thread. The specific social media clip described by the original poster has not been independently viewed by WDM; institutional and historical claims above have been verified against primary and contemporaneous news sources.

https://www.eurasiareview.com/20082026-eliminating-the-strongman-system-somalias-unfinished-constitutional-task-oped/