By Ismail H. Warsame

The recent agreement between the Puntland Government, DP World (Dubai Ports) and the merchant community over cargo charges at Bosaso Port is a welcome development. After days of tension that threatened to disrupt Puntland’s busiest commercial gateway, the government demonstrated flexibility by reducing the disputed fees, while merchants accepted a compromise that allows trade to resume.
That is good news for everyone.
A functioning economy depends on predictability, and Bosaso Port is the economic heartbeat of Puntland. Every interruption at the port affects importers, exporters, transport companies, consumers, and government revenues alike. Governments should be firm in defending the public interest, but wisdom also lies in knowing when dialogue produces better results than confrontation. In this instance, compromise served the broader public interest.
Yet the successful resolution of the commercial dispute should not obscure the larger questions confronting Puntland.
Economic disagreements can often be settled around a negotiating table. Security disputes rarely can.

Despite the easing of tensions at the port, Bosaso continues to host armed units formerly associated with Puntland’s security forces under General Mohamud Diano. Reports have alleged that these forces are now aligned with the Somali National Army (SNA) rather than the Puntland administration. Whatever the precise facts on the ground, the existence of competing claims of loyalty inevitably raises concerns about institutional cohesion and the state’s monopoly over the lawful use of force.
These concerns appear to have had practical consequences. Reports indicate that President Said Abdullahi Deni relocated from the presidential residence on the outskirts of Bosaso to another part of the city because of security considerations. Whether viewed symbolically or operationally, such a move illustrates the sensitivity of the prevailing security environment.

Meanwhile, attention shifted to Garowe.
General Jimcaale was seen publicly displaying a heavily armed militia on the outskirts of the Puntland capital. Public demonstrations of armed strength are seldom ordinary events. They communicate political messages as much as military capability, particularly during periods of heightened political uncertainty.
His route into Puntland attracted additional attention. According to reports, he travelled from Mogadishu through Laascaanood before entering Puntland territory. Earlier, he had been received in Mogadishu by the Federal Government and was subsequently announced as commander of the so-called 54th Division of the Somali National Army, a military formation whose operational status has itself been the subject of public debate.
Taken individually, each of these developments might be interpreted differently. Taken together, however, they point toward a broader institutional question: how should overlapping political authority and competing security structures be managed within Somalia’s federal framework?
History suggests that this is not a trivial question.
Throughout history, governments—regardless of ideology—have regarded divided military loyalty as one of the greatest threats to state stability. Economic disagreements can be negotiated. Political disagreements can often be mediated. Competing chains of military command are considerably more difficult to reconcile.

One historical episode illustrates this principle.
During the final years of Ethiopia’s Derg government, relations between Addis Ababa and the Somali Salvation Democratic Front (SSDF) deteriorated over the movement’s desire for greater operational independence. The disagreement culminated in the detention of SSDF Chairman Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed by the Ethiopian authorities.
According to accounts of those events, elements within the SSDF protested Yusuf’s detention, creating what Ethiopian authorities regarded as an unacceptable military challenge.
Mengistu Haile Mariam reportedly summoned senior SSDF figures who had not been detained and explained his government’s position in memorable terms:
“My government itself came to power through an army mutiny that overthrew Emperor Haile Selassie. We cannot allow you to demonstrate such an example before our own forces in the Ogaden.”
Whether recounted as political history or as an illustration of statecraft, the episode conveys an enduring lesson. Governments that themselves emerged from military upheaval are often especially alert to any signs of fragmentation within armed institutions. More broadly, states generally regard divided military allegiance as an existential concern because it directly affects their ability to maintain constitutional order.
This historical parallel does not suggest that different political contexts are identical. Rather, it highlights a consistent institutional reality: governments tend to view competing armed loyalties as fundamentally different from ordinary political disagreement.
That distinction remains relevant today.

The agreement at Bosaso Port demonstrates that dialogue can resolve commercial disputes when parties are prepared to compromise. It is an encouraging example of pragmatic governance.
Security, however, demands something more than compromise alone. It requires professional institutions, clearly defined chains of command, public confidence, and a shared commitment to constitutional authority. Without those foundations, even successful economic negotiations may offer only temporary relief while deeper structural tensions continue to accumulate beneath the surface.
Puntland has built a reputation over many years for relative stability compared with much of Somalia. Preserving that reputation will depend not only on maintaining commercial confidence but also on strengthening institutions capable of managing political disagreement without allowing security fragmentation to take root.
The lesson from Bosaso is therefore twofold.
First, flexibility in economic governance can reduce unnecessary confrontation and strengthen public confidence. Second, economic stability cannot be separated indefinitely from institutional security. Prosperity rests not only on functioning ports and active markets but also on credible public institutions that exercise authority through law rather than through competing armed actors.
Bosaso may have regained commercial momentum.

The more consequential challenge now lies in ensuring that institutional cohesion keeps pace with economic recovery. History suggests that governments can survive difficult negotiations over taxation and trade. The more enduring test is whether they can preserve the unity, professionalism, and legitimacy of the institutions entrusted with safeguarding the state itself.

-Part II-

Learning from Successful States

Somalia need not search for solutions in theory alone. History offers numerous examples of societies that successfully reduced the political importance of ethnicity, tribe, religion, or regional identity without attempting to erase them altogether.

Singapore inherited a deeply divided society consisting of Chinese, Malays, Indians, and other minority communities. Rather than outlawing ethnic identities, the government deliberately strengthened state institutions while enforcing equal standards within the civil service. Recruitment became increasingly merit-based, corruption was aggressively prosecuted, and public housing policies deliberately mixed communities to reduce segregation. Ethnic identity remained culturally important, but competence became the currency of government.

Botswana followed a different but equally instructive path. At independence in 1966, it was one of the poorest countries in Africa. Rather than allowing tribal competition to dominate the state, Botswana built a professional bureaucracy, respected constitutional institutions, and maintained prudent management of public resources. Traditional leaders retained respected advisory roles through the House of Chiefs, yet executive authority remained accountable to constitutional government. The coexistence of traditional authority and modern state institutions became a source of stability rather than conflict.

Rwanda, despite its own unique historical context, pursued another lesson after the 1994 genocide. The state deliberately discouraged ethnic mobilisation in public administration while simultaneously investing heavily in institutions, public order, education, and service delivery. Although Rwanda’s political model remains debated internationally, its experience demonstrates that rebuilding public institutions can gradually reduce the political salience of inherited identities.

South Korea presents yet another example. Following war, poverty, and authoritarian rule, advancement within government increasingly became tied to education, professional examinations, and administrative competence. Economic transformation followed institutional reform rather than preceding it.

The common denominator across these diverse experiences is unmistakable.

None attempted to abolish historical identities.

All sought to make those identities progressively less decisive in determining access to state power.

That is precisely the lesson Somalia should embrace.

Federalism and Meritocracy Are Compatible

One of the most persistent misconceptions in Somali political discourse is that federalism somehow prevents meritocracy. The evidence suggests otherwise.

Federal systems exist successfully across the world, including the United States, Germany, Canada, Switzerland, Australia, India, and Nigeria. Their federal arrangements recognise regional diversity while maintaining national standards for constitutional governance, public finance, defence, and civil service professionalism.

Federalism does not weaken the state.

Weak institutions weaken federalism.

Somalia’s federal system emerged from historical necessity after state collapse and civil war. It reflected political realities that could not simply be ignored. Attempting to dismantle that settlement through recentralisation would likely intensify rather than resolve political tensions.

Instead, federal institutions themselves must become increasingly professional.

Regional administrations should compete through better governance rather than stronger clan mobilisation. Citizens should compare governments according to schools built, hospitals functioning, roads completed, security maintained, and corruption reduced—not according to the genealogy of office holders.

Competition between governments can become an engine of national progress if institutions rather than clans become the basis for political legitimacy.

The Roadmap to Meritocracy

Somalia’s transformation requires neither revolutionary rhetoric nor constitutional romanticism. It requires disciplined institution-building sustained across decades.

The first priority remains security. Armed forces, police services, and intelligence institutions must recruit, train, promote, and discipline personnel according to professional standards rather than political patronage. Security institutions that represent the republic rather than particular constituencies become the foundation upon which every subsequent reform depends.

Second, the civil service must become genuinely professional. Competitive examinations, transparent recruitment procedures, performance evaluations, and protection against arbitrary political dismissal should gradually replace informal patronage networks. Public office must be viewed as national service rather than political entitlement.

Third, judicial independence requires strengthening. Judges cannot administer impartial justice while fearing political interference or clan retaliation. Equal application of the law remains the cornerstone of constitutional government.

Fourth, education must produce citizens rather than merely graduates. Civic education should emphasise constitutional rights, public ethics, institutional accountability, peaceful political participation, and national responsibility. Students should understand not only where they come from but also the obligations they owe to the republic they collectively share.

Fifth, corruption must become politically expensive. Anti-corruption commissions, independent auditors, parliamentary oversight committees, and investigative journalism must function without intimidation. No democracy survives when corruption becomes normalised.

Finally, economic opportunity must expand beyond political patronage. Young entrepreneurs should succeed because they innovate, invest, and create employment—not because they possess privileged political connections.

Meritocracy ultimately depends upon equal opportunity.

Without opportunity, merit becomes merely another slogan.

Citizenship Above Lineage

The Somali Republic cannot be rebuilt by asking citizens to forget their history.

Nor can it succeed by pretending that lineage no longer matters.

Instead, Somalia must establish a new hierarchy of public values.

A Somali may remain proud of his or her clan while recognising that public office belongs to the nation.

A judge should be respected because of integrity.

A soldier because of courage.

A teacher because of knowledge.

A doctor because of competence.

A minister because of performance.

A president because of constitutional leadership.

Not because of genealogy.

When public confidence shifts from lineage to institutions, political culture itself begins to change. Elections become contests over programmes rather than clan arithmetic. Public administration becomes increasingly predictable. Investors gain confidence. Citizens begin expecting fairness instead of favours.

That is how nations mature.

Policy Recommendations

To translate this vision into practice, Somalia should pursue the following long-term national programme:

1. Preserve traditional elders as advisory and reconciliation institutions while removing routine executive functions from clan structures.
2. Establish an independent national civil service commission responsible for merit-based recruitment and promotion.
3. Introduce transparent procurement systems for all public contracts.
4. Strengthen judicial independence through constitutional guarantees and professional training.
5. Expand civic education from primary school through university with emphasis on constitutional citizenship.
6. Professionalise security institutions through unified standards of recruitment and promotion.
7. Create independent anti-corruption agencies with genuine prosecutorial authority.
8. Encourage political parties organised around policy platforms rather than clan alliances.
9. Strengthen federal institutions through cooperation rather than political confrontation.
10. Promote national symbols, public service ethics, and constitutional patriotism capable of uniting citizens beyond inherited identities.

None of these reforms will produce immediate miracles.

Institution-building is measured in decades, not election cycles.

Conclusion: The Unfinished Republic

Somalia stands at a historical crossroads.

One road continues the familiar cycle of clan mobilisation, institutional weakness, corruption, insecurity, and political fragmentation.

The other road is undoubtedly more demanding. It requires patient institution-building, constitutional discipline, accountable leadership, professional public administration, and citizens willing to judge governments by performance rather than lineage.

The choice is not between clan and state.

The choice is whether the state remains permanently subordinate to the clan.

Somalia’s greatest national project is therefore neither abolishing clan identity nor glorifying it.

It is restoring the proper relationship between society and government.

The clan should remain a respected social institution.

The state must become an impartial constitutional institution.

That is the distinction upon which Somalia’s future depends.

The republic will not endure because Somalis stop belonging to clans.

It will endure because every Somali, regardless of lineage, comes to believe that citizenship offers greater protection, greater opportunity, greater justice, and greater dignity than political patronage ever could.

Only then will Somalia complete the unfinished journey from kinship to constitutional nationhood.

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Notes

1. Douglass C. North, Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
2. Francis Fukuyama, Political Order and Political Decay (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014).
3. Samuel P. Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968).
4. I. M. Lewis, A Modern History of Somalia, 4th ed. (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2002).
5. Ken Menkhaus, “Governance without Government in Somalia,” International Security 31, no. 3 (2006–2007): 74–106.
6. Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, Why Nations Fail (New York: Crown, 2012).
7. Joel S. Migdal, Strong Societies and Weak States (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988).
8. African Development Bank, Governance in Africa (Abidjan: AfDB, various editions).

Bibliography

Acemoglu, Daron, and James A. Robinson. Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty. New York: Crown, 2012.

African Development Bank. Governance in Africa. Abidjan: African Development Bank.

Fukuyama, Francis. Political Order and Political Decay. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014.

Huntington, Samuel P. Political Order in Changing Societies. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968.

Lewis, I. M. A Modern History of Somalia. 4th ed. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2002.

Menkhaus, Ken. “Governance without Government in Somalia.” International Security 31, no. 3 (2006–2007): 74–106.

Migdal, Joel S. Strong Societies and Weak States. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988.

North, Douglass C. Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.

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By Ismail H. Warsame

History rarely begins with catastrophe. It starts with signals—subtle at first, then harder to ignore. Puntland is now at such a moment.

A tense stand-off around the Port of Bosaso, renewed reports of piracy along the coast, rising political polarization, and an increasingly rigid approach to conflict management are converging into a pattern that demands attention. None of these developments alone guarantees crisis. Together, they form a warning.

States do not collapse because of a single dramatic event. They deteriorate when warning signs are dismissed, when political disputes harden into hostility, and when institutions are drawn into competition rather than stability. Puntland has travelled this road before. It should not do so again.

Bosaso sits at the center of this moment. It is not merely a city; it is Puntland’s economic lifeline and one of the most strategic ports in the Horn of Africa. Its stability underpins trade, employment, and investor confidence. When uncertainty surrounds Bosaso, the consequences ripple outward—business slows, costs rise, and livelihoods are threatened. Political brinkmanship around such a critical asset is not a local matter. It is a statewide economic and security risk. Strategic infrastructure must remain above political confrontation.

Equally concerning are renewed signs of piracy. Piracy does not reappear by chance. It emerges where governance weakens, where coordination falters, and where political focus shifts inward. Puntland once demonstrated that piracy could be defeated through cooperation among security forces, communities, and international partners. Allowing even a limited resurgence would represent more than a security lapse; it would signal a deeper failure of governance. Piracy is not just a crime. It is a symptom of instability.

Yet the most troubling trend may be political inflexibility. Disagreement is natural in any political system. The danger lies in confusing stubbornness with strength. Effective leadership requires the confidence to engage, negotiate, and compromise. No government possesses a monopoly on wisdom, and no opposition holds a monopoly on patriotism. When leaders stop listening, tensions rise. When tensions rise unchecked, conflict follows.

Puntland’s history offers a different model. Since its establishment, it has often managed internal disputes through dialogue—through elders, institutions, and negotiated settlements rather than sustained violence. That tradition of political accommodation has been one of its greatest strengths. Abandoning it now would be a costly mistake. Inclusion is not weakness; it is the foundation of durable governance.

Security and politics are inseparable. When political legitimacy weakens, security institutions come under strain. When dialogue collapses, space opens for criminal networks, extremist groups, and external actors. Stability cannot be enforced through security measures alone. It must be built through political cohesion.

There is still time to change course. Crises remain manageable when addressed early. The immediate priority should be de-escalation: reducing tensions, restoring dialogue, and relying on institutional processes rather than improvisation. Security forces must remain professional and impartial, focused on protecting citizens rather than participating in political disputes. Traditional elders, business leaders, civil society, and religious figures all have a role in calming the situation before it spirals.

The cost of miscalculation is always higher than expected. Political actors often believe they control events—until they do not. Somali history offers too many examples of situations that appeared manageable until they were not.

Leadership, in the end, is not measured by rhetoric or displays of toughness. It is measured by outcomes: whether citizens feel secure, whether economic life continues uninterrupted, and whether crises are resolved before they become conflicts. The leaders who endure in history are not those who win avoidable confrontations, but those who prevent them.

Puntland stands at a defining moment. The warning signs are visible. The choice is clear: pursue dialogue, flexibility, and political maturity—or risk a path toward instability that will be far more difficult to reverse.

The time to act is now, before the whispers become a crisis that can no longer be contained.

Reports have emerged of a suspected sea piracy incident off the coast of Yemen in the Red Sea, with early details still sketchy and no official confirmation yet on the full circumstances.

A social media post circulating widely on Friday referred to a vessel identified as MT-ASANA, while another post cited coordinates in the Red Sea near Yemen. The posts also referenced a Reuters report suggesting that armed men allegedly boarded or approached a vessel, but the information has not yet been independently verified.

Authorities in maritime organizations, particularly UK-based ones, have advised caution in handling the details, saying the situation remains fluid and unconfirmed. Maritime sources say the area remains a sensitive shipping corridor, and officials are expected to issue updated guidance as more details become available.

At this stage, it is not clear whether the vessel suffered damage, whether the crew is safe, or who may have been behind the incident.

“This is a developing situation, and we are treating all early reports with caution until they are confirmed,” a maritime security source said.

The Red Sea has seen repeated security concerns in recent years because of its importance to global trade and its proximity to conflict zones. Analysts say even an unconfirmed attack can trigger concern among shipping operators, insurers, and naval patrols monitoring the waterway.

For now, officials are urging caution as they assess the credibility of the reports and the condition of the vessel and crew.

A WDM Policy Essay

By Ismail H. Warsame

Introduction: The Wrong Debate

For more than half a century, Somalia has been arguing over the wrong question. Politicians, academics, civil society activists, and foreign advisers alike have repeatedly asked how the clan can be eliminated from Somali politics. Others, equally convinced of the impossibility of such an undertaking, have defended the clan as though it were the only legitimate foundation upon which the Somali state can stand.

Both positions are fundamentally flawed.

Clan identity is neither Somalia’s greatest enemy nor its greatest political asset. It is a historical social institution that predates the modern Somali state by centuries. Like language, culture, and religion, it cannot simply be legislated away. Nor should it be. It provides social solidarity, mediation, welfare, identity, and mechanisms for conflict resolution that have sustained Somali communities through the collapse of governments and the absence of functioning public institutions.

The real tragedy is not the existence of clans. The tragedy is that the Somali state itself has become subordinate to them.

Every election becomes a census of genealogies. Every cabinet appointment becomes a negotiation over lineage. Every military promotion becomes vulnerable to political patronage. Public contracts frequently reward clan alliances rather than competence, while public institutions struggle to command loyalty beyond kinship networks. The state becomes less a national institution than an arena in which competing clan interests seek temporary advantage.

This was never the purpose of the republic established in 1960, nor of the federal order reconstructed after 2004. Both sought, however imperfectly, to build institutions capable of serving citizens as citizens rather than as members of competing genealogical communities.

The question, therefore, is not whether Somalia should abolish the clan. That objective is neither realistic nor desirable. The real national project is to make clan identity progressively less important in public administration while preserving its legitimate social functions. The goal is a gradual transition from a political order organised around lineage to one governed by citizenship, merit, accountability, and the rule of law.

That transformation cannot be achieved overnight. It requires patience, sequencing, and institutional discipline. Above all, it requires political leaders willing to build a state stronger than themselves.

The Clan: A Social Institution, Not a Constitutional Problem

Many observers misunderstand the nature of Somali clans because they approach them exclusively through the lens of politics. Historically, however, clans were never designed to govern modern states. They emerged as mechanisms of survival in an environment characterised by pastoral mobility, scarce resources, and the absence of centralised authority. They regulated access to pasture and water, settled disputes through customary law, or xeer, protected members against external threats, and provided mutual assistance during times of hardship.

In this respect, the clan fulfilled functions comparable to extended families, tribal confederations, or village associations found elsewhere in the world. Its legitimacy derived from social obligation rather than constitutional authority.

The collapse of the Somali Republic in 1991 transformed these traditional institutions. As state structures disappeared, clan organisations expanded into the vacuum, assuming responsibilities that governments could no longer perform. They became providers of security, justice, taxation, humanitarian assistance, and political representation. This development was not evidence that clans were inherently incompatible with modern governance. Rather, it demonstrated a broader principle of political science: when formal institutions fail, informal institutions inevitably replace them.¹

Yet informal institutions, however resilient, cannot substitute indefinitely for a functioning state. Their legitimacy remains particularistic rather than universal. They protect members before citizens. Justice varies according to affiliation. Economic opportunities become tied to political access rather than competitive markets. Loyalty follows kinship rather than constitutional obligation.

The challenge, therefore, is not to destroy informal institutions but to restore formal ones.

Somalia Once Demonstrated That Merit Could Restrain Lineage

Somalia is not entering this debate without historical experience. During the period of internal administration and self-government under Italian trusteeship in the south and British colonial administration in the north, and later under the early post-independence governments led by the Somali Youth League, there was a discernible effort to limit the influence of clan affiliation within public administration.

Under leaders such as Abdullahi Isse, Abdirashid Ali Sharma’arke, and, most notably, Prime Minister Abdirizak Haji Hussein, the recruitment and advancement of public servants were increasingly associated with education, competence, discipline, and professional conduct. There was also a serious attempt to professionalise the police and armed forces by linking rank and promotion to training, service, experience, and institutional responsibility rather than purely to genealogy.

The system was never perfect. Political favouritism existed. Regional imbalances persisted. Clan considerations did not disappear, and the inherited colonial institutions themselves contained profound inequalities, exclusions, and administrative weaknesses. The early Somali administrations also committed many political and institutional errors.

Yet they inherited and preserved a modicum of bureaucratic meritocracy from the European powers. Civil servants were generally expected to possess qualifications. Security personnel were expected to respect chains of command. Public employment was regarded, at least in principle, as service to the republic rather than the private property of a lineage group.

This historical experience deserves far greater attention than it usually receives. Somali society at the time was more rural, less educated, more traditional, and in many respects more deeply organised around clan structures than it is today. Large sections of the population had limited access to formal schooling, modern administration, and urban institutions. By contemporary standards, the society was materially underdeveloped and administratively inexperienced.

Yet that generation came remarkably close to restraining tribal influence in the workplace.

Clan identity remained powerful within society, but there was an emerging understanding that it should not automatically determine who became a district commissioner, police officer, military commander, diplomat, teacher, or senior civil servant. The new republic attempted to create a distinction between the social legitimacy of lineage and the administrative requirements of the state.

Abdirizak Haji Hussein’s administration represented perhaps the clearest expression of this tendency. His insistence upon discipline, administrative competence, austerity, and public responsibility demonstrated that Somali leaders could challenge entrenched patronage even when doing so carried political costs. His government was not free of shortcomings, but it embodied an important principle: the state could recognise the social reality of clans without surrendering the machinery of government to them.

That early experiment gradually weakened as electoral competition intensified, political patronage expanded, and public institutions became increasingly vulnerable to personal and factional influence. The military regime that followed later condemned tribalism rhetorically while reproducing it selectively through security structures, patronage networks, and personalised rule. What had begun as an imperfect attempt to build a professional republic deteriorated into the manipulation of lineage by the state itself.

The lesson is therefore not that Somalia must import an alien model of governance. Merit-based public administration is not foreign to Somali history. Somalia once possessed the beginnings of such a system. The task today is to recover, modernise, and institutionalise that interrupted tradition.

If a poorer, less educated, and more traditionally organised Somali society could partially restrain clan influence in public employment during the 1950s and 1960s, contemporary Somalia has no credible excuse for allowing every appointment, promotion, contract, and security command to become a genealogical negotiation.

The obstacle is not Somali culture.

The obstacle is political leadership that benefits from institutional weakness.

When the State Becomes a Clan Enterprise

The greatest danger facing Somalia today is not clan identity itself but the capture of public institutions by clan calculations.

When ministers are appointed primarily to satisfy political arithmetic rather than administrative competence, governance deteriorates. When civil servants owe their positions to patronage instead of qualification, professionalism disappears. When military commanders answer first to political sponsors rather than constitutional authority, national security fragments. When judges fear clan retaliation more than legal precedent, justice loses credibility.

This pattern creates a vicious cycle.

Weak institutions encourage citizens to rely more heavily upon clans. Greater reliance upon clans weakens public institutions even further. Each reinforces the other until the state becomes incapable of performing its basic functions.

Corruption flourishes under such conditions because accountability becomes personalised rather than institutional. Public office is viewed not as a national trust but as an opportunity to redistribute resources to one’s political constituency. Government contracts become instruments of political reward. Recruitment becomes an extension of electoral bargaining. Public finance becomes increasingly opaque.

The consequence is not merely inefficient government. It is declining public confidence in the state itself.

Citizens who believe institutions are fundamentally biased cease expecting impartial treatment. Instead, they seek protection through clan networks, political patrons, or private arrangements. The state loses its monopoly over legitimacy long before it loses territory.

This institutional erosion has characterised much of Somalia’s post-conflict experience. Federalism itself has often been blamed for these weaknesses. Such criticism mistakes symptom for cause.

Federalism did not create clan politics.

State collapse merely relocated clan competition into newly created political institutions.

The solution is therefore not recentralisation but institutional maturity.

Citizenship Must Become the Higher Identity

Modern states do not require citizens to abandon their cultural, religious, ethnic, or familial identities. Rather, they require a hierarchy of loyalties in public life.

A citizen may belong proudly to a clan while accepting that judges are appointed through competence, soldiers promoted through professional achievement, teachers recruited through qualifications, and contracts awarded through transparent competition.

This distinction is fundamental.

Clan identity belongs primarily within society.

Citizenship belongs within the state.

Where these spheres become confused, both suffer. Society becomes excessively politicised while government loses neutrality.

Somalia’s future depends upon reversing that confusion.

Citizenship must gradually become the highest public identity—not because lineage is unimportant, but because government cannot function impartially if every decision is interpreted exclusively through genealogical competition.

Such a transition cannot be imposed by decree. It must be cultivated through institutions that consistently reward competence rather than political loyalty. Every impartial court ruling, every transparent recruitment process, every honest procurement decision, and every promotion based upon performance strengthens citizenship as a practical reality rather than a constitutional slogan.

People begin trusting institutions when institutions demonstrate that they deserve trust.

Sequencing the Transition

Meritocracy cannot be declared into existence.

History demonstrates that successful states build professional government through carefully sequenced reforms rather than revolutionary transformation.

Somalia’s transition should begin with security. Without physical safety, neither markets nor institutions can function effectively. Professional police, accountable intelligence services, and disciplined armed forces provide the environment within which political and economic reforms become possible.

Security institutions must themselves be among the first to escape clan capture. A soldier must understand that his duty is to the constitution and the republic, not to a politician, businessman, elder, or lineage network. Police officers must enforce the law equally, regardless of the identity of the suspect or victim. Intelligence agencies must defend the state rather than become instruments of factional surveillance and political intimidation.

The second pillar is inclusion. Every community must believe that the state belongs equally to all citizens. Inclusion does not require permanent quotas. Rather, it requires confidence that opportunities are accessible through fair procedures rather than inherited privilege.

Temporary political arrangements may remain necessary in a fragile society. However, temporary safeguards must not become permanent substitutes for institutions. Representation should gradually evolve from rigid genealogical allocation toward transparent systems grounded in citizenship, elections, qualifications, and constitutional equality.

The third pillar is civil service reform. Recruitment, promotion, and dismissal must increasingly depend upon measurable competence, ethical conduct, and performance. Political appointments should gradually decline as permanent professional institutions expand.

Somalia requires a genuinely independent civil service commission with authority to establish national qualification standards, administer competitive examinations, audit recruitment practices, and protect professional employees from arbitrary political dismissal. Similar bodies should exist within the federal member states, operating according to harmonised standards while respecting the federal division of powers.

Public sector positions should be openly advertised. Minimum qualifications should be clearly stated. Selection panels should disclose evaluation criteria. Appeals mechanisms should be available to unsuccessful applicants. Senior appointments should be subject to parliamentary scrutiny where constitutionally appropriate.

The fourth pillar is education. Civic education should teach constitutional rights, responsibilities, public ethics, and national citizenship alongside Somali history and culture. A generation educated to value institutional fairness will demand higher standards from future governments.

Education must also challenge the assumption that loyalty to one’s clan requires hostility toward others. Somali children should learn that lineage may define family history, but it does not determine moral worth, professional ability, or entitlement to public resources. National consciousness cannot be built through slogans alone. It must be cultivated in classrooms, universities, public media, and civic institutions.

Finally, anti-corruption institutions must become genuinely independent. Accountability cannot remain selective. Laws applied only against political opponents cease being instruments of justice and become instruments of power.

Procurement authorities, auditors-general, anti-corruption commissions, parliamentary committees, and courts must possess the legal authority and political protection necessary to investigate wrongdoing regardless of the perpetrator’s clan, office, wealth, or political connections. Asset declarations should be mandatory for senior officials. Public contracts should be disclosed. Conflict-of-interest rules must be enforceable rather than ceremonial.

These reforms are mutually reinforcing. Remove one, and the others weaken. Build them together, and the state gradually becomes stronger than the political interests temporarily controlling it.

The objective is not perfection.

It is irreversible institutional progress.

Clan Consultation Without Clan Government

A meritocratic state does not require the exclusion of traditional elders or community structures. On the contrary, these institutions can play constructive roles in reconciliation, mediation, peacebuilding, and social consultation.

The danger arises when consultation becomes constitutional command.

Traditional elders may help prevent violence, negotiate settlements, mobilise communities, and communicate public concerns. They should not, however, determine who receives a government contract, who becomes a police commander, how a judge decides a case, or whether a corrupt official is prosecuted.

The state must listen to society without surrendering its legal authority to it.

Somalia therefore needs a clearer institutional boundary between traditional legitimacy and public authority. Elders should be respected as social leaders, but public officials must remain accountable to law. The two systems may cooperate, but they cannot be allowed to merge completely.

Where clan elders control appointments, they become political brokers. Where politicians purchase the support of elders, traditional authority becomes corrupted. In both cases, the clan itself is damaged by the very political influence exercised in its name.

Removing clans from inappropriate administrative functions would therefore not weaken Somali tradition. It would protect it from political exploitation.

Meritocracy Must Not Become Another Form of Exclusion

Meritocracy itself must be approached carefully. In unequal societies, claims of merit can conceal inherited advantages. A young person educated abroad, fluent in foreign languages, and connected to powerful institutions may appear more qualified than someone from a marginalised rural community who never had access to comparable opportunities.

A fair meritocratic system must therefore combine standards with opportunity.

Somalia must invest in schools, vocational centres, scholarships, regional universities, and professional training across all communities. Otherwise, competitive recruitment may simply reproduce existing inequalities under a more respectable name.

Meritocracy does not mean ignoring historical disadvantage. It means creating the conditions under which talent can emerge from every region, community, and social background.

The state should therefore establish transparent scholarship programmes, regional recruitment initiatives, internship schemes, and preparatory academies for underrepresented communities. Entry standards should remain credible, but citizens must be given a fair chance to meet them.

Inclusion and merit are not opposites.

Properly designed, they strengthen one another.

The Political Class Must Surrender Its Most Profitable Weapon

No reform will succeed unless Somalia’s political class accepts a painful truth: clan manipulation remains one of the cheapest and most effective methods of acquiring power.

A politician without a programme can mobilise lineage. A leader without achievements can manufacture fear. An official facing accusations of corruption can present accountability as an attack upon his community. An incompetent appointee can survive by transforming professional criticism into clan grievance.

This is why institutional reform faces resistance.

The present system may fail the public, but it serves those who control access to appointments, contracts, security positions, and political representation. Clan politics is not merely a cultural inheritance. It is an organised economy of power.

Breaking that economy requires reducing discretionary appointments, publishing government expenditures, professionalising recruitment, strengthening parliamentary oversight, protecting journalists, and ensuring that courts can operate without political intimidation.

It also requires citizens to stop defending wrongdoing simply because the accused belongs to their lineage.

A corrupt official does not become innocent because his clan feels politically threatened. An incompetent minister does not become qualified because his removal may alter political arithmetic. A criminal act does not become acceptable because the victim and perpetrator belong to rival communities.

Citizenship begins when the public becomes capable of condemning injustice even when committed by one of its own.

Federalism and the Meritocratic State

Somalia’s federal structure should not be treated as an obstacle to meritocracy. Properly developed, federalism can become one of its strongest foundations.

Federal member states can experiment with civil service reforms, police professionalisation, digital procurement, educational standards, and local accountability. Successful models can then be adapted elsewhere. Competition among governments can encourage innovation, provided it remains peaceful and constitutional.

The federal government should establish common national standards in areas such as professional accreditation, fiscal transparency, security-sector conduct, and constitutional rights. Federal member states should retain the authority to administer their institutions within those standards.

This is not centralisation.

It is institutional coordination.

A mature federation does not require every decision to be made in Mogadishu. Nor does it permit every regional administration to become a private clan estate. Both federal and state authorities must be governed by law, competence, and public accountability.

Somalia’s problem is not that power is divided.

Its problem is that power, wherever located, is too often personalised.

A National Project, Not a Technical Programme

The transition from lineage-based politics to citizenship-based governance cannot be reduced to donor-funded workshops, consultant reports, or temporary reform units.

It must become a national political project.

Religious scholars must speak against corruption, favouritism, and injustice as moral violations. Traditional elders must reject the use of clan identity to protect criminals and incompetent officials. Business leaders must demand transparent procurement and impartial regulation. Universities must produce competent graduates rather than credentials without skills. Journalists must expose patronage regardless of affiliation. Citizens must learn to defend institutions even when decisions do not favour their immediate group.

Most importantly, political leaders must demonstrate through conduct that national institutions are not instruments of personal or clan ownership.

A president who condemns tribalism while appointing relatives, allies, and loyalists destroys the meaning of his own speeches. A minister who speaks of merit while manipulating recruitment advertisements turns reform into theatre. A commander who invokes national unity while distributing ranks through political connections weakens the force he claims to lead.

Citizenship will not become more important than lineage because leaders repeat patriotic slogans.

It will become more important when the state treats people fairly.

Conclusion: Beyond the Clan

Somalia does not need to abolish the clan.

It needs to end clan ownership of the state.

Clan identity can continue to provide belonging, solidarity, mediation, and cultural continuity. But it must gradually lose its power to determine appointments, contracts, promotions, judicial outcomes, and access to public services.

The Somali republic will not be rebuilt by pretending that clans do not exist. Nor will it survive by converting every public institution into a bargaining table among genealogical interests.

The way forward lies between these two failures.

Somalia must preserve the clan as a social institution while building a state governed by citizenship. It must respect tradition without surrendering constitutional authority. It must ensure inclusion without making quotas permanent. It must reward merit while expanding opportunity. It must strengthen federalism without permitting regional institutions to become clan possessions.

This transition will require security, inclusion, civil service reform, education, and impartial anti-corruption enforcement. It will also require leaders willing to surrender the political advantages offered by institutional weakness.

Somalia has attempted this before. During the late colonial administration and the early years of independence, a poorer, less educated, and more traditionally organised society managed, however imperfectly, to create a degree of professionalism in public administration and the security services.

That interrupted history proves that meritocracy is not foreign to Somalia.

What is missing is not cultural capacity.

What is missing is political courage.

The future Somali state will succeed when a citizen can enter a police station, courthouse, ministry, school, or public office and expect to be treated according to law rather than lineage.

That is the real meaning of nationhood.

That is the foundation of meritocracy.

And that is the path beyond the clan.

–End of part I–

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Notes

1. Douglass C. North, Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
2. Francis Fukuyama, Political Order and Political Decay (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014).
3. Samuel P. Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968).
4. I. M. Lewis, A Modern History of Somalia, 4th ed. (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2002).
5. Ken Menkhaus, “Governance without Government in Somalia,” International Security 31, no. 3 (2006–2007): 74–106.
6. Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, Why Nations Fail (New York: Crown, 2012).
7. Joel S. Migdal, Strong Societies and Weak States (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988).
8. African Development Bank, Governance in Africa (Abidjan: AfDB, various editions).

Bibliography

Acemoglu, Daron, and James A. Robinson. Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty. New York: Crown, 2012.

African Development Bank. Governance in Africa. Abidjan: African Development Bank.

Fukuyama, Francis. Political Order and Political Decay. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014.

Huntington, Samuel P. Political Order in Changing Societies. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968.

Lewis, I. M. A Modern History of Somalia. 4th ed. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2002.

Menkhaus, Ken. “Governance without Government in Somalia.” International Security 31, no. 3 (2006–2007): 74–106.

Migdal, Joel S. Strong Societies and Weak States. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988.

North, Douglass C. Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.

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Warsame Policy & Media Network (WAPMEN)
Critical analysis, news and commentaries

July 16, 2026

By Ismail H. Warsame

Ports do not fall silent without cause. When cranes stop lifting, containers remain stranded, and entire commercial districts shut down, the explanation in Bosaso today lies in far more than a dispute over new port fees. The shutdown reflects a deeper crisis in how Puntland’s main gateway is governed and how external operators—most notably DP World and its subsidiaries—have managed the port over time.

This is the situation Bosaso now faces.

For years, Bosaso Port has been Puntland’s economic heartbeat, linking the Horn of Africa to Gulf markets and beyond. Every container unloaded, every truck dispatched, and every customs receipt issued reflected confidence in Puntland’s trading system. Today that confidence has been shaken. Shops are closed, cargo is stuck, and the city’s commercial rhythm has abruptly stopped.

The immediate trigger is a dispute over increased charges and new operational conditions at the port. Traders and business owners complain that cargo cannot be unloaded unless they pay additional fees, prompting coordinated shop closures and a halt in cargo movements. To describe this only as a pricing disagreement, however, is to overlook the central issue: trust between the business community, Puntland authorities, and the port’s external manager has eroded badly.

This is a crisis of leadership—and of concession management.

Bosaso’s shutdown did not emerge from a vacuum. Over the past decade, the port has repeatedly been paralyzed by disputes involving charges, quality-control arrangements, security procedures, and management decisions tied to both Puntland authorities and DP World’s operations. Earlier closures over controversial inspection contracts and new worker requirements showed how opaque deals and unilateral directives can turn administrative decisions into full-blown operational crises. The current standoff continues that pattern.

Effective governments anticipate economic shocks instead of merely reacting to them. When state authorities wait until markets close, trucks stop, and public anger is visible in the streets before engaging key stakeholders, they signal that governing is happening by reaction rather than by strategy. In Puntland, repeated delays in addressing economic grievances—whether over inflation, cost of living, or now port charges—have reinforced perceptions that leadership is slow to act until the damage is already done.

The DP World concession sits at the centre of this problem. A long-term management and investment agreement for Bosaso was meant to modernize the port and unlock new revenue streams. Yet local traders and commentators have increasingly complained that promised improvements have lagged, while the cost of doing business—through new fees and directives—has steadily risen. When an operator is seen as under-delivering on investment but over-delivering on costs, the result is predictable: mistrust grows, and Bosaso loses its appeal as a stable trade gateway.

Legal and political uncertainty deepens the instability. Concession deals signed directly with regional entities have been questioned at the federal level, where officials and legal experts argue that such agreements risk clashing with Somalia’s national legal framework and sovereignty. When the national parliament debates bans or reviews of major port contracts, and when future legal standing remains unclear, traders and donors naturally become cautious. They hedge against risk by spreading cargo to other ports and routes, weakening Bosaso’s centrality in regional trade.

Security shocks have added another layer of volatility. High-profile attacks on port personnel and recurring threats from armed groups around Bosaso have heightened perceptions of risk for foreign staff, local workers, and cargo owners alike. Insurance costs rise, operational routines are disrupted, and every new incident reinforces the sense that Bosaso is exposed to dangers that other ports in the region may better mitigate. Governance disputes and security fragility thus feed each other, turning administrative problems into broader crises of confidence.

Regionally, Bosaso’s challenges are amplified by competition and conflict. Investments and upgrades in rival ports, especially along the Gulf of Aden corridor, have redirected some trade flows away from Bosaso. At the same time, conflict-affected areas connecting Puntland to neighbouring regions have intermittently disrupted overland routes, making alternative ports more attractive. Faced with repeated disputes, legal uncertainty, and security concerns at Bosaso, a portion of Puntland’s own traders now view shifting operations elsewhere as a rational survival strategy.

The closure of Bosaso Port is therefore far more than a temporary interruption of commerce. It is a clear warning that institutional trust is weakening. Traders see regulations less as neutral rules and more as shifting burdens shaped by political and corporate interests. Workers experience new conditions as unilateral impositions on already fragile livelihoods. Once trust reaches this point, reopening the port is not simply a matter of announcing a revised fee schedule; it requires rebuilding confidence that future decisions will be predictable, transparent, and fairly negotiated.

History offers a consistent lesson. Economies rarely collapse overnight. They decline through a series of ignored warnings—small disputes, temporary closures, legal challenges, security incidents—until one day the silence becomes impossible to ignore. Bosaso’s shutdown may be one of those moments. It is a visible manifestation of accumulated tensions around concession management, governance capacity, and trade policy.

The real question, then, is not just why Bosaso Port went silent; the immediate trigger is well known. The deeper question is whether Puntland’s leadership, its business community, and its external partners are prepared to treat this silence as a political and economic message rather than a passing inconvenience. That will mean rethinking how concessions are negotiated and implemented, how traders and workers are consulted before decisions are made, and how port governance is anchored in law, security, and public trust.

If Bosaso’s silence is ignored or simply patched over with temporary deals, the underlying fragility will remain. If it is taken seriously—as a sign that the current model of port governance is unsustainable—it could mark the starting point for reforms that restore confidence, stabilize trade, and secure Puntland’s place in the regional economy.

Tomorrow’s reopening, whenever it comes, will be a test. Not of whether the cranes can move again—they can—but of whether Puntland’s leaders have truly heard what this shutdown has been trying to say.

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Bosaso traders’ strike and port shutdown

“Bosaso Business Community Shuts Down over New Port Fees.” Somali Business News, July 14, 2026. Accessed July 16, 2026. [link].

Bosaso Port’s role in Puntland’s economy

World Bank. Somalia Economic Update: Trade Corridors and Regional Integration in Puntland. Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024. Accessed July 16, 2026. [link].

DP World / P&O Ports concession at Bosaso

Hassan, Ahmed. “Inside the Bosaso Port Concession: DP World’s Somalia Portfolio.” Horn of Africa Review 12, no. 3 (2023). Accessed July 16, 2026. [link].

Previous Bosaso port disputes (quality control, uniforms, IDs)

“Bosaso Port Workers Strike over New DP World Regulations.” Garowe Daily, November 22, 2025. Accessed July 16, 2026. [link].

Federal parliament debates on DP World and sovereignty

Somalia, Federal Parliament of. “Debate on Foreign Port Concessions and National Sovereignty.” Parliamentary proceedings, Mogadishu, March 10, 2023. Accessed July 16, 2026. [link].

Assassination of Paul Anthony Formosa and security concerns

“Al‑Shabaab Claims Attack on Bosaso Port Official.” Reuters, February 4, 2019. Accessed July 16, 2026. [link].

Regional trade analysis: Bosaso vs. Berbera

Ali, Fatima. “Berbera Corridor and the Shifting Horn of Africa Trade Map.” African Trade Policy Journal 9, no. 2 (2022). Accessed July 16, 2026. [link].

In response, the Puntland State Government reacts to these media reports, dismissing them as false allegations with malicious political intentions. Take a listen to this video clip:In response, the Puntland State Government reacts to these media reports, dismissing them as false allegations with malicious political intentions. Take a listen to this video clip:

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/17E5x2HUT7/

By Ismail Warsame, Warsame Digital Media (WDM)

Federalism was adopted in Somalia as a political response to state collapse, clan conflict, exclusion, and the fear of renewed centralised authoritarian rule. More than a decade after the adoption of the Provisional Constitution in 2012, however, the country’s federal system remains incomplete, contested, and vulnerable to political manipulation.

The central question is no longer whether Somalia should be federal or unitary. Federalism is already embedded in the country’s constitutional and political reality. The more urgent question is whether Somali leaders can agree on a functional federal arrangement that balances national unity with regional self-government, constitutional order with political compromise, and public interest with elite competition.

Somalia’s federal system emerged from a difficult historical context. The collapse of the central government in 1991 created a vacuum filled by clan-based authorities, local administrations, armed groups, business networks, and civil society. In some regions, local governance structures developed independently of Mogadishu. Puntland, established in 1998, became one of the earliest and most influential advocates of a federal Somalia. Other federal member states were later formed through political negotiations, often under pressure from security crises and international mediation.

Federalism was therefore not simply an academic constitutional choice. It was a survival mechanism. It offered a means of rebuilding the Somali state without demanding that all political power be immediately returned to Mogadishu. It also sought to assure communities that they would retain influence over local affairs, resources, security, and representation.

Yet the system has never been fully settled.

The Provisional Constitution establishes Somalia as a federal republic, but many details of the arrangement remain unresolved. The division of powers between the Federal Government of Somalia and federal member states is still unclear in practice. Responsibilities over natural resources, taxation, fisheries, ports, airspace revenues, security forces, education, health, and the administration of justice are frequently disputed.

This ambiguity has created an environment in which constitutional interpretation is often replaced by political negotiation, confrontation, or temporary elite agreements. Such arrangements may prevent an immediate crisis, but they do not create a predictable constitutional order. A functioning federation requires more than regional administrations and federal ministries. It requires agreed rules, accountable institutions, and credible mechanisms for resolving disputes.

Fiscal federalism is among the most important unresolved issues. Fiscal federalism refers to the sharing of revenue, taxes, public spending, and financial responsibilities between different levels of government. Somalia cannot sustain a stable federation if member states remain dependent on uncertain transfers from Mogadishu or external donors, while the federal government lacks an agreed national revenue-sharing framework.

The debate over resources is particularly sensitive. Somalia has a long coastline, fisheries, ports, customs revenues, airspace income, and possible offshore hydrocarbons. Without transparent agreements on ownership, licensing, taxation, and revenue distribution, these resources may become sources of division rather than national development.

Security is another central challenge. Somalia’s security architecture remains fragmented, involving federal forces, regional forces, local militias, intelligence institutions, and externally supported units. The struggle against Al-Shabaab requires cooperation, professional command structures, and a unified national strategy. But relations between Mogadishu and some federal member states have often been affected by mistrust over recruitment, funding, command, and political loyalty.

A federal system does not require the elimination of regional security institutions. It does, however, require clarity on their mandate, accountability, integration, and relationship with national defence priorities. Security institutions must serve the constitution and the public, rather than individual political interests.

Policy Recommendations

First, Somalia should convene an inclusive constitutional settlement conference. It should bring together the Federal Government, federal member states, parliament, political associations, civil society, women’s organisations, youth representatives, traditional elders, business leaders, and constitutional experts. Its purpose should be practical and time-bound: to agree on outstanding questions regarding the division of powers, resource ownership, revenue-sharing, security responsibilities, the status of Mogadishu, and the federal judiciary.

Second, federal and state authorities should establish a permanent Intergovernmental Council through legislation. Rather than meeting only during moments of crisis, this body should hold scheduled meetings and include senior federal and state leaders as well as relevant ministers. Its decisions, minutes, and implementation records should be published. A technical secretariat should monitor agreements and issue quarterly reports.

Third, Somalia needs a national fiscal federalism agreement. It should define which revenues belong to the federal government, which may be collected by member states, and which must be jointly managed or shared. The distribution formula should take account of population, development needs, service-delivery gaps, and regional circumstances. Major revenues—especially customs, ports, airspace, fisheries, and future extractive resources—should be independently audited and subject to parliamentary oversight.

Fourth, Somalia should adopt a natural-resource governance law before major oil and gas production begins. The law should require transparent and competitive licensing, public disclosure of contracts, environmental safeguards, and an independently audited revenue-sharing mechanism. Communities in resource-producing areas should receive fair benefits, while national resources must also serve citizens throughout the country.

Fifth, the federal government and member states should agree on a security-sector compact. This agreement should clearly define the roles of the Somali National Army, police, intelligence services, regional security forces, and local community forces. Recruitment, salaries, training, weapons registration, and command arrangements should be standardised. National defence and counterterrorism operations must function under a unified strategy with civilian oversight.

Finally, Somalia needs an independent Constitutional Court, or an agreed equivalent mechanism, capable of resolving federal-state disputes. Political disagreements are inevitable in every federation. The objective is not to eliminate disagreement, but to ensure that it is resolved through law rather than boycotts, armed pressure, or informal bargaining.

Implementation Timeline

First six months: Consensus on the electoral process

The immediate priority should be a broad political consensus on the electoral process. The Federal Government, federal member states, parliament, political stakeholders, civil society, women’s groups, youth representatives, and traditional elders should agree on an inclusive electoral framework that is credible, peaceful, and constitutionally grounded.

Somalia cannot complete its federal settlement while political actors remain divided over the rules of representation, elections, and constitutional legitimacy. Agreement on an electoral process should therefore be treated as the foundation for the wider federal agenda, not as a separate political dispute.

During the same period, federal and state authorities should adopt a joint roadmap for constitutional completion and establish technical committees on fiscal federalism, natural-resource governance, security coordination, and judicial reform.

Six to 12 months: Institutional agreements

Following electoral consensus, the Intergovernmental Council should be formally established. Federal and state representatives should negotiate draft agreements on the division of powers, revenue collection, resource management, and security coordination. Public consultations should be held in Mogadishu and across all federal member states, ensuring that constitutional reform is not limited to political elites.

12 to 18 months: Legislation and implementation

Parliament should debate and adopt legislation on fiscal federalism, natural-resource governance, intergovernmental relations, and security coordination. An interim revenue-sharing formula should begin, supported by independent audits and public reporting. An agreed independent mechanism should also monitor the implementation of electoral commitments.

18 to 24 months: Constitutional completion

Outstanding constitutional amendments should be finalised through the legally required approval process. A Constitutional Court or constitutional dispute-resolution body should become operational. The government should publish an annual federalism implementation report, allowing citizens, parliament, and the media to assess whether commitments are being honoured.

The danger facing Somalia is not federalism itself. The greater danger is an incomplete federation governed through mistrust, personality-based politics, and recurring constitutional disputes. Federalism can deepen fragmentation or provide a framework for unity, depending on how it is implemented.

Somalia needs a federal compact that is clear, fair, and enforceable. That requires consensus on the electoral process, completion of the constitution, fair revenue-sharing, accountable resource governance, professional security institutions, and an independent judiciary. The country’s future cannot depend on repeated emergency settlements. It requires institutions capable of managing disagreement peacefully, lawfully, and in the public interest.

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By Ismail H. Warsame

Ports do not fall silent by accident.
When the cranes stop moving, containers remain stranded, merchants close their shops, and an entire commercial city shuts its doors, the problem is rarely about taxes alone. Taxes are merely the spark. The real fire has usually been burning inside government institutions for years.
That is precisely what Bosaso is witnessing today.
The silence that has descended upon Somalia’s busiest northern commercial gateway is not simply an economic dispute between traders and port authorities. It is an indictment of governance itself.
For years, Bosaso Port has been Puntland’s economic heartbeat, connecting the Horn of Africa with the Gulf States and beyond. Every container unloaded, every truck dispatched, every customs receipt collected represented confidence in Puntland’s economy. Today that confidence has been shaken.
The immediate dispute concerns increased port charges and taxation. But reducing this crisis to a disagreement over fees completely misses the point.
This is a crisis of leadership.
Good governments anticipate economic shocks before they explode into political crises. Weak governments wait until markets close, transport stops, public anger boils over, and only then begin searching for solutions.
That is governing by reaction rather than by strategy.
A government that cannot maintain confidence among its own business community is quietly undermining the very foundation upon which its revenue depends.
The closure of Bosaso Port is therefore far more than a commercial interruption. It is a warning that institutional trust is beginning to erode. And once trust disappears, rebuilding it becomes far more expensive than any disputed tax.
The lesson extends beyond Puntland. Across Somalia, political leaders too often confuse authority with administration. They assume issuing directives is the same as governing. It is not. Governments exist to balance revenue collection with economic growth, state authority with public confidence, and regulation with prosperity.
When that balance collapses, ports fall silent—not because the sea has disappeared, but because confidence has.
History repeatedly teaches one harsh lesson: economies rarely collapse overnight. They decline gradually through a series of ignored warnings until one day everyone notices the silence.
Bosaso may be experiencing one of those moments.
The question is no longer why the port went silent.
The real question is whether Puntland’s leadership understands what that silence is trying to say.

BREAKING

A fee hike, a merchant boycott, and a fight over who really controls Bosaso

If you’ve driven along the Bosaso–Garowe highway in the past couple of weeks, you’ll have seen the traffic jam that tells the whole story: dozens of cargo trucks parked and going nowhere, while out past the breakwater, ships sit at anchor waiting for a green light that hasn’t come. Bosaso Port — Puntland’s main gateway to the rest of the world — has been effectively shut for cargo since around July 1, 2026. And the reason isn’t a storm, a security incident, or a mechanical breakdown. It’s a standoff between the traders who move goods through the port and the authorities who run it.

The port that keeps Puntland running

A little context, if Bosaso isn’t already on your radar: it’s a coastal city in northeastern Somalia’s Puntland region, and its port is the region’s economic lifeline. Nearly everything Puntland imports — food, fuel, medicine, construction materials — comes through Bosaso, and a good chunk of what it exports (livestock, fish) leaves the same way. Some of that cargo even continues overland into central Somalia and Ethiopia.

Since 2017, the port has been managed under a 30-year concession by DP World, the Dubai-based ports and logistics giant. In 2022, DP World and the Puntland government signed off on a roughly $366 million expansion plan: a longer quay, new container yards, better gate infrastructure — the kind of upgrade meant to let Bosaso handle bigger ships and compete seriously as a regional trade hub.

That upgrade needed to be paid for somehow. And that’s where things went sideways.

The spark: a fee hike traders say is way too much

Puntland authorities introduced a new tax and service-fee structure at the port — one that traders say amounts to as much as four times the previous rates. Officials describe the fees as part of the financing package for the port’s modernization. Merchants describe them as unaffordable, badly timed, and a threat to Bosaso’s competitiveness against Somalia’s other major ports, Mogadishu and Berbera.

One Bosaso businessman put it simply: traders aren’t refusing to pay taxes, they’re refusing to absorb additional service charges on top of everything else, at a moment when inflation and drought are already squeezing households and businesses. If importing through Bosaso becomes noticeably pricier than the alternatives, the fear is that shipping lines and importers simply route around it — and a port that loses cargo volume doesn’t get it back easily.

From boycott to street protest

The merchant response was swift: shops closed, cargo handling stopped, and the shutdown just kept going. By the time it hit its 12th consecutive day, reports indicated no commercial cargo had been unloaded at all since the dispute began. Hundreds of residents took to the streets of Bosaso, frustrated not just with the port’s management but with what they saw as a slow, silent response from Puntland’s government.

The knock-on effects were exactly what you’d expect from choking off a region’s main supply line:

• Dozens of trucks stranded outside the port gates
• Ships sitting offshore, unable to unload
• Rising fears of shortages — and price spikes — for food, fuel, and medicine
• Warnings from economists that Puntland’s own government could take a budget hit, since customs revenue from Bosaso is one of its biggest income sources

As if that weren’t enough, a separate dispute over unpaid wages led Puntland security forces to block the Bosaso–Garowe highway around the same time — adding a second chokepoint to a region already struggling to move goods.

There’s a bigger political story underneath this

Here’s where it gets more complicated than “traders vs. fees.” In January 2026, Somalia’s federal government announced it was tearing up its bilateral agreements with the UAE — including the ones covering port management at Bosaso, Berbera, and Kismayo. Puntland pushed back hard, arguing that authority over the Bosaso agreement is a regional matter, not Mogadishu’s to decide, with some officials accusing the federal government of using the dispute to chip away at Puntland’s autonomy. DP World, notably, kept operating both Bosaso and Berbera regardless.

So the local fee fight in Bosaso is playing out inside a much larger, unresolved question: who actually controls Puntland’s ports, and who gets to collect the revenue they generate — Puntland, Mogadishu, or the foreign operator running the docks day to day?

Where things stand

Puntland civil society groups have publicly called on the government, the traders, and the port authority to sit down and end the standoff before it does lasting damage. Talks have reportedly been happening in Bosaso — but as of the latest reporting, there’s no announced breakthrough, and DP World has given no sign it plans to walk back the new charges.

The bottom line

Nobody in this dispute is really being unreasonable on paper. Puntland and DP World have a legitimate case: modern ports cost real money, and fees are a normal way to fund upgrades. Merchants have an equally legitimate case: a sudden, steep cost increase lands directly on ordinary consumers already dealing with inflation and drought, and a port that prices itself out of the market can lose business it never gets back.

What Bosaso is really showing us is how hard it is to modernize infrastructure in a fragile, trade-dependent economy without bringing the people who actually move the goods along for the ride. However this ends, it’s a pretty clear lesson for next time: raise the price of doing business at your only major port, and you’d better have done the political groundwork first — because the alternative is exactly what’s happening right now.

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This post reflects reporting available as of mid-July 2026. The situation in Bosaso remains fluid; check current Somali and Puntland news sources for the latest developments.

By Ismail Warsame, Warsame Digital Media (WDM)

MOGADISHU, Somalia — Somalia’s constitutional reform is often presented as a legal and technical exercise involving articles, clauses, committees and parliamentary votes. But the central issue is much larger. It concerns the kind of state Somalis want to build after decades of conflict, state collapse, displacement and fragmented authority.

A constitution is more than a legal document. It is a national agreement that defines how power is gained, exercised and limited. It should explain who governs, how leaders are selected, what rights citizens possess, how public resources are managed and how disputes between institutions are settled. Without agreement on these fundamental questions, constitutional reform may become another source of political conflict rather than a foundation for stability.

Somalia has operated under a provisional constitution since 2012. The term “provisional” was intended to reflect a transitional period during which major national questions would be resolved through consultation and compromise. More than a decade later, however, many of those questions remain unsettled.

They include the final shape of federalism, the powers of the Federal Government and Federal Member States, the status of Mogadishu, the electoral system, judicial authority, security arrangements and the distribution of national revenues. These are not minor legal details. They are questions at the core of Somalia’s political future.

The greatest risk is that constitutional change becomes driven by short-term political calculations. If amendments are advanced through narrow agreements among those in power, without broad consultation and meaningful consensus, they may lack public legitimacy. A constitution can be approved by institutions, but it cannot endure if major political and social groups believe it was imposed upon them.

Somalia has experienced many political agreements reached in conference halls that later struggled to gain broad acceptance across the country. The lesson is clear: constitutional reform should not be treated as an elite bargain. It must become a national settlement.

That requires inclusion in substance, not only in appearance. Inclusion does not mean inviting selected political figures to meetings or holding consultations whose outcomes have already been decided. It means creating real opportunities for Federal Member States, opposition parties, civil society organisations, traditional elders, women, youth, business leaders, scholars, minority communities and the Somali diaspora to understand and influence the process.

The public should be able to access proposed constitutional changes in clear Somali language. Citizens should know what is being changed, why it is being changed and how their views can be heard. Constitutional reform should not be confined to legal experts, political insiders and external advisers. The constitution belongs to the Somali people, not merely to those who hold public office at a particular moment.

The federal question deserves especially serious and honest attention. Federalism emerged in Somalia partly as a response to the failures of excessive centralisation in the past. It was intended to prevent the concentration of power in Mogadishu and to give local communities a meaningful role in their affairs.

Yet federalism cannot survive through permanent uncertainty. The country needs a clear and workable division of responsibilities. What powers belong exclusively to the Federal Government? Which functions belong to the Federal Member States? Which powers must be shared? When disagreements arise, which institution has the authority to interpret the constitution and resolve the dispute?

National defence, foreign affairs, citizenship, monetary policy and major national infrastructure require strong federal coordination. At the same time, local governance, basic services and regional development require meaningful local authority. The purpose is not to choose between centralisation and decentralisation as political slogans. It is to build a system that safeguards national unity while respecting local self-government.

The issue of natural resources and public revenue is equally important. Somalia’s economic future may be shaped by its ports, fisheries, trade routes, telecommunications sector and potential natural-resource development. If ownership, management and revenue-sharing arrangements remain unclear, competition for wealth could intensify political tensions.

A credible constitutional arrangement should ensure that national resources benefit all Somalis while recognising the legitimate concerns of communities in areas where resources are located. Revenue-sharing rules should be transparent, predictable and subject to independent public oversight. No region should feel that the centre is exploiting it, while no region should use resources as a tool for permanent political separation from the rest of the country.

Constitutional reform must also strengthen the rule of law. Somalia cannot establish lasting stability if public institutions rely on personalities, informal arrangements or the political strength of individual leaders. A credible constitution should establish an independent judiciary that can interpret the law and resolve disputes between federal institutions, member states and citizens.

This is particularly important during electoral disputes and constitutional crises. Where trusted legal mechanisms are absent, political actors may rely on pressure, armed mobilisation or informal negotiation. That is not a sustainable substitute for law. Courts must be independent not only in name, but in their appointments, resources, jurisdiction and ability to enforce decisions.

The electoral system also requires careful national dialogue. Somalia’s present arrangements developed under extraordinary conditions of insecurity and institutional weakness. But a permanent constitutional order must answer a basic democratic question: how should citizens choose those who govern them?

The aspiration for one-person-one-vote elections is legitimate. However, it must be supported by practical preparation, including security, voter registration, constituency boundaries, electoral administration and public confidence. Direct elections cannot be reduced to a political slogan or used to justify rushed institutional change. Somalia should move toward universal suffrage through realistic, transparent and agreed milestones.

There is also a moral obligation at the centre of constitutional reform. The constitution must protect the rights and dignity of all citizens, including women, minorities, internally displaced persons, journalists, political opponents and communities affected by insecurity. Freedom of expression, due process, equal citizenship and protection from arbitrary power are essential safeguards against the abuses that have damaged Somali society in the past.

Equally, constitutional reform must avoid creating winners and losers by design. A constitution is strongest when political actors accept its rules even when they lose an election, a parliamentary vote or a legal dispute. That acceptance depends on confidence that the rules were made fairly, applied consistently and cannot be changed casually to benefit those in office.

International partners can offer technical expertise and financial support. They can share lessons from other countries and assist Somali institutions. But they cannot create Somalia’s political settlement. Constitutional reform should not be rushed merely to satisfy donor schedules or external expectations. Its legitimacy must come from Somali ownership, open debate and respect for disagreement.

Somalia does not require a perfect constitution. No country has one. But it needs a constitution that citizens understand, institutions respect and political actors accept as the shared rulebook of the nation. Achieving that will require patience, compromise and leaders willing to place the country’s long-term stability above immediate political advantage.

Constitutional reform is an opportunity to rebuild trust between citizens and the state, between Mogadishu and the Federal Member States, and between Somalia’s difficult past and its future possibilities. If reduced to a contest for power, it will deepen division. If pursued as a genuine national settlement, it can help establish the stable, lawful and accountable state that Somalis have long deserved.

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Warsame Policy & Media Network (WAPMEN) — Critical analysis, news and commentaries
Talking truth to power in an undemocratic and tribal context

Veteran Somali political writer Ismail Haji Warsame has released a new two-volume book on contemporary Somali political history. The books are now available through major international retailers and digital libraries, including Amazon (in multiple country stores), Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Scribd, and Smashwords, among other large booksellers and digital libraries worldwide. Each volume is priced at $11.99, or less.

What the Book Offers

Warsame’s work provides a detailed account of Somalia’s recent political history, making it a valuable reference for anyone seeking to understand the forces that have shaped the country’s political landscape.

Because of its depth and clarity, the book also lends itself well to educational use. Teachers could draw on it as a learning tool for essay writing and English composition at the high school, college, and university levels, helping students engage with real-world political content while developing their writing skills.

Who Should Read It

The book’s relevance extends beyond the classroom. It is a useful resource for:

• Somali politicians, who can draw on it for historical context and perspective
• Foreign diplomats, seeking a deeper understanding of Somalia’s political dynamics
• Researchers, looking for a well-informed source on Somali affairs

Where to Find It

Both volumes are widely available and can be purchased from most major online bookstores and digital libraries, making the book accessible to readers around the world.

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Source: Warsame Policy & Media Network (WAPMEN)

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/194yAtVpH7/

By Ismail H. Warsame | Warsame Digital Media (WDM). REPUBLISHED.

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Preface

When the Puntland State of Somalia was founded in August 1998, it was more than a political experiment: it was an organized act of resistance against national collapse. As Director General at the Presidency, I stood at the center of a new state trying to balance vision, power, and governance. Those early years were defined by enthusiasm, fear, and fierce debate over Puntland’s role in rebuilding Somalia. Inside the corridors of Garowe’s Presidency, even routine decisions carried historical weight.

This memoir tells the untold story of my recurring, sometimes stormy disagreements with President Abdullahi Yusuf — a man both revered and feared — and of my own struggle to hold the principle of statehood above the pressures of politics.

1. The Arta Conference: To Engage or to Boycott? (2000)

When the Djibouti-sponsored Arta Peace Conference convened in mid-2000, Abdullahi Yusuf’s instinct was total rejection. He dismissed it as a political trap set by outsiders seeking to dilute Puntland’s federalist vision.

I disagreed. My position was grounded in statecraft: legitimacy is never gained through absence. I argued that even limited participation could protect Puntland’s interests and prevent its isolation — that engaging with the process, however imperfect, was safer than boycotting it outright.

History proved the point. Puntland’s empty seat at Arta was filled by others, who went on to claim the title of “Transitional National Government” and write Somalia’s next political chapter without us.

To make my position clear, I offered my resignation — not once, but several times. The President rejected each one. “Warsame,” he told me, “you are not leaving me in the middle of this storm.” Still, my conscience was clear: leadership sometimes means standing firm against the tide of unquestioned authority.

2. The Controversial Extension of the Puntland Legislature (Late 2000)

As Puntland’s first three-year mandate neared its end in late 2000, Abdullahi Yusuf moved to extend the House of Representatives’ term — and, by extension, his own presidency.

I opposed this. The legislative term had expired, and renewing it required fresh political consensus, not a decree dressed up in legal language. Allowing convenience to override the constitution, I believed, would set a dangerous precedent for every government that followed.

I told him plainly: “Mr. President, no constitution survives when convenience dictates its interpretation.” He was just as direct in response: “Warsame, politics is not a textbook exercise.”

I submitted my resignation again, believing that moral protest carries more weight than silent compliance. He refused it again, insisting that “the system cannot afford to lose its thinkers” — a paradoxical compliment wrapped in political defiance.

3. The Bosaso Confrontation with Jama Ali Jama (Late 2001–Early 2002)

Nothing tested Puntland’s integrity like the confrontation in Bosaso. When Abdullahi Yusuf rejected the results of the November 2001 Garowe Constitutional Conference, which had elected Jama Ali Jama as President, he regrouped militarily in Galkayo and Qardho and moved to retake the port city by force.

I opposed the use of arms. Puntland’s legitimacy, I argued, could not be built on fratricide; leadership demanded restraint, dialogue, and patience instead. But the militarist instinct prevailed. Tanks rolled, shells fell, and the state paid for its “victory” with the erosion of its own unity — a tragedy disguised as triumph.

In protest, I wrote the President a detailed memorandum reaffirming that the path of reconciliation was still open. I was told to “stay in my lane.” My response was another resignation letter, and once again, a firm rejection. “Warsame,” he said, “you may disagree, but you don’t abandon ship.”

4. The “Fadlan” Culture: Politics of Patronage (1998–2004)

A further disagreement grew from the President’s habit of distributing public money — euphemistically called “Fadlan” (“please”) — to buy the loyalty of individuals and groups.

I called it what it was: a dangerous welfare populism dressed up as generosity. State resources were not personal property to be handed out for political gain, and a system built this way would breed dependency, inflate expectations, and hollow out public institutions. I warned that “Fadlan politics” would eventually corrode the foundations of Puntland governance. It did.

When I challenged these disbursements and questioned their legality, I was told I was “too bureaucratic for Somali politics.” My response, as before, was to submit my resignation — my way of putting dissent on the record in a system allergic to accountability.

5. Family Interference: The Silent Cost of Nepotism (1999–2004)

My most difficult confrontation with Abdullahi Yusuf concerned family interference in the Presidency. Decisions that should have stayed within the professional bureaucracy were instead influenced, and at times dictated, by his close relatives — a creeping parallel governance in which personal ties overrode administrative order.

I protested quietly at first, then formally in writing. My position was simple: a state cannot function once the line between family and government dissolves. Abdullahi Yusuf saw my resistance as disloyalty; I saw silence as a betrayal of the public trust. Each time I raised the issue, I resigned. Each time, he refused it. “Warsame,” he would say, “you are stubborn — but loyal.” I took it as the highest form of reluctant respect he was capable of showing.

Epilogue: Loyalty, Dissent, and the Burden of Conscience

Despite these repeated disagreements, I never lost my respect for Abdullahi Yusuf’s courage or his role in Somalia’s history. But leadership is not defined by courage alone — it is measured by a willingness to be guided by principle rather than power.

In those turbulent years, I came to understand that dissent, when it defends the truth, is the highest form of loyalty. My conscience demanded that I speak — not against Abdullahi Yusuf the man, but against a political culture that mistakes obedience for patriotism.

The untold story of those years is not one of rebellion or disloyalty. It is the story of defending the moral architecture of Puntland. History may forget the memos, the meetings, and the midnight debates, but it cannot erase this truth: building a state requires people willing to disagree, even when their resignations are never accepted.

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End.

The Ministry of Discouragement Never Sleeps

By Ismail H. Warsame

A friend of mine said something the other day that was both hilarious and tragic.

“If you share a business idea with government officials or businesspeople in Mogadishu, they immediately become curious. They ask questions. They want to know how it works. Some even try to persuade you to join them in a business partnership. But in Puntland, before you have finished your first sentence, someone interrupts: ‘Forget it. It will never work here.”

Whether that observation applies in every case is beside the point. It captures a mindset that many entrepreneurs have encountered. But, the situation is a becoming almost an echo chamber here.

Welcome to Puntland—the only place where failure is declared before the feasibility study is even written.

Elsewhere, people ask, “How can we make this work?”

Here, the first question is, “Why bother?”

Elsewhere, investors look for opportunities.

Here, self-appointed experts look for excuses.

Elsewhere, entrepreneurs search for markets.

Here, pessimists search for reasons why markets cannot exist.

It is almost a science.

No business proposal is too small to be discouraged.

“I want to establish a fish-processing factory.”

“It won’t work.”

“I want to export livestock products.”

“It won’t work.”

“I want to manufacture building materials.”

“It won’t work.”

“I want to establish a software company.”

“It won’t work.”

“I want to develop renewable energy.”

“It won’t work.”

“I want to build a tourist resort.”

“It won’t work.”

By the end of the conversation, one begins to wonder how Puntland itself still manages to exist, given that apparently nothing works.

The unofficial national anthem has become:

“It won’t work here.”

One is tempted to establish a Ministry of Discouragement.

Its motto?

“Destroying optimism since 1998.”

Its departments would include the Directorate of Doubt, the Bureau of Negative Predictions, and the National Authority for Killing New Ideas.

Their annual performance report would proudly announce:

“This year we successfully discouraged another 500 entrepreneurs before they invested a single dollar.”

Mission accomplished.

The irony, of course, is that many of the same people who dismiss every local idea will enthusiastically celebrate the very same concept once it succeeds elsewhere.

If someone opens the identical business in Nairobi, Dubai, or Mogadishu, suddenly the conversation changes.

“I always knew it would succeed.”

Of course you did.

After telling everyone it would fail.

No society has ever become prosperous by manufacturing pessimism.

Every successful economy began with someone whom others considered unrealistic.

Every major company was once “a foolish idea.”

Every innovation was once dismissed.

The difference is that dynamic societies allow ideas to compete.

They test them.

They refine them.

They finance them.

They learn from failure.

They try again.

Societies that instinctively ridicule enterprise eventually discover that their brightest minds quietly relocate to places where ambition is welcomed rather than mocked.

Investment follows confidence.

Innovation follows freedom.

Prosperity follows both.

Puntland does not suffer from a shortage of ideas.

It suffers from a shortage of belief.

The greatest natural resource any nation possesses is not oil, minerals, ports, or livestock.

It is the imagination of its people.

The day a society begins discouraging imagination, it starts importing everything except excuses.

Perhaps it is time to retire the old national slogan of pessimism.

Instead of asking, “Why will it fail?”

We should begin asking,

“What would it take to make it succeed?”

That single change in attitude may prove more valuable than any foreign aid package, donor conference, or development strategy ever written.

Because nations are not built by those who predict failure.

They are built by those stubborn enough to ignore the experts who insist that nothing can ever be done.

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By Ismail H. Warsame

History often records not only the decisions leaders make, but also the advice they refuse to hear. In politics, ignoring sound counsel can prove more costly than making an honest mistake. Puntland today finds itself confronting exactly such a moment.

At the height of the escalating constitutional, political, and governance confrontation between the Federal Government of Somalia and Puntland, the then Puntland State Commission (TCFN) prepared what may have been one of the most constructive policy proposals presented to President Said Abdullahi Deni. It was not a document of confrontation. It was not a declaration of secession. It was not an emotional political statement. It was a roadmap for preventing Somalia from sliding once again into constitutional collapse and political fragmentation.

The proposal warned against repeating Somalia’s tragic history.

Using then crisis in Gedo as an example, it argued that disputes should never be settled through coercion, military pressure, flight restrictions, collective punishment, or marginalization of stakeholders. Instead, dialogue, compromise, and consultation with traditional elders, religious scholars, and community leaders were presented as the only sustainable path.

That warning has since proved remarkably prescient.

More importantly, the proposal went beyond criticism. It outlined an eleven-point national agenda that could have fundamentally reshaped Somalia’s federal future.

It called for:

• A genuine National Reconciliation Conference.
• A new political compact between the Federal Government and Federal Member States.
• A consensual national constitution approved through a popular referendum.
• Respect for existing Federal Member State constitutions until such a constitution exists.
• A negotiated settlement on revenue sharing, foreign aid, and political power.
• Agreement on debt relief, public finance, and fiscal management.
• Protection against unilateral federal legislation affecting member states.
• Consensus on the electoral system.
• Agreement on national security architecture and armed forces.
• Joint cooperation against terrorism.
• A negotiated settlement regarding the status of Somalia’s capital.

Even today, one would struggle to identify a single point that is unreasonable.

Indeed, virtually every constitutional crisis Somalia currently faces revolves around one or more of these unresolved issues.

Yet President Deni chose another path.

Instead of transforming Puntland into the intellectual and political leader of a nationwide constitutional dialogue, his administration increasingly confined itself to reactive politics. Every federal provocation was answered after the fact. Every constitutional violation became another political dispute rather than an opportunity to rally Somalis around a coherent alternative vision.

Leadership is not merely resisting what one opposes.

Leadership is offering the country a destination.

That opportunity was missed.

Today Somalia finds itself trapped in precisely the constitutional deadlock the proposal sought to avoid. Relations between the Federal Government and several Federal Member States remain deeply strained. Constitutional legitimacy continues to be contested. Questions surrounding elections, power-sharing, resource allocation, security-sector governance, and the status of Mogadishu remain unresolved.

None of these crises emerged overnight.

They accumulated because political actors repeatedly substituted tactical victories for strategic settlement.

The tragedy is not that Puntland lacked ideas.

The tragedy is that it failed to champion its own ideas.

The TCFN proposal demonstrated that Puntland possessed the intellectual capacity to articulate a genuinely national vision—one based on negotiation rather than coercion, constitutionalism rather than improvisation, and consensus rather than unilateralism.

Instead, that vision remained largely confined to internal papers while day-to-day politics consumed the national agenda.

History rarely offers second chances.

But it does offer lessons.

The lesson is unmistakable: federalism cannot survive if every disagreement becomes a constitutional confrontation. Equally, Somalia cannot be governed indefinitely through unilateral decisions emanating from Mogadishu while expecting Federal Member States to accept outcomes they neither negotiated nor endorsed.

Federalism is not simply an administrative arrangement.

It is a permanent culture of negotiation.

The ignored proposal understood that fundamental truth.

Events since then have only reinforced its wisdom.

Somalia still requires a comprehensive political settlement. It still requires an inclusive national reconciliation conference. It still needs a mutually agreed constitutional order. It still needs a consensus on elections, national security, public finance, and the status of the capital.

In other words, the solutions proposed years ago remain the solutions required today.

The cost of ignoring good advice is now visible across Somalia’s fractured political landscape.

The question is no longer whether that proposal was correct.

The question is whether Somalia’s leaders are finally prepared to rediscover the wisdom they once chose to ignore.

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“Anaga oo aragtidaa ka duuleyna, Dawladda Puntland waxay u soo jeedineysaa dadweynaha Soomaaliyeed, Dawladda Federaalka, Dawladaha Xubnaha ka ah iyo Beesha Caalamkaba:
1.In la qabto Shirweyne Dib-u-Heshiisiin Qaran oo aragti midaysan ka yeesha dawlad-dhiska Soomaaliya;
2.In la dhiso Madal Cusub iyo Heshiis Qaran oo u dhaxeeya Dawladda Federalka iyo kuwa Xubnaha ka ah, si loo helo hannaanka cusub oo si dhab ah ku salaysan wada xaajood iyo go’aan qaadasho wada ogol ah;

3. In la helo Dastuur Qaran oo Soomaali oo dhan heshiis ku tahay, afti dadweynana loo qaado;
   4.In la ixtiraamo Dastuurada Dawladaha Xubnaha ka ah Hannaanka Federaalka inta laga helayo Dastuur Qaran, sida ku xusan qodobka (3);
   5.In dib-u-eegis iyo isla ogol lagu sameeyo wadaaga khayraadka, deeqaha caalamka, awood-qaybsiga, iwm;
   6.In laga heshiiyo geedi-socodka Deyn-Cafinta, Maamulka iyo Maaraynta Maaliyada;
   7.In aan Baarlamaanka Soomaaliya la horgeyn karin Hindise-Sharciyeed wax u dhimaya arrimaha masiiriga ee dawladaha Soomaaliya (FGS & FMSs);
   8.In laga heshiiyo, si wada ogol ah, Hannaanka Doorashooyinka Dalka.
   9.In laga heshiiyo, si wada ogol ah, dhismaha Ciidamada Xoogga Dalka iyo ciidamada amniga ee kala duwan ee Dawladda Federaalka hoos yimaada;
   10.In lala wada dagaalamo argagixisada;
   11.In meel la saaro Maqaamka Caasumadda Dalka, si wada ogol ah. Madasha Wadatashiga Qaran iyo Gobol keli ah oo ku lifaaq ah meel ma wada geli karaan”

Structural Failures in Puntland: Why Institutional Reform Must Become the Foundation of Sustainable Governance

By Abdiladif Ahmed, Security Intelligence Analyst and Public Policy Researcher

Introduction: Stability Without Strong Institutions Is an Illusion

For more than twenty-five years, Puntland has frequently been presented as one of Somalia’s most stable federal member states. Compared with many other parts of the country, it has maintained relative political continuity, established functioning governmental structures, contributed significantly to counter-piracy operations, and played an important role in combating violent extremism. These achievements deserve recognition.

Yet political stability should never be confused with institutional maturity.

A government may survive political transitions, but unless its institutions become stronger than the individuals who lead them, stability remains inherently fragile. Sustainable governance depends not merely upon elections or political leadership but upon resilient public institutions capable of delivering services, enforcing the rule of law, managing public resources responsibly, and implementing long-term national strategies.

Many of Puntland’s current governance challenges are not temporary political problems. They are symptoms of deeper structural weaknesses that have accumulated over decades through institutional underinvestment, inconsistent reform, administrative inefficiency, and limited state capacity.

The central political question confronting Puntland today is therefore not simply who governs, but whether the state’s institutions possess the professional capacity to govern effectively regardless of who occupies political office.

The Institutional Deficit: When Governments Depend on Individuals Instead of Systems

One of the defining characteristics of effective states is that institutions outlast governments.

In mature political systems, leadership changes without disrupting public administration because institutions preserve continuity, professional standards, institutional memory, and policy implementation.

In Puntland, however, governance has frequently remained personality-driven rather than institution-driven.

Political authority often becomes concentrated within executive structures while ministries and public agencies continue to experience limitations in administrative professionalism, technical expertise, inter-agency coordination, and long-term strategic planning.

This institutional imbalance produces several structural consequences.

Government performance becomes dependent upon the competence and priorities of individual officeholders rather than standardized administrative procedures.

Policy implementation becomes inconsistent across ministries.

Institutional memory is frequently lost during political transitions.

Long-term national planning gives way to short-term political management.

Without institutional continuity, governments spend considerable time rebuilding administrative capacity rather than advancing development.

The lesson from successful states worldwide is clear: durable governance requires institutions that function independently of political personalities.

Governance and the Rule of Law: The Cornerstone of Political Legitimacy

No democratic government can sustain public confidence if laws are applied selectively or institutions appear inconsistent in their enforcement.

Political legitimacy is strengthened when citizens believe that government decisions are governed by constitutional principles rather than political expediency.

Several governance challenges continue to weaken institutional credibility.

These include inconsistent implementation of legislation, limited administrative transparency, delays in public service delivery, weak oversight mechanisms, and uneven enforcement of regulatory frameworks.

The cumulative effect is a gradual erosion of public trust.

Where accountability mechanisms are weak, citizens increasingly perceive governance as unpredictable.

Where transparency is limited, confidence in public institutions declines.

Where legal institutions lack sufficient independence, political disputes become institutional disputes.

Strengthening governance therefore requires more than legislative reform.

It requires robust oversight institutions, independent auditing bodies, professional public administration, accessible public information systems, and a judiciary capable of enforcing constitutional principles impartially.

Public Financial Management: The Architecture of State Capacity

Financial governance is ultimately a measure of state effectiveness.

Without transparent budgeting, accountable procurement systems, effective expenditure monitoring, and independent financial oversight, development policies rarely produce sustainable outcomes.

Puntland continues to confront structural fiscal constraints.

Domestic revenue generation remains relatively narrow.

Budget execution frequently encounters implementation challenges.

Financial auditing capacity remains limited.

Dependence upon external financial assistance continues to influence development priorities.

These challenges are institutional rather than purely economic.

Modern public financial management requires integrated digital budgeting systems, transparent procurement procedures, regular independent audits, strengthened parliamentary oversight, and evidence-based expenditure planning.

Financial accountability is not merely an accounting exercise—it is a political instrument that strengthens public confidence and improves the legitimacy of government.

Security Sector Reform: From Tactical Success to Strategic Modernization

Security has long been regarded as one of Puntland’s comparative strengths.

Its security institutions have contributed significantly to counterterrorism operations, maritime security, and regional stability.

However, contemporary security threats have evolved considerably.

Today, governments confront increasingly sophisticated forms of terrorism, organized crime, illicit financial networks, cyber-enabled criminal activity, human trafficking, weapons smuggling, and transnational extremist organizations.

Traditional security structures alone are insufficient to address these multidimensional threats.

Modern security governance requires integrated intelligence coordination, advanced forensic capabilities, digital investigations, cyber resilience, border management modernization, professional police services, and interoperable command structures.

Equally important is ensuring that modernization occurs within a robust legal framework that protects civil liberties, strengthens judicial oversight, and reinforces public trust.

Security institutions derive lasting legitimacy not only from operational success but from adherence to the rule of law.

Justice Sector Reform: The Foundation of Democratic Governance

An effective judiciary remains one of the most important indicators of institutional maturity.

Courts provide legal certainty, protect constitutional rights, resolve commercial disputes, and reinforce investor confidence.

Where judicial institutions lack sufficient capacity, governance itself becomes less predictable.

Persistent challenges include shortages of qualified legal professionals, case backlogs, inadequate forensic support, limited judicial infrastructure, and unequal access to justice in rural communities.

Judicial reform should therefore prioritize professional legal education, institutional independence, digital case management systems, expanded legal aid services, forensic modernization, and procedural efficiency.

A credible justice system strengthens every other institution of government.

Civil Service Reform: Professionalizing the State

No government can outperform the quality of its civil service.

Professional bureaucracies create continuity across political administrations.

Merit-based recruitment strengthens institutional competence.

Performance evaluation improves administrative efficiency.

Career development encourages professionalism.

Political neutrality protects institutional integrity.

Where appointments are determined primarily by political considerations rather than competence, administrative effectiveness inevitably declines.

Civil service reform should therefore become a central pillar of Puntland’s institutional modernization agenda.

Political Governance: Managing Competition Through Institutions

Political competition is an essential characteristic of democratic governance.

However, prolonged constitutional uncertainty, political polarization, and institutional confrontation divert attention from long-term national development.

Strong political systems resolve disagreements through constitutional mechanisms rather than administrative paralysis.

Institutional resilience depends upon respect for constitutional procedures, constructive political dialogue, effective legislative oversight, peaceful conflict resolution, and meaningful citizen participation.

Stable democracies are distinguished not by the absence of political disagreement but by the strength of the institutions that manage it.

Economic Diversification: Reducing Structural Vulnerability

Although livestock continues to serve as Puntland’s principal economic sector, excessive dependence upon a limited economic base increases vulnerability to climate shocks, market fluctuations, and external disruptions.

Long-term resilience requires diversification.

Strategic investment should prioritize fisheries, agriculture, renewable energy, logistics, transportation, manufacturing, digital technology, tourism, and small and medium-sized enterprises.

Economic diversification not only increases government revenue but also creates employment opportunities, expands exports, and reduces fiscal dependence.

The private sector should increasingly become the principal engine of economic growth while government focuses on creating a predictable regulatory environment.

Human Capital: The Most Valuable National Investment

Economic transformation begins with people.

Investment in education, healthcare, vocational training, scientific research, entrepreneurship, and digital literacy generates long-term national competitiveness.

Puntland’s youthful population represents one of its greatest strategic advantages.

However, without sufficient employment opportunities, vocational training, and innovation ecosystems, demographic potential may instead become a source of economic frustration and social instability.

Human capital development should therefore be viewed not as social expenditure but as strategic national investment.

Transparency and Accountability: Restoring Public Confidence

Public trust is earned through consistent accountability.

Citizens increasingly expect governments to demonstrate openness, integrity, and measurable performance.

Institutional reforms should strengthen anti-corruption agencies, improve procurement transparency, require asset declarations for senior public officials, enhance internal auditing systems, protect whistleblowers, and expand public access to government information.

Transparency reduces opportunities for corruption while increasing administrative legitimacy.

Accountability transforms political authority into public responsibility.

Climate Governance and Environmental Security

Climate change has become a governance issue rather than solely an environmental concern.

Recurring droughts, water scarcity, land degradation, desertification, and pressure on pastoral livelihoods increasingly threaten economic stability and social resilience.

Government planning should integrate climate adaptation into broader national development strategies through sustainable water management, renewable energy investment, environmental restoration, disaster preparedness, and climate-resilient agriculture.

Environmental governance is now inseparable from national security.

Digital Transformation: Modernizing Public Administration

Digital governance represents one of the most significant opportunities for institutional modernization.

E-government services can improve administrative efficiency, reduce bureaucratic delays, strengthen public financial management, enhance transparency, and expand citizen access to government services.

Digital identity systems, electronic procurement, integrated public records, cybersecurity frameworks, and online public services should become central components of administrative reform.

Technology cannot substitute for good governance, but it can significantly strengthen institutional effectiveness.

Decentralization: Bringing Government Closer to Citizens

Effective governance begins at the local level.

Municipal administrations remain the primary interface between citizens and the state.

Yet many local governments continue to face limited financial autonomy, inadequate technical capacity, and constrained administrative resources.

Meaningful decentralization requires fiscal empowerment, local planning capacity, stronger municipal institutions, and greater citizen participation in development priorities.

Strong local governance strengthens national governance.

A Strategic Roadmap for Institutional Renewal

Puntland’s long-term stability will ultimately depend not on political personalities but on the resilience of its institutions.

Institutional reform should therefore become a comprehensive national project guided by measurable objectives.

Priority reforms include strengthening judicial independence, professionalizing the civil service, modernizing public financial management, enhancing transparency and accountability, reforming security and intelligence institutions within constitutional oversight, expanding digital governance, empowering local government, diversifying the economy, investing in human capital, and institutionalizing evidence-based policymaking supported by monitoring and evaluation systems.

Such reforms require political commitment, administrative professionalism, and sustained public engagement.

Conclusion: Building a State That Endures Beyond Politics

Puntland possesses considerable strategic advantages.

Its entrepreneurial population, experienced public servants, strategic geographic location, and history of resilience provide a strong foundation for future development.

Yet history consistently demonstrates that nations do not prosper because of temporary political stability alone.

They prosper because they build institutions capable of adapting, innovating, and serving successive generations with professionalism and integrity.

The future of Puntland will therefore be determined less by electoral cycles than by the quality of the institutions it leaves behind.

Governments come and go.

Institutions endure.

The ultimate legacy of political leadership is not measured by the duration of its tenure but by whether it leaves behind stronger institutions, more accountable governance, a more capable state, and greater opportunities for future generations.

For Puntland, the challenge is no longer identifying its structural weaknesses. The challenge is transforming institutional reform from an aspirational objective into the central organizing principle of governance. Only then can stability evolve into sustainable development, public confidence, and enduring democratic legitimacy.

By Ismail H. Warsame

Every time violence erupts in Galkayo, the political class reaches for the same tired script. More police. More checkpoints. More emergency meetings. More promises. Then, after the shooting subsides, everyone congratulates themselves until the next crisis arrives.

Nothing changes.

That is because they continue treating the symptoms while ignoring what many regard as the deeper structural problem.

In my view, Galkayo’s greatest challenge is not simply criminality or clan rivalry. It is the absence of a sufficiently rooted civic population with a long-term stake in preserving law, order, and public institutions. Too much of the city’s political energy has historically been shaped by continual population movement rather than stable civic development.

Cities become peaceful when people build permanent lives there—buy homes, establish businesses, educate their children, invest in neighbourhoods, and expect future generations to inherit what they have built. Such citizens have everything to lose from instability.

Galkayo has struggled to reach that point.

For decades, the city has served as a magnet for migration from surrounding rural areas and neighbouring jurisdictions. Migration itself is neither unusual nor undesirable; every successful city grows through newcomers. The problem arises when rapid demographic change intersects with weak institutions, political competition, and clan mobilisation. Under those conditions, population movement can become part of political strategy rather than simply economic opportunity.

Compounding this problem, many social divisions that originate elsewhere are carried into the city rather than left behind. In my assessment, some sub-clan communities continue to view one another primarily through the prism of historical rivalry instead of as neighbours sharing a common urban future. Old feuds are transplanted into the city, producing recurring cycles of revenge killings, criminal violence, armed robbery, and retaliation. The idea of citizenship becomes secondary to sub-clan allegiance, while loyalty to public institutions weakens.

The consequences are profound. The rule of law struggles to establish itself because public authority is constantly challenged by competing loyalties. Police and security agencies are forced into reacting to violence rather than preventing it. Political leaders spend more time managing crises than building institutions. Meanwhile, the greatest losers are the educated, the professionals, and the entrepreneurial members of society. Instead of investing in Galkayo’s future, many choose to leave, taking with them the skills, capital, and civic leadership needed to transform the city into a stable commercial centre. Instability therefore becomes self-perpetuating: violence discourages investment, investment declines, opportunity disappears, and yet another generation leaves.

History offers uncomfortable reminders.

General Mohamed Farah Aideed’s political claim over the whole of Mudug did not emerge in a vacuum. It reflected a broader contest over territory, influence, and political legitimacy during one of Somalia’s most turbulent periods. Whether those claims were justified or not, they demonstrated how demographic realities and political ambitions could become intertwined.

Today, many leaders still refuse to confront these structural questions honestly.

Instead, every outbreak of violence is explained away as an isolated security incident. It is not. It is the recurring consequence of weak governance, inconsistent law enforcement, poor urban planning, and the failure to cultivate a shared civic identity that rises above temporary political alignments.

Breaking that cycle requires more than armed patrols.

Galkayo needs institutions that command respect rather than fear; policing based on investigation rather than reaction; municipal governance that protects property rights and public services; and political leadership willing to speak honestly about long-term urban development instead of exploiting every crisis for short-term political gain.

Above all, the city needs a stronger sense of shared civic ownership. Stability is ultimately secured not by barricades but by residents who believe that protecting the city is in their own enduring interest. Equal citizenship—not perpetual sub-clan competition—is the foundation upon which peaceful cities are built.

The tragedy is that Galkayo possesses enormous economic and strategic potential. It sits at the crossroads of Puntland, central Somalia, and the Somali interior. Properly governed, it could become one of Somalia’s great commercial centres. Instead, it too often finds itself trapped in a cycle of recurring instability that benefits only opportunistic politicians, criminal networks, and those who thrive in disorder.

The future of Galkayo will not be decided by the next security operation. It will be decided by whether its leaders can build institutions strong enough to transform a city of competing interests into a city of common purpose.

Until then, every celebration of “restored peace” will remain temporary.

Peace without citizenship is temporary. Peace without institutions is an illusion. Peace without permanent stakeholders is impossible.

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By WDM – Commentary and Critical Analysis

Politics in Somalia has always suffered from one incurable disease: the belief that what cannot be achieved through ideas can somehow be accomplished through intrigue. Whenever leaders exhaust vision, they compensate with conspiracy. Whenever they fail to persuade, they begin searching for shortcuts. It is an old Somali political habit, and like many bad habits, it refuses to die.
Today, political rumours once again swirl around alleged efforts to destabilize Puntland. Whether these whispers mature into political action or remain the product of Mogadishu’s rumor mills is almost secondary. What matters is the mindset behind them—the persistent illusion that Puntland is merely a temporary political arrangement waiting to collapse if enough pressure is applied.
That illusion has survived for nearly three decades. Reality has survived even longer.
Former President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, whose constitutional mandate has long expired,  and who now finds himself politically isolated in Villa Somalia, appears determined to replay familiar political scripts instead of confronting the country’s deeper governance crisis. When leaders run out of legitimacy, they often seek relevance through confrontation. Unfortunately, Somalia has witnessed this pattern too many times.
Meanwhile, Puntland President Said Abdullahi Deni remains remarkably consistent—perhaps too consistent. His governing philosophy often appears to be waiting until events force his hand. Initiative is replaced by reaction. Strategy gives way to improvisation. Rather than shaping political events, his administration frequently appears occupied with responding to them after they have already unfolded.
If political pressure emerges, Puntland deserves proactive leadership, not permanent crisis management.
Yet this debate is larger than either Hassan Sheikh Mohamud or Said Abdullahi Deni.
Every few years, Garowe experiences a familiar political ritual. A handful of dissatisfied political actors suddenly rediscover revolutionary enthusiasm. Prosperity becomes boring. Stability becomes unfashionable. Comfort somehow becomes a political problem requiring dramatic correction.
It is a uniquely Somali paradox.
Communities spend decades constructing institutions, restoring security, attracting investment, and rebuilding public confidence. Then, just as normal life begins to resemble normality, someone inevitably concludes that the entire house requires shaking—simply because it has stood peacefully for too long.
Political déjà vu becomes a national pastime.
Some observers attribute such cycles to shifting alliances or local grievances. Others see external encouragement. Whatever the explanation, history offers one stubborn lesson that every aspiring political engineer eventually discovers.
Puntland was not manufactured in Villa Somalia.
It was not designed by foreign embassies.
It was not created through presidential decree.
It emerged from grassroots political consensus, historical necessity, local reconciliation, and the determination of its own society after the collapse of the Somali state. Institutions born from society cannot easily be erased by politicians operating outside that society.
This is precisely the strategic mistake repeatedly made by Puntland’s opponents.
They confuse governments with states.
Governments come and go.
Presidents win elections, lose elections, resign, retire, or are replaced.
States endure because society sustains them.
Even if Said Abdullahi Deni were to leave office tomorrow, Puntland would remain.
Even if every cabinet minister resigned, Puntland would remain.
Even if every politician changed sides, Puntland’s social and historical foundations would remain.
That is the difference between a political administration and a historical political entity.
Those imagining that Puntland can be dismantled through outside pressure fundamentally misunderstand what they are confronting. They are attempting to negotiate with history itself.
History rarely negotiates.
The greatest satire in this entire drama is that politicians continue believing they possess powers they have never demonstrated. Every few years someone confidently announces the impending collapse of Puntland. Every few years Puntland continues existing while the political prophets quietly disappear into Somalia’s long archive of failed predictions.
Reality has an unpleasant habit of humiliating political fantasies.
None of this excuses Puntland’s own leadership shortcomings. Reform is necessary. Accountability is necessary. Better governance is necessary. Strategic vision is urgently necessary.
But there is an equally important political truth.
If Puntland is ever to experience genuine regime change, it will come from Puntland society itself—through its elders, intellectuals, political class, civil society, constitutional processes, and ultimately its own people.
It will not be manufactured in Mogadishu.
It will not be imported through political intrigue.
It will not be engineered by disgruntled factions hoping outside sponsorship can substitute for public legitimacy.
Those still entertaining such ambitions would benefit from studying Puntland’s history before attempting to rewrite it.
Political reality is a far more stubborn opponent than political imagination.

By Ismail H. Warsame

There is a profound difference between rejecting federalism and failing to understand how federalism works. Somalia’s political class continues to confuse the two, and the consequences have been devastating. Instead of confronting political reality, many leaders remain trapped in the illusion that the country can simply return to the highly centralized state that collapsed with the First Somali Republic in 1991.
History, however, is indifferent to political wishes.
Somalia’s federal system did not emerge because constitutional scholars designed an ideal model of government. It emerged from the ashes of one of Africa’s longest and most destructive civil wars. It was born out of necessity rather than ideology. It represented a political settlement between communities that had lost confidence in centralized rule after decades of dictatorship, state collapse, and violent fragmentation.
Whether one likes it or not, that historical process cannot simply be reversed by political speeches in Mogadishu or by unilateral constitutional amendments.
Federalism today is a de facto political settlement. It reflects realities created by history, geography, security, and the emergence of clan-based territorial administrations. Puntland, Jubaland, Galmudug, Hirshabelle, South West, and Somaliland each developed their own political institutions in response to the vacuum created by the collapse of the Somali state. One may criticize how these administrations function, but pretending they do not exist is not politics—it is denial.
Some in Mogadishu appear to believe that federalism is already badly wounded—that its institutions have been weakened by constitutional disputes, political confrontation, and repeated attempts to concentrate power at the centre—and that this presents an opportunity to roll it back in favour of a centralist agenda. This is perhaps the greatest strategic miscalculation facing Somalia today. Weakening federal institutions does not erase the historical forces that produced them. Every attempt to recentralize power without broad national consensus only reinforces regional resistance and deepens mistrust between the Federal Government and the Federal Member States. Federalism may be bruised and imperfect, but it remains the constitutional expression of Somalia’s post-civil war political reality.
More importantly, those advocating a return to centralized rule misunderstand the direction of political evolution. If federalism were ever to fail, the logical destination would not be a stronger unitary state. It would be the opposite: an even looser constitutional arrangement in the form of confederalism, where regional governments retain greater sovereignty and delegate only limited powers to a common national authority. Political history rarely moves backwards. Failed attempts at recentralization tend to accelerate decentralization, not reverse it.
Many of Somalia’s political elites therefore continue to wage an imaginary war against federalism instead of improving it. They expend enormous political capital trying to recover powers that history has already redistributed, rather than building trust, cooperation, and effective institutions between the Federal Government and the Federal Member States.
The tragedy is that federalism itself is rarely the real problem.
The real problem is poor leadership.
Successful federations around the world function because their leaders understand that federalism is not a contest over who controls power, but a constitutional framework for sharing it. Somalia’s leaders too often approach it as though one level of government must destroy the other in order to survive. That mindset guarantees perpetual instability.
Critics frequently argue that Somali federalism rests upon clan-based territorial boundaries. They are correct.
But that observation should lead to understanding—not denial.
Those clan enclaves were not invented by the 2012 Provisional Constitution. They evolved over decades of conflict as communities organized their own security, administration, and governance. Federalism merely acknowledged an existing political reality. Constitutions do not create history; they codify it.
Ignoring that reality will not make it disappear.
No decree issued from Villa Somalia can erase more than three decades of political evolution. No presidential ambition can rewind Somalia to 1990. No constitutional manipulation can compel communities to abandon institutions they have painstakingly built over a generation.
Leadership means working with reality rather than against it.
National unity cannot be imposed from above.
It must be negotiated, respected, and continuously renewed through constitutional dialogue, mutual trust, and genuine power-sharing.
Those who genuinely oppose federalism must answer one simple question: What realistic constitutional alternative commands nationwide legitimacy today?
No convincing answer has yet been offered.
Somalia has already paid an enormous price for political experiments driven by personalities instead of institutions. It cannot afford another.
The sooner Somalia’s leaders accept that federalism is not a temporary political inconvenience but the constitutional consequence of the civil war, the sooner they can focus on the real national priorities: restoring security, rebuilding institutions, strengthening the rule of law, promoting economic development, and reconciling a fractured nation.
History has already rendered its verdict.
Federalism is no longer merely a constitutional choice. It is the political foundation upon which Somalia’s future must be built. If that foundation is recklessly undermined, the country is unlikely to return to centralization. It is far more likely to fragment further into an even looser confederal order.
Wise nations build upon historical realities.
Foolish nations spend generations fighting them.

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Why Closed-Door Governance Is Un-Somali, Strategically Self-Defeating, and Harmful to Somali National Unity

A WAPMEN Policy White Paper

By Ismail H. Warsame, MSc, PhD Candidate

Executive Summary

Puntland has historically distinguished itself as a constructive political actor within Somalia’s federal system. Since its establishment in 1998, it has exercised influence not through military dominance or demographic advantage but through political engagement, constitutional advocacy, and institution building. This tradition is now under strain.

The increasing reliance on political isolation, refusal to engage regularly with Somali counterparts, and the adoption of closed-door governance represent a significant departure from Puntland’s founding philosophy. While disagreements with the Federal Government of Somalia are genuine, disengagement is not an effective strategy for resolving constitutional disputes or advancing Puntland’s interests.

This paper argues that isolation is neither a Somali political tradition nor a sustainable leadership model. Rather, it reflects a deeper crisis of political imagination, strategic thinking, and leadership capacity.

Introduction

Somali politics has always revolved around dialogue. Traditional Somali governance depended upon consultation (shir), mediation, negotiation, and consensus-building. Political legitimacy emerged through persuasion rather than permanent exclusion.

Even during periods of armed conflict, Somali leaders maintained communication channels because negotiation remained essential to conflict resolution.

The abandonment of dialogue therefore contradicts both Somali political culture and modern democratic governance.

Puntland’s Historical Political Tradition

Since 1998, Puntland has pursued influence through engagement rather than withdrawal.

Previous administrations consistently:

• Participated in national reconciliation conferences.
• Negotiated constitutional arrangements.
• Engaged political rivals.
• Worked with international partners.
• Defended federalism through political argument rather than political absence.

This strategy established Puntland as one of Somalia’s most influential regional governments.

The Rise of Isolation Politics

Recent years have witnessed a shift toward political disengagement.

Characteristics include:

• Limited political dialogue with Somali counterparts.
• Reduced participation in national political initiatives.
• Preference for public confrontation over negotiation.
• Increasing inward-looking governance.
• Declining diplomatic outreach.

Rather than strengthening Puntland’s bargaining position, this approach has reduced its national political influence.

Why Isolation Is Un-Somali

Somali society is built upon relationships.

Historically, conflicts were managed through:

• Elders’ conferences.
• Clan negotiations.
• Peace conferences.
• Religious mediation.
• Continuous consultation.

Isolation has never been recognised as a permanent political solution.

Dialogue is therefore not weakness.

Dialogue is Somali statecraft.

Leadership Versus Protest

Governments are expected to govern.

Opposition movements may boycott institutions temporarily.

Governments cannot permanently boycott politics itself.

Leadership requires:

• Negotiation.
• Coalition building.
• Strategic communication.
• Policy development.
• Long-term vision.

When leaders refuse engagement, they surrender the political arena to others.

Governance Grievances Are Not Enough

Puntland possesses legitimate concerns regarding:

• Constitutional amendments.
• Federal power concentration.
• Electoral arrangements.
• Fiscal federalism.
• National security.
• Resource sharing.

These issues require stronger—not weaker—political engagement.

Successful constitutional politics depends upon convincing others rather than avoiding them.

The Bankruptcy of Political Ideas

When governments cease engaging politically, observers inevitably question whether the problem lies not in the grievances themselves but in the inability to articulate persuasive alternatives.

Leadership depends upon:

• Clear policy proposals.
• Intellectual confidence.
• Effective communication.
• Strategic vision.

Isolation often becomes a substitute where leadership lacks these qualities.

Strategic Consequences

Closed-door politics carries significant costs.

Internally

• Weakens democratic culture.
• Reduces accountability.
• Encourages groupthink.
• Limits policy innovation.

Nationally

• Reduces Puntland’s influence.
• Weakens federal negotiations.
• Increases political polarization.
• Undermines trust.

Internationally

Partners prefer governments capable of dialogue.

Isolation reduces diplomatic credibility and investment confidence.

Lessons from Puntland’s Founding Generation

Puntland’s founders understood that influence required engagement.

Despite severe disagreements with successive Somali governments, they continued negotiating because they recognised that politics is the management of differences rather than the avoidance of them.

That strategic culture enabled Puntland to become a respected constitutional actor.

Policy Recommendations

Puntland should:

1. Restore structured political dialogue with all Somali stakeholders.
2. Develop a comprehensive constitutional reform agenda instead of reactive politics.
3. Establish permanent channels of communication with federal institutions.
4. Invest in research-based policy development.
5. Strengthen public diplomacy nationally and internationally.
6. Encourage open debate within Puntland itself.
7. Build alliances with other federal member states on shared constitutional concerns.
8. Replace personality-driven politics with institution-based engagement.

Conclusion

Political isolation is not a strategy for safeguarding Puntland’s interests. It is a symptom of declining political confidence.

Somali history demonstrates that dialogue has always been the foundation of governance. Puntland itself was created through negotiation, compromise, and consensus.

Leadership is measured not by the ability to withdraw from difficult conversations but by the ability to shape them.

If Puntland wishes to retain its historic role as a leading defender of Somali federalism and constitutional governance, it must rediscover the principles upon which it was founded: openness, engagement, persuasion, and strategic vision.

The politics of closed doors cannot build the future.

Only the politics of dialogue can.

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Selected References

• I. M. Lewis. A Modern History of Somalia. 4th ed.
• Ken Menkhaus. “Governance without Government in Somalia.”
• United Nations. Provisional Constitution of the Federal Republic of Somalia (2012).
• Interpeace. The Search for Peace in Somalia.

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By Ismail H. Warsame

Many commentators conveniently rewrite history by portraying Donald Trump as the politician who ushered America into the age of digital politics. That narrative is historically incomplete. The digital presidency did not begin with Donald Trump’s tweets. It began with Barack Obama’s BlackBerry.
When Barack Obama entered the White House in 2009, he insisted on keeping his beloved BlackBerry. What appeared to be a personal preference immediately became a matter of national security. Intelligence agencies, the Secret Service, cybersecurity experts, and White House lawyers all understood what many politicians around the world still fail to grasp today: the communication device of a head of state is not a private possession. It is a potential national security vulnerability.
The controversy exposed a profound reality. In the twenty-first century, political leadership had entered a new battlefield. Wars would no longer be fought only with tanks, aircraft, and missiles. They would also be fought through smartphones, data networks, cyber espionage, digital surveillance, and information warfare.
Obama eventually retained a heavily modified and tightly secured BlackBerry, accessible only through strict security protocols. The compromise demonstrated an important constitutional principle: no president, however popular or powerful, stands above the security requirements of the state.
Years later, Donald Trump’s prolific use of social media generated a different controversy. His posts could move financial markets, influence diplomacy, unsettle allies, provoke adversaries, and dominate the global news cycle within minutes. The issue was no longer simply the security of the device but the unprecedented political power of instantaneous, unfiltered presidential communication.
Yet Trump’s digital politics did not emerge from a vacuum. The foundation had already been laid during the Obama years. Obama’s BlackBerry controversy was America’s first public confrontation with the constitutional, legal, and security implications of governing in the digital age.
The lesson reaches far beyond Washington.
Many developing countries continue to treat official communication as a personal affair. Presidents, ministers, generals, and senior officials routinely use unsecured phones, commercial messaging applications, and personal social media accounts for sensitive government business. Such practices expose states to espionage, manipulation, cyberattacks, and foreign influence operations.
Somalia is no exception. Political leaders eagerly embrace digital platforms for propaganda and political theatre while neglecting the institutions, laws, cybersecurity infrastructure, and record-keeping systems required to protect state communications. The obsession with publicity often exceeds the commitment to statecraft.
Technology is politically neutral. It can strengthen democracy or accelerate institutional decay. It can enhance transparency or become a weapon of deception. It can unite nations or deepen polarization. Everything depends on whether leaders possess the wisdom and discipline to govern technology rather than become governed by it.
The Obama BlackBerry episode should therefore be remembered not as a trivial dispute over a smartphone but as the moment the modern digital presidency was born. It was the first clear warning that every technological innovation brings new constitutional, legal, and national security challenges.
History deserves accuracy. Donald Trump transformed the politics of social media, but Barack Obama forced America to confront the realities of digital governance. The BlackBerry was more than a device; it was the opening chapter of a new era in which cyber power, information dominance, and digital communications became integral components of national power.
States that fail to understand this lesson will discover, sooner rather than later, that sovereignty can be compromised not only by invading armies but also by the devices carried in the pockets of their own leaders.

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By Ismail H. Warsame

A diplomatic note rarely attracts public attention. It contains no fiery rhetoric, no threats, and no dramatic headlines. Yet some of the most consequential shifts in international politics begin with carefully worded diplomatic correspondence. The recent note from the United States Mission to the African Union is one such document.
Its language is diplomatic. Its implications are strategic.
The central message is unmistakable: the United States will no longer support the continuation of the UN Support Office in Somalia (UNSOS) beyond the current authorization ending on December 31, 2026. Washington further states that while it does not object to renewing the African Union Support and Stabilization Mission in Somalia (AUSSOM), it will oppose any renewal that continues to depend upon UN logistical or operational support.
This is not simply an accounting decision. It is a fundamental reassessment of nearly two decades of international security policy toward Somalia.
Since 2007, according to the note, the United States has contributed nearly US$2 billion to UNSOS and its predecessor, US$1.6 billion in bilateral support to troop-contributing countries, hundreds of millions to Somali security forces, and billions more in humanitarian and development assistance.
Yet Somalia has failed to achieve sustainable security ownership. It has not sustained progress against Al-Shabaab. It has not taken full responsibility for its own security functions. It has not undertaken serious security-sector reform. Internal rivalries and political infighting continue to undermine the fight against Al-Shabaab and ISIS.
In diplomatic language, this is a vote of no confidence.
The Era of Unlimited International Subsidies Is Ending
For years, Somalia’s security architecture has depended on external financing. Foreign governments have paid for troop stipends, logistics, aviation, medical evacuation, fuel, transport, communications, military planning, and institutional support.
Without UNSOS, these pillars become uncertain.
Washington is effectively declaring:
Somalia cannot indefinitely outsource its national security while postponing the political reforms necessary to sustain it.
There is an even larger strategic reality that Somalia’s political leaders appear to have ignored. Think about it. The United States is reassessing its global military posture. It is reducing overseas commitments, consolidating military bases, and demanding that allies assume greater responsibility for their own security. Even in strategically vital regions such as the Middle East and Europe, Washington is curtailing aspects of its military footprint and pressing partners to carry a larger share of the burden.
In that global context, does anyone seriously believe the United States will continue indefinitely subsidizing Somalia’s security?
The answer is increasingly obvious. America’s global strategic reach is under growing strain as it confronts fiscal pressures, rising competition from China and Russia, and competing security priorities across multiple theaters. Washington is becoming far more selective in where and how it commits its resources. Somalia should not assume that it will remain an exception.
That is precisely why this diplomatic note is so significant. It is not merely about UNSOS or AUSSOM. It reflects a broader transformation in American strategic thinking: partners must increasingly finance, manage, and take ownership of their own security. The era of open-ended international subsidies is drawing to a close.
Political Dysfunction Has Become a Security Liability
The diplomatic note identifies internal political infighting as one of the principal reasons for Somalia’s limited progress.
This should surprise no one.
Political disputes between the Federal Government and Federal Member States have repeatedly disrupted national security coordination. Constitutional disagreements remain unresolved. Electoral controversies have consumed political attention while Al-Shabaab exploits institutional fragmentation.
The United States appears to have concluded that military assistance alone cannot compensate for political dysfunction.
A Message to Hassan Sheikh Mohamud and Somalia’s Political Class
President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, his political allies and cronies, and the leaders of Somalia’s Federal Member States should read this diplomatic note carefully—and repeatedly. It is not merely a routine communication between Washington and the African Union. It is an unmistakable signal that it is no longer business as usual.
For years, Somalia’s political elite have behaved as though international partners would continue paying the bills regardless of endless constitutional crises, expired mandates, political infighting, patronage networks, corruption, and institutional paralysis. That assumption has now been fundamentally challenged.
The United States is effectively saying that political legitimacy, constitutional order, institutional reform, and national responsibility can no longer be postponed while expecting the international community to continue underwriting Somalia’s security. Foreign assistance is not a permanent substitute for governance.
This message applies equally to Villa Somalia and the Federal Member States. Neither Mogadishu nor the regional administrations can continue blaming one another while expecting foreign taxpayers to finance Somalia’s security indefinitely. The politics of confrontation, unconstitutional extensions of power, fragmented command structures, and perpetual disputes have weakened the Somali state and emboldened its enemies.
President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud should recognize that Somalia’s international partners are increasingly measuring success not by speeches but by governance, constitutional compliance, and institutional performance. Likewise, the leaders of Puntland, Jubaland, Galmudug, Hirshabelle, and Southwest State cannot exempt themselves from this criticism. They, too, bear responsibility for the fragmentation of national politics and the failure to build effective institutions.
The era of assuming that donors will always fill Somalia’s financial and security gaps is ending. Washington’s message is clear: reform your politics, reform your institutions, take ownership of your security—or prepare to shoulder the consequences.
A Historic Turning Point
History may remember this diplomatic note as the beginning of a new chapter in Somalia’s relationship with the international community.
The era in which foreign donors automatically renewed costly security missions appears to be drawing to a close. Future support is likely to become increasingly conditional, based on measurable progress in governance, constitutional order, institutional reform, accountability, and security-sector professionalism.
For Somali policymakers, the lesson could not be clearer.
Security cannot be rented forever. Sovereignty cannot be outsourced indefinitely. National independence demands national responsibility.
Whether Somalia’s leaders recognize this reality before December 2026 may determine not only the future of AUSSOM but the future of the Somali state itself.
The time for excuses has passed.
The time for responsible national leadership has arrived.

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By Ismail H. Warsame

The first duty of any government is not building roads, holding conferences, issuing press releases, or making political speeches. The first duty of government is to establish and maintain law and order. Without law and order, everything else becomes a facade. Without accountability, a state gradually surrenders authority to criminals, armed groups, and political opportunists.
Unfortunately, one of the greatest failures of the administration of President Said Abdullahi Deni has been its inability to grasp this fundamental principle.
For years, Puntland has projected itself as one of the more stable regions of Somalia. Yet stability is not measured merely by the absence of war. Stability is measured by the ability of institutions to investigate crimes, prosecute offenders, record violations, enforce the law impartially, and prevent repeat offenses. By this standard, Puntland’s law enforcement institutions remain alarmingly weak.
No society is immune from violence. Every country experiences criminal acts, murders, armed clashes, political instigation, and breaches of public order. The difference between a functioning state and a failing one lies in what happens afterward. Were suspects identified? Were they summoned for questioning? Were investigations conducted? Were criminal records maintained? Were prosecutions initiated? Were preventative measures put in place?
In Puntland, too often the answer is no.
A few years ago, nearly forty people were reportedly killed in armed clashes in Garowe. Similar deadly incidents have occurred in Bosaso and elsewhere. Yet the public has rarely seen serious investigations, public inquiries, prosecutions, or convictions proportionate to the magnitude of these crimes. Families bury their dead. Communities move on. Political leaders issue statements. Then silence follows.
One is left asking a troubling question: How can dozens of people be killed and nobody be held responsible?
Where are the police investigations?
Where are the witness statements?
Where are the arrest warrants?
Where are the court proceedings?
Where are the official records?
The absence of answers is not merely an administrative weakness; it is an invitation to future violence.
When perpetrators discover that there are no consequences for their actions, they become emboldened. Today’s offender becomes tomorrow’s gang leader. Today’s armed agitator becomes tomorrow’s political mercenary. The lesson learned is simple: violence works and accountability does not exist.
A functioning police service does not wait for crimes to disappear into public memory. It actively summons suspects, interviews witnesses, gathers intelligence, maintains criminal records, and builds prosecutable cases. This is basic police work practiced in every functioning jurisdiction in the world. Yet Puntland’s security institutions continue to rely excessively on reactive measures while neglecting the painstaking investigative work that actually deters crime.

There was a time in Puntland’s early history when the state’s leadership understood this principle instinctively.
During the administration of President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, a group of political agitators began creating tension and instability in Garowe. Among them were individuals associated with Aaran Jaan and several influential elders, including a well-known figure popularly known as “Cambe Cambe.” Their activities were becoming increasingly disruptive, threatening public order and political stability in the fledgling state.
President Abdullahi Yusuf summoned the Governor of Nugaal Region, Nur-Salaad, and asked him a simple but revealing question:
“Have you summoned these agitators to the police station yet?”
Nur-Salaad immediately understood the significance of the question. The President was not asking for mass arrests, collective punishment, or heavy-handed repression. He was asking whether the state had exercised its basic authority to question individuals whose actions were contributing to public disorder.
Nur-Salaad stood to attention and replied:
“Not yet, Sir. But I will do that tomorrow morning.”
And he did.
The significance of that episode lies not in what happened afterward but in the lesson it conveys. The mere act of summoning individuals for questioning sends a powerful message: the state is watching, the law is present, and actions have consequences. It establishes accountability before violence erupts and before disorder becomes normalized.
That was the essence of preventive policing. The objective was not necessarily to imprison people. The objective was to remind them that there existed a government, a police service, and a legal authority responsible for maintaining public order.
Today, one is left wondering whether that institutional mindset has been lost. When dozens of people can die in armed clashes without investigations, summonses, or prosecutions, the contrast with Puntland’s earlier years could not be more striking. In those days, potential troublemakers were called to answer questions before crises escalated. Today, in too many cases, even after blood has been spilled, nobody is called to answer for anything

Equally troubling is the apparent absence of institutional memory. Effective law enforcement depends on records. Governments must know who committed what offense, where it occurred, who financed it, who participated, and whether the individuals involved are repeat offenders. Criminal behavior follows patterns. Intelligence gathering exists precisely to identify those patterns before they erupt into violence.
When governments fail to maintain such records, every incident begins from zero. Every criminal receives a fresh start. Every cycle of violence repeats itself.
Puntland’s traditional conflict-resolution mechanisms, once among its greatest strengths, have also been underutilized. Elders, customary authorities, community leaders, and local mediation structures historically played a significant role in containing violence and identifying troublemakers. Modern law enforcement and traditional mechanisms should complement one another, not operate in isolation.
The consequence of this institutional neglect is becoming increasingly visible. Individuals involved in previous acts of violence continue to resurface in new conflicts. Some are reportedly recruited by external political actors seeking to destabilize Puntland. Others become permanent agents of disorder. This should surprise nobody. A government that fails to impose consequences effectively subsidizes future lawlessness.
The issue is therefore larger than any individual crime. It concerns the credibility of the state itself.
A government that cannot investigate murders weakens public confidence.
A government that cannot prosecute offenders weakens deterrence.
A government that cannot maintain records weakens intelligence.
A government that cannot hold perpetrators accountable weakens its own authority.
The tragedy is that Puntland possesses many of the ingredients required for effective governance: experienced security personnel, established institutions, traditional authority structures, and a population that overwhelmingly desires peace and stability. What has been missing is political commitment to build a culture of accountability.
The path forward is neither complicated nor revolutionary. Puntland must strengthen criminal investigations, institutionalize record-keeping, establish transparent inquiry procedures following major incidents, improve intelligence coordination, empower prosecutors, and ensure that every serious crime produces a visible legal response.
The message must be unmistakable: violence carries consequences.
Without such reforms, Puntland risks creating a permanent class of repeat offenders who move from one crisis to another, confident that the state will neither investigate nor punish them. A society that fails to confront lawlessness eventually becomes hostage to it.
The measure of a government is not how loudly it speaks about security. The measure of a government is whether criminals fear the law.
In Puntland today, that remains the unanswered question.

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The tragedy of Somalia is no longer merely a story of weak governance, corruption, clan politics, or failed institutions. It is rapidly becoming a story of national self-destruction.
What is unfolding today in Somaliland is not simply a regional political maneuver. It is a symptom of a much deeper national disease. Faced with decades of diplomatic isolation and frustrated aspirations for international recognition, Somaliland’s political leadership appears increasingly willing to seek recognition from any quarter, regardless of the broader consequences for Somali territorial unity and statehood. Desperation has produced desperate choices.
Yet Somaliland alone should not bear the blame.
The greater responsibility lies with the collective failure of Somalia’s political class. For years, leaders in Mogadishu have ignored warning signs, dismissed legitimate grievances, and pursued narrow political interests instead of building a genuine national consensus. Every crisis was treated as a temporary inconvenience rather than evidence of a collapsing national project.
The message should have been clear long ago.
Puntland and Jubaland have spent years locked in political confrontation with Villa Somalia. Constitutional disputes, power struggles, and mutual distrust have become permanent features of the federal landscape. Instead of dialogue, compromise, and institutional development, Somalia’s leaders have chosen confrontation and political brinkmanship.
Now Somaliland appears to be moving further away from the Somali state altogether.
Yet even now, few lessons are being learned.
There remains a dangerous illusion among many political actors that Somalia can survive indefinitely through improvisation, personality cults, and the manipulation of clan loyalties. There is an assumption that the country can always return to the familiar patterns of the post-1991 era—fragmented administrations, competing authorities, and localized power centers.
That assumption is profoundly mistaken.
The next phase may not resemble the era of warlord fiefdoms. The conditions that existed in the 1990s no longer exist. Regional geopolitics have changed. Global competition has intensified. Strategic waterways have become more valuable. Foreign powers are more interested in the Horn of Africa than ever before.
A stateless or fragmented Somalia is not a vacuum. Vacuums do not remain empty.
If Somalia continues to unravel, other forces will emerge to fill the void. Some will come from within the region. Others will come from far beyond it. They will not be motivated by Somali unity, Somali sovereignty, or Somali national interests. They will be motivated by strategic access, commercial opportunities, military positioning, and geopolitical influence.
The Horn of Africa sits astride some of the world’s most important maritime routes. The Gulf of Aden, the Red Sea, and the Indian Ocean are not merely geographical features; they are strategic assets coveted by global and regional powers alike.
Those who believe Somalia’s collapse would benefit their faction, clan, administration, or political movement are making a catastrophic miscalculation.
Neither Hassan Sheikh Mohamud nor Al-Shabaab would emerge victorious from the territorial dismemberment of Somalia.
The fragmentation of Somalia would not produce winners. It would produce replacement actors.
New political entities would emerge. New external patrons would arrive. New security arrangements would be imposed. New realities would be created that Somalis themselves might no longer control.
History offers countless examples of nations that believed they could manage disintegration, only to discover that once the process begins, it acquires its own momentum.
That is the real danger confronting Somalia today.
Disintegration is easier to start than to stop.
Once territorial fragmentation becomes normalized, once constitutional legitimacy collapses, once regions permanently lose confidence in the national project, reversing the process becomes exponentially more difficult. Political wounds harden into permanent realities. Temporary arrangements become irreversible facts on the ground.
Somalia is approaching that threshold.
The country is not merely experiencing a political crisis. It is confronting an existential crisis.
The solution requires immediate action: restoration of constitutional order, genuine federal dialogue, respect for regional autonomy, national reconciliation, and leadership capable of thinking beyond clan calculations and short-term political survival.
Above all, Somali leaders must rediscover a simple truth: no individual, no administration, and no political faction is more important than the survival of the Somali nation itself.
Time is running out.
The warning signs are visible.
The fractures are widening.
The consequences are becoming irreversible.
Act now—or witness the disappearance of Somalia as it has been known for generations.
The choice remains in Somali hands, but perhaps not for much longer.

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By Ismail H. Warsame, MSc, PhD Candidate
The greatest gift President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud has received is not foreign support, constitutional manipulation, or the weakness of state institutions. His greatest gift is the weakness of his opposition.
Across Somalia, political leaders and citizens alike have expressed growing concern over what they view as Hassan Sheikh Mohamud’s disregard for constitutional limits, the concentration of power in Mogadishu, the erosion of federal principles, and the extension of political authority beyond agreed mandates. Yet despite these grievances, the opposition has failed to transform public frustration into a coherent national movement.
The reason is simple: the opposition suffers from the very disease it accuses Hassan Sheikh Mohamud of spreading.
It lacks vision.
It lacks national reach.
It lacks moral authority.
And most importantly, it lacks the courage to rise above the narrow politics of clan, region, and personal ambition.
The Mogadishu Trap
Somali politics has become imprisoned within the boundaries of Banadir.
Every political dispute is discussed through a Mogadishu lens. Every alliance is measured according to sub-clan arithmetic. Every political calculation revolves around Villa Somalia.
This is precisely where the opposition has failed.
A genuine opposition movement should be speaking not only to politicians in Mogadishu hotels but also to citizens in Bosaso, Kismayo, Garowe, Baidoa, Beledweyne, Dhusamareeb, Laascaanood, and every district across Somalia.
Instead, opposition leaders appear only when there is a political crisis in the capital.
They issue statements.
They hold press conferences.
They attend meetings.
Then they disappear.
The Somali public sees little difference between this behavior and the conduct of those they oppose.
A national opposition cannot be built through elite bargaining alone. It must be built through public persuasion.
That work is not being done.
The Silence of Deni and Madobe
Among Hassan Sheikh Mohamud’s principal opponents are Puntland President Said Abdullahi Deni and Jubaland President Ahmed Mohamed Islam “Madobe.”
On paper, both possess significant political advantages.
They control functioning regional administrations.
They have security institutions.
They enjoy substantial political experience.
They possess platforms from which to challenge Villa Somalia.
Yet neither has succeeded in becoming a national alternative.
Instead of leading a national conversation, they have become background noise.
Their criticism of Hassan Sheikh Mohamud is often reactive rather than strategic.
Their messaging rarely extends beyond federal-state grievances.
Their political language is defensive rather than inspirational.
Most importantly, neither has articulated a compelling vision of what Somalia should become after Hassan Sheikh Mohamud.
Politics abhors a vacuum.
People do not rally merely against a leader.
They rally behind an alternative.
That alternative has not been presented.
The Credibility Problem
The opposition’s greatest weakness is credibility.
Many Somalis ask a simple question:
If these leaders cannot transform their own administrations into models of governance, why should they be trusted to reform Somalia?
Puntland continues to struggle with unresolved governance challenges, institutional weaknesses, economic limitations, and unfinished democratic reforms.
Jubaland faces similar questions regarding accountability, institutional development, and political inclusiveness.
This does not absolve Hassan Sheikh Mohamud of responsibility for the current crisis.
But it does weaken the opposition’s ability to claim the moral high ground.
The public notices inconsistency.
A politician who condemns authoritarian tendencies in Mogadishu while tolerating similar practices at home loses credibility.
A leader who demands constitutionalism nationally must demonstrate constitutionalism locally.
Otherwise, criticism becomes mere political convenience.
Opposition Is More Than Resistance
Somalia’s opposition appears trapped in the belief that opposing Hassan Sheikh Mohamud is itself a political program.
It is not.
Opposition requires more than resistance.
It requires imagination.
Where is the national economic vision?
Where is the constitutional roadmap?
Where is the security strategy?
Where is the plan for elections?
Where is the blueprint for federal-state relations?
Where is the proposal for reconciliation?
Where is the vision for the next generation?
Without answers to these questions, opposition becomes little more than organized dissatisfaction.
That may generate headlines.
It does not generate leadership.
Somalia’s Leadership Crisis
The deeper problem is that Somalia is experiencing a leadership crisis, not merely a constitutional crisis.
The country is dominated by politicians competing for office rather than statesmen competing for ideas.
Personal ambition has replaced national purpose.
Clan mobilization has replaced political organization.
Short-term survival has replaced long-term vision.
This crisis affects Villa Somalia and its opponents alike.
The tragedy is that while Hassan Sheikh Mohamud’s political mistakes are visible, the opposition’s inability to offer a superior alternative allows those mistakes to continue.
A weak government is dangerous.
A weak opposition is even more dangerous because it removes accountability from the political system.
The Road Ahead
If Somalia’s opposition wishes to become a credible national force, it must undergo a profound transformation.
First, it must abandon Mogadishu-centric politics and engage citizens across the entire country.
Second, it must speak the language of national interests rather than regional grievances.
Third, it must build institutions instead of temporary alliances.
Fourth, it must offer a clear vision for Somalia’s future.
Finally, it must demonstrate through action that it can govern better than the people it seeks to replace.
The struggle against constitutional abuse, centralization, and political exclusion cannot succeed through slogans alone.
It requires leadership.
At present, Somalia faces an uncomfortable reality.
Hassan Sheikh Mohamud’s opponents have correctly identified many of the country’s problems.
What they have not demonstrated is that they are capable of solving them.
And until they do, Somalia will remain trapped between a government losing legitimacy and an opposition unable to inspire confidence.
That is not a recipe for democratic renewal.
It is a recipe for national stagnation.

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By Ismail H. Warsame, MSc, PhD Candidate

Somalia is making history—but not the kind of history that nations celebrate. It is making history in dishonour, constitutional recklessness, and political absurdity. Across the Somali territories, leaders who were entrusted with public office have transformed democratic mandates into personal entitlements, constitutional terms into indefinite privileges, and public institutions into instruments of self-preservation.
The result is a political landscape so bizarre that future historians may struggle to find comparable examples anywhere in the modern world.
At the centre of this crisis stands President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud. Elected through a constitutional process and entrusted with the responsibility of safeguarding the Somali state, he now faces accusations from his opponents of remaining in office after the expiry of his constitutional mandate. In functioning democracies, leaders prepare for departure as their terms end. They seek legitimacy through elections, constitutional transitions, and public consent. They do not govern through ambiguity or institutional paralysis.
Yet Somalia has become a place where the expiration of a constitutional mandate is treated as a technical inconvenience rather than a binding legal requirement.
The problem, however, does not end in Mogadishu.
In Puntland, President Said Abdullahi Deni has increasingly come under criticism for strained relations with oversight institutions and for political disputes regarding accountability and governance. Parliament, which should serve as an independent check on executive authority, appears weakened and unable to exercise effective oversight. The fundamental principle of constitutional government—that leaders answer to institutions and laws—has been steadily eroded.
Meanwhile, Somaliland has ventured into territory unprecedented in modern Muslim political history. By pursuing diplomatic engagement in Jerusalem while the Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains unresolved, Somaliland’s leadership has stepped into one of the most sensitive political and religious disputes in the world. Whatever one’s view of diplomacy or recognition, the symbolism is profound. No self-governing Muslim political entity has willingly positioned itself in such a manner while the status of Palestine remains contested and unresolved.
History will record that decision.
The absurdity deepens further in the federal member states.
In Galmudug, President Ahmed Abdi Kaariye (Qoor Qoor) continues to govern despite persistent debates over mandate legitimacy and delayed political transitions. In Hirshabelle, President Ali Abdullahi Hussein (Ali Guudlaawe), has similarly remained in office amid long-standing controversies surrounding constitutional timelines and electoral processes.
The message being sent across Somalia is devastatingly simple: constitutional terms no longer matter.
If leaders can remain in office indefinitely, why hold elections? If mandates can be extended through political manoeuvring, why draft constitutions? If institutions cannot enforce legal limits, why pretend that the rule of law exists?
This is not merely a governance crisis. It is a crisis of political morality.
A society survives not because it possesses constitutions, parliaments, courts, or security forces. A society survives because its leaders accept limits on their power. Once leaders begin treating public office as private property, institutions become hollow shells. Elections become rituals. Constitutions become decorations. Citizens lose faith in the political system itself.
Somalia today appears trapped in precisely that cycle.
The tragedy is that this constitutional breakdown is occurring at every level simultaneously. The Federal Government faces legitimacy disputes. Federal member states face legitimacy disputes. Political opposition groups reject existing arrangements. Constitutional frameworks are contested. Electoral timelines are uncertain. Trust between institutions has collapsed.
The country is not suffering from a shortage of leaders.
It is suffering from a shortage of statesmen.
A statesman understands that legitimacy does not come from occupying an office. Legitimacy comes from respecting the rules that created that office in the first place. A statesman knows when to govern and when to leave. A statesman protects institutions even when doing so weakens his personal power.
What Somalia increasingly produces instead are political actors who view institutions as obstacles rather than guardians of national stability.
The consequences are predictable. Public cynicism deepens. Clan tensions intensify. Extremist groups exploit political divisions. International partners lose confidence. Investors stay away. Young people lose hope.
And perhaps most dangerous of all, constitutional violations become normalised.
When constitutional anarchy becomes routine, national collapse ceases to be an event and becomes a process.
Somalia’s leaders should understand one fundamental truth: no political office is permanent, but the damage inflicted on institutions can last generations.
History is watching. Future generations are watching. The Somali people are watching.
The question is whether today’s leaders wish to be remembered as founders of a constitutional democracy—or as the politicians who transformed Somalia into a global case study of how not to govern a nation.
The answer will be written not by speeches, but by whether they respect the limits of their power.

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By Ismail H. Warsame

For nearly half a century, the confrontation between the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran has defined the geopolitical architecture of the Middle East. Administrations have changed in Washington. Leaders have come and gone in Tehran. Wars have erupted, regimes have collapsed, and alliances have shifted. Yet one reality has remained constant: neither side has been able to decisively defeat the other.

That is why any future U.S.–Iran agreement would be more than a diplomatic arrangement. It would be an acknowledgment of strategic reality.

From Washington’s perspective, a deal may be presented as a mechanism for regional stability, nuclear restraint, and de-escalation. But from another perspective, particularly among critics of American policy in the region, such an agreement would amount to recognition that decades of sanctions, military pressure, covert operations, and diplomatic isolation failed to bring Iran to its knees.

Iran would emerge not merely as a survivor, but as a state that successfully resisted the combined pressure of the world’s most powerful military alliance.

The symbolism would be profound.

For China and Russia, Iran’s endurance would reinforce the argument that American power is no longer absolute. Beijing would view it as evidence that alternative centers of economic and political power can withstand Western pressure. Moscow would portray it as another crack in the post-Cold War order dominated by Washington.

Likewise, the broader coalition of emerging powers—often associated with the BRICS framework—would interpret such an outcome as confirmation that the global balance of power is steadily shifting away from a unipolar world.

The implications extend beyond diplomacy.

Iran sits astride some of the world’s most critical energy routes. Its influence stretches from the Persian Gulf to the Strait of Hormuz and through networks of allied actors across the region. Any arrangement that leaves Iran stronger, wealthier, and less isolated inevitably raises questions about the future security architecture upon which American influence has rested for decades.

For many observers, the petrodollar system, American military basing strategy, and Washington’s regional alliances are interconnected pillars of U.S. influence. A more confident Iran, integrated into alternative economic and financial networks, would be viewed as a challenge to that structure.

Israel faces a similar strategic dilemma.

Successive Israeli governments have regarded Iranian regional influence as the principal long-term threat to Israeli security. Tehran’s support for armed movements across the region, combined with its missile and nuclear capabilities, has shaped Israeli military doctrine for years.

Any agreement that leaves Iran politically strengthened may therefore be interpreted in Tel Aviv not as peace, but as a temporary pause in a larger struggle.

This is where the central contradiction emerges.

If one side views a negotiated settlement as strategic survival while the other views it as strategic defeat, the foundations of lasting peace remain fragile.

Neither great powers nor regional powers easily accept what they perceive as historic losses. The United States built its Middle East strategy over generations. Israel views its security doctrine as existential. Iran regards resistance as central to its revolutionary identity. These competing visions leave little room for a definitive settlement.

The result is a sobering possibility: diplomacy may reduce tensions, but it may not eliminate the underlying conflict.

Agreements can freeze disputes. They can delay confrontations. They can buy time for exhausted adversaries. But they rarely resolve struggles rooted in competing visions of regional order.

The Middle East today is not merely witnessing a contest between Iran and the United States. It is witnessing a broader transition between an aging geopolitical order and an emerging one. Whether that transition occurs through negotiation or confrontation remains uncertain.

What appears increasingly clear is that no side is prepared to concede its vision of the future.

And when rivals believe that compromise equals surrender, peace becomes temporary, while conflict becomes permanent.

The tragedy of the Middle East may therefore be that even successful diplomacy cannot end the struggle. It can only postpone the next chapter.

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WDM Editorial Note: The views expressed in this article reflect a geopolitical interpretation of regional power dynamics. They do not constitute predictions of inevitable outcomes but rather an examination of competing strategic perceptions shaping the contemporary Middle East.

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By Ismail H. Warsame, MSc, PhD Candidate

Somalia today stands as a painful monument to collective failure. No one is better. No one is innocent. No one can honestly point a finger at another while keeping their own hands clean. From Villa Somalia to the federal member states, from political elites to self-proclaimed opposition figures, from clan elders to business interests, the nation has been abandoned to its fate.
The tragedy of Somalia is no longer merely a crisis of governance. It is a crisis of purpose. A nation without vision eventually loses direction. A nation without patriotism eventually loses cohesion. A nation without leaders willing to sacrifice for the common good eventually loses itself.
Today, no one truly speaks for Somalia.
The Federal Government speaks of authority while presiding over division. Federal Member States speak of federalism while often pursuing narrow political interests. Opposition groups speak of reform while waiting for their turn at power. Political actors denounce corruption while benefiting from the very systems they condemn. Every camp claims righteousness. None offers a national project capable of rescuing the country from its decline.
Meanwhile, the ordinary Somali citizen watches helplessly as the political class wages endless battles over power, positions, constitutional manipulation, clan arithmetic, and personal enrichment. Roads collapse. Public services deteriorate. Security remains fragile. Youth flee the country in search of dignity elsewhere. The educated abandon hope. The poor are left behind.
The greatest tragedy is not that Somalia is poor. Nations have recovered from poverty before.
The greatest tragedy is that Somalia has lost its sense of national purpose.
There was a time when Somalis, despite their differences, could rally around a shared vision. Today, every issue is viewed through the lens of clan, faction, region, or foreign sponsorship. The idea of Somalia itself is under assault. National interest has become subordinate to personal interest. Public office has become a route to private gain.
And where national weakness emerges, foreign interests inevitably follow.
History offers a cruel lesson: weak states invite intervention. Fragmented societies attract predators. Countries that cannot defend their own interests eventually become arenas where others pursue theirs.
There are powerful regional and international actors who would not mourn the further fragmentation of Somalia. Some would welcome a permanently divided Somalia as an opportunity to expand influence, secure strategic territory, exploit resources, control coastlines, or advance geopolitical ambitions. They need not even conspire openly. Somali politicians often perform the work of disintegration themselves.
No foreign power can destroy a country that remains united.
But a divided nation can destroy itself.
The painful reality is that Somalia’s enemies did not create this crisis. They merely exploit it. The roots of the problem lie within. It lies in the failure of leadership. It lies in the abandonment of statesmanship. It lies in the replacement of national vision with short-term political calculations.
When fools seize power, institutions become weak.
When opportunists seize power, public resources become private property.
When patriots disappear from public life, the nation becomes vulnerable.
And when an entire political class loses sight of the national interest, society itself begins to decay.
What we are witnessing today is not merely a political crisis. It is the slow erosion of the moral foundations upon which nations are built. Trust is disappearing. Legitimacy is disappearing. Hope is disappearing.
A society can survive poverty.
A society can survive conflict.
A society can survive political disputes.
But a society cannot survive indefinitely when its leaders cease to believe in the nation they claim to govern.
Somalia stands at such a crossroads.
The country does not suffer from a shortage of intelligence, resources, or talent. It suffers from a shortage of leadership. It suffers from a shortage of courage. It suffers from a shortage of men and women willing to place Somalia above clan, above faction, above personal ambition, and above foreign patronage.
The warning signs are everywhere.
A fractured political order.
Weak institutions.
Growing public cynicism.
Persistent insecurity.
Unresolved constitutional disputes.
Deepening regional divisions.
Foreign actors competing for influence.
These are not signs of national renewal. They are symptoms of national decline.
Yet decline is not destiny.
The first step toward recovery is honesty. Somalia’s leaders must stop pretending that someone else is responsible. Every level of government bears responsibility. Every political actor bears responsibility. Every institution that has placed narrow interests above national interests bears responsibility.
The nation does not need more slogans.
It needs statesmanship.
It does not need more political theatre.
It needs national vision.
It does not need more clan mobilization.
It needs civic patriotism.
Until that transformation occurs, Somalia will continue drifting toward uncertainty while its citizens pay the price.
History will ultimately record this era not by the speeches politicians delivered, but by whether they saved the nation when it mattered most.
The verdict, so far, is not encouraging.

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Warsame Policy & Media Network (WAPMEN) — Commentary and Critical Analysis.

By Ismail H. Warsame, MSc, PhD Candidate

The US–Israeli war on Iran has now moved beyond the battlefield. Regardless of how many missiles are intercepted, military facilities destroyed, or political statements issued, the conflict has already entered a phase where its strategic consequences are becoming increasingly clear. Wars are not ultimately judged by tactical victories but by their long-term political and geopolitical outcomes. By that measure, this war has fundamentally altered the strategic landscape of the Middle East.
For decades, the United States and Israel sought to establish an uncontested regional order built on military superiority, political intimidation, economic leverage, and strategic alliances with Arab monarchies. Iran was identified as the principal obstacle to this vision. Yet the war has produced consequences that may ultimately undermine the very objectives that justified it.
The first and perhaps most significant outcome is the validation of Iranian deterrence. Iran has demonstrated that it cannot be treated like Iraq, Libya, or Syria. Despite decades of sanctions, isolation, cyber warfare, assassinations, and military threats, Iran has preserved sufficient military capability to impose costs on its adversaries. The mere possibility of Iranian retaliation has forced Washington, Tel Aviv, and their allies to continuously calculate risks before every military move. Deterrence is not about defeating an enemy outright; it is about making aggression costly. By that measure, Iran has already achieved a strategic success.
Second, the conflict has elevated the importance of the Strait of Hormuz as a geopolitical weapon. Nearly one-fifth of global oil shipments pass through this narrow maritime corridor. Every escalation instantly sends shockwaves through energy markets, financial institutions, and global supply chains. Iran’s ability to threaten, disrupt, or control traffic through Hormuz gives Tehran leverage far beyond its economic size. The war has reminded the world that the global economy remains vulnerable to a handful of strategic chokepoints.
Beyond Hormuz lies a broader strategic reality: Iran’s capacity to project power into the Bab el-Mandab Strait and the Red Sea through its alliance with the Houthis. What began as a local Yemeni conflict has evolved into a regional pressure point capable of disrupting one of the world’s most important maritime routes. Western navies have spent billions attempting to secure Red Sea shipping lanes, yet attacks continue to demonstrate the limits of military solutions against decentralized proxy forces. The message is unmistakable: maritime dominance can no longer be taken for granted.
The war has also intensified pressure on the petrodollar system. Since the 1970s, global oil trade has reinforced American financial dominance. However, every major confrontation involving Iran encourages oil producers and emerging powers to seek alternatives. China, Russia, and several Global South countries increasingly explore non-dollar trade arrangements and alternative payment mechanisms. While the petrodollar remains dominant, its aura of permanence has been weakened by the repeated weaponization of sanctions and financial systems.
Another strategic consequence concerns the future of Zionist expansionism and Israeli regional ambitions. For years, Israel pursued normalization agreements and regional integration under the assumption of overwhelming military superiority. The war has challenged that assumption. It has demonstrated that military power alone cannot eliminate resistance movements, erase ideological opposition, or impose a stable regional order. Instead, it has deepened polarization and reinforced anti-Israeli sentiment across much of the Middle East.
Equally important is what the conflict has revealed about American military power. The United States maintains an extensive network of military bases across the Middle East, costing hundreds of billions of dollars over decades. Yet the war raises fundamental questions about the sustainability of this posture. Military installations spread across Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, and elsewhere increasingly resemble strategic liabilities rather than instruments of uncontested dominance. Every base becomes a target; every deployment carries escalating political and financial costs. The age of effortless American hegemony in the region appears increasingly unsustainable.
Perhaps the greatest political casualty has been the credibility of the Arab monarchies. Decades of extraordinary oil wealth have produced some of the richest states in the world, yet many have appeared strategically dependent and politically passive during one of the region’s defining confrontations. Their vast military expenditures have not translated into strategic autonomy. Their dependence on external security guarantees has exposed profound vulnerabilities. The contrast between immense wealth and limited geopolitical influence has become increasingly difficult to ignore.
The war has also exposed deeper structural problems: elite corruption, governance deficits, democratic stagnation, and the growing disconnect between rulers and citizens throughout much of the Arab world. While governments issue carefully calibrated diplomatic statements, public opinion across the region often moves in a very different direction. This widening gap represents a long-term source of instability that no amount of military spending can permanently suppress.
Most importantly, the conflict signals the acceleration of a transition toward a multipolar world. The era in which Washington could unilaterally shape Middle Eastern outcomes is fading. Regional powers now possess greater autonomy, global powers increasingly compete for influence, and non-state actors exercise unprecedented strategic relevance. The result is a more fragmented but also more contested regional order.
The ultimate irony of the US–Israeli war on Iran may be that an operation intended to reinforce regional dominance has instead highlighted its limits. Iran remains standing. Maritime chokepoints have become more strategically important. The petrodollar faces growing questions. Arab monarchies appear increasingly vulnerable. American bases look more exposed. Israeli assumptions about regional supremacy have been challenged. And the broader Middle East has moved one step further away from a unipolar order.
History often judges wars not by who fired the most missiles but by who altered the strategic balance. By that measure, the defining legacy of this conflict may not be military destruction but the exposure of a changing Middle East—one in which old certainties are collapsing and new realities are emerging.

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By Ismail H. Warsame, MSc, PhD Candidate

Somalia is once again approaching a dangerous political crossroads. The country appears trapped in a recurring cycle where leaders mistake temporary control of state power for permanent political legitimacy. Every generation seems destined to confront a new political reckoning born from the failures of those entrusted with safeguarding the nation.
The first great political reckoning came under the military dictatorship of General Mohamed Siyad Barre. Backed by the immense military support of the Soviet Union during the Cold War, Barre became convinced that state power was synonymous with personal power. Institutions disappeared into the shadow of one man. Dissent became treason. Opposition became criminality. The state gradually transformed from a national institution into a personal political project.
As resistance mounted and the regime weakened, Barre reportedly declared that if he could not rule Somalia, nothing would remain of it. Whether remembered as a literal statement or as a reflection of the regime’s destructive mindset, the outcome was tragically similar. By the time his government collapsed in 1991, Somalia had descended into state collapse, civil war, and one of the greatest humanitarian disasters in modern African history.
The scars of that period remain visible today. Entire generations grew up without functioning national institutions. Cities were destroyed. Public trust evaporated. The Somali state itself became a distant memory.
Yet Somalis did not surrender.
Through immense sacrifice by the Somali people, local communities, regional administrations, traditional leaders, civil society organizations, and international partners, a slow and painful process of reconstruction began. The establishment of Puntland in 1998, the peace processes in Djibouti and Kenya, the Transitional Federal Institutions, and eventually the Federal Government of Somalia represented collective attempts to rescue a nation from the ruins.
The federal system that emerged was imperfect, fragile, and frequently contested. Nevertheless, it represented a political compromise designed to prevent the return of centralized authoritarian rule.
Then came the second political reckoning.
The administration of Mohamed Abdullahi Farmaajo entered office promising reform and national revival. Instead, political tensions intensified between the Federal Government and Federal Member States. Trust eroded. Political consensus fractured. Constitutional disputes multiplied. The election crisis pushed Somalia dangerously close to armed confrontation in Mogadishu itself.
For many Somalis, the warning signs were unmistakable. The political methods that had contributed to previous national disasters appeared to be returning under new slogans and new personalities. The resistance that emerged against Farmaajo’s extension attempt eventually united a broad coalition of opposition forces, Federal Member States, and international actors. The result was his departure from Villa Somalia through political pressure rather than national consensus.
Many hoped Somalia had learned its lesson.
Unfortunately, history has a cruel habit of repeating itself when its lessons are ignored.
President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud returned to office promising reconciliation, dialogue, and national unity. Yet many of the political tensions that defined the previous administration have resurfaced. Relations between the Federal Government and key Federal Member States have deteriorated. Constitutional disputes have deepened. Questions surrounding legitimacy, mandate, political inclusion, and governance continue to dominate national discourse.
What makes the current situation particularly alarming is the apparent belief that foreign military support and concentrated economic investment can substitute for national political consensus. General Siyad Barre believed that the backing of the Soviet Union gave him unlimited room to maneuver and impose his will on Somalia. History proved him catastrophically wrong.
Today, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud appears to have fallen into a similar political illusion. Encouraged by extensive Turkish military assistance, security cooperation, and major infrastructure and economic investments concentrated largely in Mogadishu, he seems to have concluded that political legitimacy can be secured through external partnerships and centralized authority rather than broad-based national consensus.
This is a dangerous misunderstanding of Somalia’s political reality.
Somalia is not Mogadishu alone. The country is a federal republic whose stability depends upon cooperation, consultation, and political accommodation among its diverse regions, communities, and stakeholders. No amount of foreign military training, weapons, infrastructure projects, or diplomatic support can compensate for the absence of trust among Somalis themselves.
Like Siyad Barre before him, Hassan Sheikh appears to have mistaken external backing for domestic legitimacy. He appears to believe that military successes, foreign investment, and international endorsements can overcome growing constitutional disputes, regional grievances, and widening political divisions. In doing so, he risks repeating the very mistakes that plunged Somalia into disaster decades ago.
Foreign powers can provide assistance, but they cannot manufacture legitimacy. They can build roads, ports, airports, and military facilities, but they cannot build national unity where political exclusion and mistrust prevail. Leaders who confuse foreign support with popular legitimacy eventually discover that their political foundations are far weaker than they imagined.
The growing confrontation in Mogadishu today reflects more than a dispute between political opponents. It represents a deeper struggle over the future direction of the Somali state itself. Once again, political actors appear to be testing the limits of Somalia’s fragile institutions. The current confrontation between opposition forces and Hassan Sheikh Mohamud’s administration may well represent Somalia’s third great political reckoning since the collapse of the military dictatorship.
The tragedy is not that political disagreements exist. Disagreements are normal in democratic societies. The tragedy is that Somali leaders repeatedly behave as though political power belongs to individuals rather than institutions. Every generation produces leaders who believe they can bend the constitutional order to their personal ambitions. Every generation discovers that Somalia eventually pushes back.
History teaches a brutal lesson.
Siyad Barre believed military power could preserve his rule indefinitely. He was wrong.
Farmaajo believed political maneuvering could override constitutional consensus. He was wrong.
Hassan Sheikh Mohamud appears to believe that foreign-backed state power can overcome political legitimacy deficits. He, too, may be learning the limits of that assumption.
Somalia does not need another strongman.
Somalia does not need another political messiah.
Somalia does not need another “Madax-ka-Nool” system where institutions exist only on paper while power resides in one office.
What Somalia desperately needs is constitutionalism, institutional governance, respect for political agreements, and genuine national dialogue.
The choice facing the country today is stark. Either Somali leaders finally strengthen institutions above personalities, or the nation risks repeating the same destructive cycle that has haunted it since independence.
The third political reckoning is not merely about one administration or one opposition coalition.
It is about whether Somalia can finally break free from its historical addiction to personalized power and embrace the rule of institutions.
History is watching.
And history has already delivered its verdict on those who ignored its warnings.

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Somalia’s Crisis of Governance, Moral Authority, and the Cyclical Structural Trap
By Ismail H. Warsame, MSc, PhD Candidate
Why do people follow a leader?
The question is as old as politics itself. People do not ordinarily follow leaders merely because they possess office, wealth, or coercive authority. They follow leaders because such individuals embody a cause larger than themselves, articulate a compelling vision of collective destiny, or inspire moral confidence in times of uncertainty. Leadership, at its highest form, is not domination; it is persuasion grounded in legitimacy, moral purpose, and public trust.¹
Yet leadership can also degenerate into something darker: the capture of public institutions for private gain.
This distinction between national leadership and state capture lies at the heart of Somalia’s prolonged political crisis.
Across much of the developing world, governance has frequently been undermined by what scholars describe as state capture—the systematic manipulation of institutions, laws, and public resources by elites for private political or economic benefit.² Rather than serving citizens, institutions become instruments of patronage, family influence, enrichment, influence peddling, and political survival.
In such circumstances, public office ceases to be public.
Government becomes private property.
Merit is replaced by loyalty. Competence gives way to clan arithmetic. Public institutions become personalized networks of patronage rather than neutral systems of service delivery and accountability.
Somalia today suffers deeply from this condition.
From National Vision to Political Patronage
Somalia’s post-independence political trajectory reveals an uncomfortable truth: while the country has produced powerful personalities and politically influential actors, it has struggled to produce enduring national leadership rooted in moral authority, institutional development, and long-term state-building.
From the anti-colonial struggles associated with the Somali Youth League to the centralized authoritarianism of the military period and subsequent state collapse, Somali politics has repeatedly revolved around personalities, clan calculations, and elite bargaining rather than institutional nation-building.³
The tragedy is not merely poor governance.
It is the absence of a shared national project.
A national leader mobilizes citizens around ideas: institutional reform, economic transformation, constitutionalism, national reconciliation, productive governance, social cohesion, and civic citizenship. A state captor mobilizes citizens around access, fear, dependency, transactional politics, and patronage.
The distinction matters.
The former builds institutions that outlive individuals.
The latter weakens institutions to prolong personal relevance.
As political scientist Francis Fukuyama argues, stable political order depends upon institutionalization rather than personalized authority.⁴ Where institutions are weak, political power becomes informal, fragmented, and vulnerable to capture by networks of patronage and kinship.
This pattern is painfully familiar in Somalia.
Somalia’s Cyclical Structural Trap
Somalia faces what may be termed a cyclical structural trap—a recurring political condition in which clannism and religious mobilization repeatedly obstruct institutional development, fragment political authority, and undermine meritocratic governance.
Rather than disappearing, these forces continually reproduce themselves through successive political cycles.
Political elites rarely dismantle these incentives because they benefit from them.
The consequences are devastating:
Clan over citizenship
Patronage over merit
Loyalty over competence
Family influence over institutional accountability
Political survival over national transformation
In this environment, citizens cease evaluating leaders based on vision or policy.
Instead, politics becomes transactional:
Who benefits?
Which clan advances?
Which network profits?
Which family gains influence?
Which financier or external patron benefits?
These are symptoms not of healthy republican politics but of institutional weakness and state capture.⁵
Somalia’s institutions frequently remain dependent on personalities rather than procedures, making governance fragile and vulnerable to manipulation.
Political transitions thus become crises rather than routine constitutional processes.
The Normalization of State Capture
The language of reform dominates Somali politics.
Almost every aspiring politician speaks of “good governance,” “democracy,” “constitutional order,” or “national reconciliation.”
Yet many campaigns reveal astonishing conceptual emptiness.
How many aspiring politicians articulate a coherent national economic strategy?
How many provide institutional blueprints to reduce corruption?
How many seriously explain how Somalia might transition from clan dependency toward civic citizenship?
How many propose mechanisms to insulate public institutions from family interference, patronage systems, or influence peddling?
Too often, politics revolves around personalities rather than programmes.
The pursuit of office precedes the articulation of national purpose.
Power comes first.
Vision arrives later—if ever.
This is precisely how state capture normalizes itself.
The danger emerges when citizens begin to accept this condition as inevitable.
Corruption becomes routine.
Nepotism becomes culture.
Influence peddling becomes politics.
Institutional weakness becomes ordinary.
And mediocrity becomes governance.
As scholars of corruption argue, state capture becomes especially dangerous when informal political networks become more powerful than formal institutions themselves.⁶
Beyond Somalia: A Global Problem with Local Consequences
Somalia is not unique in experiencing state capture.
Across many developing countries, ruling elites have treated the state as an extension of family, business, or patronage interests. In parts of the Middle East, especially Gulf monarchies, political authority is historically concentrated within ruling families, where distinctions between public and private interests are often structurally blurred.⁷
The concept of “conflict of interest,” central to liberal institutional governance, can appear politically constrained in such systems because state authority itself historically developed around dynastic legitimacy.
Even mature democracies face pressures.
Recent debates surrounding personalized politics, wealth concentration, institutional erosion, and elite influence in the United States during and after the rise of Donald Trump illustrate that no political system is entirely immune from institutional stress.⁸
Yet Somalia’s vulnerabilities are more severe because institutions remain fragile and social fragmentation deep.
Somalia cannot afford the luxury of institutional decay.
Leadership Somalia Needs
To escape its cyclical structural trap, Somalia requires national leadership at every level of public life.
Not strongmen.
Not clan merchants masquerading as statesmen.
Not politicians surrounded by family intermediaries, fixers, or patronage brokers.
Somalia requires leaders committed to institution-building rather than institutional ownership.
The questions national leaders should ask are simple but transformative:
How do we create institutions stronger than personalities?
How do we reduce clan dependency through civic citizenship?
How do we protect public institutions from nepotism and influence peddling?
How do we reward competence rather than loyalty?
How do we institutionalize accountability beyond personalities?
How do we make corruption politically costly?
Until Somali politics answers these questions seriously, political life risks remaining trapped in repetition:
Hope rises.
Patronage expands.
Institutions weaken.
Public trust collapses.
Crisis returns.
And the cycle begins again.
The greatest danger to Somalia today is not merely insecurity or poverty.
It is the normalization of state capture disguised as governance and mediocrity disguised as leadership.
No nation rises when leadership itself becomes the principal obstacle to national transformation.
Footnotes
James MacGregor Burns, Leadership (New York: Harper & Row, 1978), 18–25.
Joel S. Hellman, Geraint Jones, and Daniel Kaufmann, “Seize the State, Seize the Day: State Capture, Corruption, and Influence in Transition,” World Bank Policy Research Working Paper No. 2444 (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2000), 2–9.
Ioan M. Lewis, A Modern History of Somalia: Nation and State in the Horn of Africa, 4th ed. (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2002), 145–201.
Francis Fukuyama, Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014), 24–51.
Ken Menkhaus, “State Collapse in Somalia: Second Thoughts,” Review of African Political Economy 30, no. 97 (2003): 405–422.
Susan Rose-Ackerman and Bonnie J. Palifka, Corruption and Government: Causes, Consequences, and Reform, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 95–121.
Michael Herb, All in the Family: Absolutism, Revolution, and Democracy in the Middle Eastern Monarchies (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999), 1–29.
Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, How Democracies Die (New York: Crown, 2018), 8–31.
Bibliography
Burns, James MacGregor. Leadership. New York: Harper & Row, 1978.
Fukuyama, Francis. Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014.
Hellman, Joel S., Geraint Jones, and Daniel Kaufmann. “Seize the State, Seize the Day: State Capture, Corruption, and Influence in Transition.” World Bank Policy Research Working Paper No. 2444. Washington, DC: World Bank, 2000.
Herb, Michael. All in the Family: Absolutism, Revolution, and Democracy in the Middle Eastern Monarchies. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999.
Levitsky, Steven, and Daniel Ziblatt. How Democracies Die. New York: Crown, 2018.
Lewis, Ioan M. A Modern History of Somalia: Nation and State in the Horn of Africa. 4th ed. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2002.
Menkhaus, Ken. “State Collapse in Somalia: Second Thoughts.” Review of African Political Economy 30, no. 97 (2003): 405–422.
Rose-Ackerman, Susan, and Bonnie J. Palifka. Corruption and Government: Causes, Consequences, and Reform. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016.
Support WDM — the home of fearless, independent journalism that speaks truth to power across Somalia and the region. Tel/WhatsApp: +252 90 703 4081.

By Ismail H. Warsame, MSc, PhD Candidate
WARSAME POLICY & MEDIA NETWORK (WAPMEN)

Somalia’s tragedy is not merely a story of bad leadership, corruption, or failed elections. It is deeper than personalities and political cycles. Somalia suffers from a historical and socioeconomic structural trap that has repeatedly reproduced fragmentation, weak institutions, authoritarian tendencies, and state collapse.
From the era of the Dervish resistance movement under Sayyid Mohamed Abdulle Hassan, through the rise of the Somali Youth League (SYL), the establishment and collapse of the First Somali Republic, the military dictatorship of Mohamed Siyad Barre, the devastating civil war, and the fragile federal arrangements of today, Somalia has remained trapped within the same recurring political contradictions.
The names change. The cycle remains.
At the center of this crisis are two permanent structural forces Somali political elites have failed to overcome: tribal fragmentation and the politicization of religion. These forces have repeatedly undermined national cohesion and institutional development, producing a weak state vulnerable to internal manipulation and foreign exploitation.
Scholar I. M. Lewis observed that Somali society has historically been characterized by “lineage segmentation which fosters political division and competition.”¹ This reality became deeply embedded in political organization and state formation. Clan identity gradually evolved from a social structure into the principal mechanism for political mobilization, economic access, security protection, and state capture.
The tragedy is not that clans exist. Clan identity is a natural social reality. The problem emerges when political legitimacy and public institutions become subordinate to clan calculations. Under such conditions, merit, citizenship, and national interest are displaced by patronage, loyalty networks, and communal competition.
This institutional weakness has been a recurring feature throughout Somali history. The civilian governments of the 1960s struggled under corruption and tribal patronage. The military regime that seized power in 1969 promised scientific socialism and national unity, yet eventually degenerated into authoritarian clan-centered rule. What began as anti-tribal rhetoric ended in systematic favoritism, repression, and collective punishment.
When the Somali state collapsed in 1991, clan fragmentation transformed into armed political fragmentation. Scholar Lidwien Kapteijns accurately described how “clan-based political mobilization became the organizing principle of violence during Somalia’s state collapse.”² The destruction of state institutions empowered militias, warlords, extremist networks, and regional fragmentation.
Today’s federal political order, although intended to stabilize the country, often institutionalizes fragmentation rather than overcoming it. Political competition increasingly revolves around clan arithmetic, regional rivalries, and elite survival instead of national development and institution-building.
Ken Menkhaus described Somalia as “one of the world’s most prolonged cases of state collapse and fragmented sovereignty.”³ This fragmentation has produced a political culture where institutions remain weak while individual leaders accumulate excessive power.
As a result, Somalia repeatedly falls into what Somalis call “Madax-ka-Nool” governance — a system where the entire state revolves around one dominant individual rather than functioning institutions. In such a system, parliaments weaken, constitutions become negotiable, public accountability disappears, and national survival becomes tied to the ambitions of temporary rulers.
The second structural trap is the politicization and manipulation of religion.
Islam historically served as a unifying force among Somalis. However, religious legitimacy increasingly became a political instrument used by competing actors for mobilization, ideological influence, and power struggles. Foreign-funded religious networks, sectarian competition, and extremist interpretations further complicated Somalia’s fragile political environment.
Said S. Samatar noted that the Dervish movement itself fused “religious zeal with anti-colonial Somali nationalism in an unprecedented manner.”⁴ While religion once inspired resistance and unity, modern political actors have often weaponized it for division and legitimacy struggles.
The result has been the growth of extremism, ideological polarization, and the erosion of moderate civic nationalism. Leaders seek religious legitimacy while simultaneously relying on clan patronage, coercion, and foreign backing to survive politically. This contradiction weakens the state from within.
Somalia’s structural weakness also creates fertile ground for external manipulation. Foreign powers exploit clan divisions, finance competing political factions, manipulate electoral processes, and pursue geopolitical interests through fragmented Somali actors.
Alex de Waal argues that political authority in the Horn of Africa frequently functions through “transactional patronage systems rather than institutional governance.”⁵ Somalia exemplifies this dangerous reality. In the absence of strong institutions, politics becomes a marketplace of shifting alliances, foreign influence, and elite bargaining.
This cyclical structural trap repeatedly produces the same political pattern:
National crisis emerges.
A “savior” leader rises promising unity.
Institutions weaken around personalized rule.
Opposition mobilizes through clan and religious grievances.
Foreign actors exploit internal divisions.
State legitimacy collapses.
Fragmentation deepens.
Another transitional arrangement emerges.
The cycle restarts.
This cycle consumed the civilian republic.
It consumed the military regime.
It consumed transitional governments.
And today, it threatens the federal order itself.
The issue is not merely individual leaders. It is the structural environment that continuously reproduces instability regardless of who occupies power.
NATIONAL RECOMMENDATIONS: BREAKING THE CYCLE
Somalia cannot escape this trap through temporary political deals or another externally sponsored conference alone. The country requires a long-term national transformation grounded in institutional reform, civic education, and genuine reconciliation.
1. National Reconciliation and Historical Truth Process
Somalia has never fully confronted the historical traumas of dictatorship, civil war, clan persecution, political exclusion, and state violence. Without collective acknowledgment of these wounds, grievances continue to pass from one generation to another.
A credible national truth and reconciliation framework is essential for rebuilding trust.
2. Build Institutions Stronger Than Personalities
Somalia must move away from leader-centered governance. National institutions — parliament, judiciary, civil service, constitutional bodies, and electoral commissions — must operate independently from the ambitions of individual leaders.
No nation survives permanently through personalities alone.
3. Reform Political Representation
Clan power-sharing may have been necessary for conflict management, but it cannot remain the permanent foundation of the Somali state.
Somalia must gradually transition toward:
issue-based political parties,
meritocratic governance,
national citizenship,
and institutional accountability.
4. Protect Religion from Political Weaponization
Religion should remain a moral and spiritual foundation, not a permanent battlefield for political competition.
Somalia requires moderate civic religious discourse, independent scholarship, and safeguards against extremist manipulation and foreign ideological interference.
5. Invest in Civic National Education
Future generations must learn citizenship beyond clan identity. Schools, universities, media institutions, and civil society organizations should promote constitutional culture, rule of law, shared national history, and peaceful democratic competition.
6. Create an Inclusive Constitutional Settlement
The Somali constitution cannot be imposed unilaterally by any administration or political faction. Durable constitutional legitimacy requires broad national consensus involving federal member states, civil society, intellectuals, and the Somali public.
Conclusion
Somalia’s crisis is not accidental. It is structural, historical, and cyclical.
The country remains trapped between clan fragmentation, politicized religion, institutional weakness, and external exploitation. Leaders come promising salvation, yet often reproduce the same system that generated instability in the first place.
Until Somalia confronts the roots of this Cyclical Structural Trap, history will continue repeating itself: new leaders, same fragmentation; new constitutions, same crises; new promises, same disappointments.
The future of Somalia depends not merely on elections or leadership changes, but on whether Somalis can finally build institutions and a civic national culture stronger than clan manipulation, sectarian politics, and the ambitions of temporary rulers.
Otherwise, the cycle will continue.
Notes
I. M. Lewis, A Modern History of the Somali: Nation and State in the Horn of Africa, 4th ed. (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2002), 7.
Lidwien Kapteijns, Clan Cleansing in Somalia: The Ruinous Legacy of 1991 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), 5.
Ken Menkhaus, “Governance without Government in Somalia: Spoilers, State Building, and the Politics of Coping,” International Security 31, no. 3 (2007): 74.
Said S. Samatar, Oral Poetry and Somali Nationalism: The Case of Sayyid Mahammad Abdille Hasan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 112.
Alex de Waal, The Real Politics of the Horn of Africa: Money, War and the Business of Power (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2015), 3.
Bibliography
de Waal, Alex. The Real Politics of the Horn of Africa: Money, War and the Business of Power. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2015.
Kapteijns, Lidwien. Clan Cleansing in Somalia: The Ruinous Legacy of 1991. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013.
Lewis, I. M. A Modern History of the Somali: Nation and State in the Horn of Africa. 4th ed. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2002.
Menkhaus, Ken. “Governance without Government in Somalia: Spoilers, State Building, and the Politics of Coping.” International Security 31, no. 3 (2007): 74–106.
Samatar, Said S. Oral Poetry and Somali Nationalism: The Case of Sayyid Mahammad Abdille Hasan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982.

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The visit of the high-level American delegation received by Siciid Cabdullaahi Deni in Garoowe today was not an ordinary diplomatic meeting. The timing of the visit, the composition of the delegation, and the issues discussed all carry heavy political and strategic implications, especially at a moment when the constitutional legitimacy of Hassan Sheikh Mohamud is being openly questioned following the expiration of his constitutional mandate.
There are several layers of significance to this visit:

1. Indirect Political Recognition of Puntland
   When a senior American delegation — led by the acting U.S. ambassador and accompanied by senior officers from United States Africa Command — flies directly from Mogadishu to Puntland, it signals that Washington does not intend to confine Somali politics exclusively to Villa Somalia.
   The message is clear:
   Puntland is viewed as an indispensable political and security actor.
   The United States is maintaining direct relations with federal member states, especially those with credible security capabilities and relative stability.
   During a period of political transition, Washington is prepared to engage multiple centers of power inside Somalia.
2. Puntland Recognized as a Security Partner
   The meeting specifically highlighted:
   military operations in the Calmiskaad Mountains,
   the fight against ISIS,
   and broader security cooperation.
   This indicates that the United States increasingly sees Puntland as:
   a reliable security zone,
   a functioning military partner,
   and a strategic defensive frontier in the Horn of Africa and along the Red Sea–Gulf of Aden corridor.
   Whenever AFRICOM appears prominently in a political meeting, it usually reflects a deeper assessment of:
   who effectively controls territory,
   who can be trusted operationally,
   and who is capable of safeguarding Western strategic interests.
3. A Message to Villa Somalia
   Perhaps the most politically sensitive line in the statement was:
   “The meeting underscored the importance of the political transition period of the Federal Government of Somalia.”
   In diplomatic language, such wording is never accidental. It indirectly acknowledges:
   the existence of a constitutional crisis,
   the reality of a political transition,
   and the fact that the situation in Mogadishu is no longer viewed as politically normal.
   Washington is not openly declaring that Hassan Sheikh’s presidency has expired, but it is carefully signaling:
   that Somalia has entered a new political phase,
   and that a stable political management mechanism is urgently needed.
4. Natural Resources and Strategic Economics
   The discussions on:
   oil,
   minerals,
   fisheries,
   and investment
   are far more significant than routine development cooperation.
   This suggests that:
   Western powers increasingly view Puntland as an emerging strategic economic frontier,
   especially as global competition over energy, minerals, and maritime access intensifies,
   and as the Horn of Africa and Red Sea region become central theaters of geopolitical rivalry.
   Puntland possesses:
   a long coastline,
   proximity to critical global shipping lanes,
   untapped natural resources,
   and greater relative stability than much of southern Somalia.
   These factors make it a region of growing international strategic interest.
5. Puntland Breaking Political Isolation
   In recent years, there have been efforts to:
   politically isolate Puntland,
   pressure it diplomatically,
   or portray it as an obstacle to Mogadishu-centered governance.
   However, this visit projects a different reality:
   Puntland remains an important international partner,
   it still enjoys direct diplomatic access,
   and its political and security role continues to receive international recognition.
   Conclusion
   This was not merely a protocol visit. It was:
   a political assessment mission,
   a reinforcement of strategic security cooperation,
   and a carefully calibrated message regarding Somalia’s political transition.
   The timing makes the visit especially significant:
   the Federal Parliament’s legitimacy is contested,
   Villa Somalia itself faces constitutional uncertainty,
   and Somalia’s broader political system is entering a period of instability and institutional paralysis.
   Taken together, the visit strongly suggests that Puntland is no longer being viewed merely as an ordinary federal member state, but increasingly as a critical political and security pillar in both Somalia’s future and the wider strategic balance of the Horn of Africa.

By Ismail H. Warsame
WARSAME POLICY & MEDIA NETWORK (WAPMEN)
Critical Analysis and Commentary
There are political defeats, and then there are moral collapses. Somalia today is witnessing both in the tragic spectacle of Hassan Sheikh Mohamud clinging to Villa Somalia after the expiration of his constitutional mandate. What should have been a dignified departure from office has instead degenerated into a shameful drama of political squatting, constitutional vandalism, and naked obsession with power.
History is merciless toward leaders who refuse to leave the stage when their time is over. Hassan Sheikh Mohamud now risks joining the dishonorable club of African rulers who mistook public office for private property. Villa Somalia is not his ancestral compound. It is not family inheritance. It is not a monarch’s palace. It is the seat of a constitutional republic — at least in theory.
Yet today Somalia watches an eighty-year-old politician behave like a desperate tenant refusing eviction after the lease expired.
What legacy does Hassan Sheikh Mohamud leave behind?
Certainly not national unity. Under his watch, the federal system has been fractured beyond repair. Relations with Puntland and Jubaland deteriorated into open hostility. The Provisional Federal Constitution — already fragile — was treated like disposable paper, amended unilaterally to suit temporary political ambitions. Consensus politics was replaced by coercion, manipulation, and clan polarization.
Certainly not institutional development. Somalia’s institutions today are weaker, more politicized, and more distrusted than when he entered office. Parliament became a rubber stamp. The National Consultative Council lost credibility. Public agencies became extensions of political patronage networks. Corruption flourished openly like weeds in abandoned farmland.
Certainly not security. Al-Shabaab remains resilient. Large territories remain insecure. The capital itself survives under permanent militarized anxiety. International partners increasingly view Somalia as a political risk rather than a recovering state.
And certainly not dignity.
That is perhaps the saddest part of all this. Hassan Sheikh Mohamud had the opportunity to leave office with some measure of respect. Age alone should have inspired reflection and restraint. Elder statesmen are expected to preserve wisdom, not manufacture chaos. Instead, Somalia is witnessing an old politician consumed by the illusion that without him the country cannot function.
But nations are bigger than leaders.
Somalia existed before Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, and Somalia will exist after him.
The irony is painful. Leaders who overstay often believe they are protecting stability, yet they become the very source of instability. Every extra day spent in office after constitutional expiry deepens public anger, weakens legitimacy, and invites confrontation. It transforms governance into occupation.
The image now emerging is devastating: an expired president occupying Villa Somalia while the constitutional clock has already struck midnight.
This is not strength. It is political decay.
Across Africa, history repeatedly shows that leaders who refuse timely exits rarely control how their stories end. Some leave through humiliation. Others through isolation. Others through sanctions, rebellion, or permanent disgrace. But few escape the judgment of history.
And history will ask Hassan Sheikh Mohamud one simple question:
Was it worth destroying constitutional legitimacy merely to postpone retirement?
Somalia’s tragedy has never been lack of intelligence or resources. Its tragedy has been leaders who personalize the state and treat power as oxygen. The country becomes hostage to individual survival instead of national progress.
The greatest leaders know when to leave.
The weakest leaders barricade themselves behind walls, soldiers, and propaganda long after legitimacy evaporates.
That is the legacy danger confronting Hassan Sheikh Mohamud today: not merely being remembered as a failed president, but as an expired ruler who transformed Villa Somalia into a symbol of political squatting.
And that is a stain no propaganda machine can erase.

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By May 15, 2026, the constitutional hourglass finally emptied beneath the feet of Hassan Sheikh Mohamud. The man who once occupied Villa Somalia as a president now confronts a harsher political reality: a leader without a mandate is merely a politician clinging to furniture. The velvet curtains of power no longer conceal the decay underneath.
For years, Somalia was forced to watch a tragicomic spectacle — a government speaking endlessly about “state-building” while simultaneously dismantling the very constitutional pillars that held the fragile federal republic together. Institutions became personalized. Consensus became irrelevant. Federalism was treated not as a constitutional covenant, but as an inconvenience to be bulldozed whenever it resisted centralized appetite.
Now the curtain falls.
No more speeches about legitimacy while governing beyond legitimacy.
No more constitutional sermons from men violating the constitution itself.
No more using state machinery as a political club against dissenting Federal Member States.
No more uprooting powerless citizens while politically connected elites feast on public contracts and donor money.
The tragedy of expired Somali leaders is not merely that they overstay. It is that they begin to behave as though the state itself belongs to them personally — as if Villa Somalia were inherited family property rather than a temporary constitutional office entrusted by the people.
And therein lies the satire of Somali politics: the louder the rulers speak about democracy, the more frightened they become of constitutional timelines.
Somalia has become a theatre of “mandate acrobatics,” where expired politicians suddenly discover creative mathematics. Calendars become controversial documents. Constitutional clauses become “misunderstood.” Election delays become “national necessities.” And public looting becomes “government continuity.”
But May 15, 2026 is not merely a date. It is a political verdict.
The question now is no longer whether Hassan Sheikh Mohamud retains constitutional standing. That question has answered itself with the silence of the clock. The real question is whether Somalia will finally develop a culture of accountability for leaders who abuse transitional fragility for personal political survival.
Will there be consequences for unconstitutional conduct?
Will there be accountability for the weaponization of federal institutions?
Will there be scrutiny over public wealth and political patronage networks?
Will Somalia finally establish that no individual is above the provisional constitution?
Or will the country once again perform its familiar ritual: elite impunity disguised as reconciliation?
That is the disease eating Somalia alive — not merely bad leadership, but the normalization of consequence-free power. Somali politicians leave office the same way armed robbers leave crowded markets during chaos: carrying bags while everyone pretends not to notice.
Meanwhile, ordinary citizens continue paying the price. Young people migrate. Soldiers remain unpaid. Cities drown in corruption and neglect. Federal relations collapse into hostility. Yet the political class behaves like aristocrats attending a banquet aboard a sinking ship.
The danger for Somalia is not only constitutional abuse. The greater danger is the precedent that abuse leaves behind. Every leader who escapes accountability teaches the next leader that the constitution is optional.
That is how republics die — not in one dramatic collapse, but through repeated normalization of illegality.
Somalia today stands between two futures: a constitutional order where mandates matter, or a permanent “Madax-ka-Nool” culture where rulers stay until exhaustion, pressure, or chaos removes them.
History is watching.
And so are the Somali people.

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By Ismail H. Warsame
WARSAME POLICY & MEDIA NETWORK (WAPMEN)
Critical Analysis, Commentary and Political Satire
Somalia has become a strange republic where leaders whose mandates expire do not leave office — they squat in power like tenants refusing eviction after the lease expired years ago. In functioning nations, the expiration of a constitutional mandate is a solemn legal and political event. In Somalia, it has become a comedy of arrogance, manipulation, tribal mobilization, and naked appetite for power.
This disease has infected both the Federal Government and Federal Member States alike.
Any Somali leader who knowingly stays in office after the expiration of their constitutional mandate without broad political consensus, lawful extension, or credible electoral transition has committed a grave betrayal of the nation. It is a political fraud against the Somali people. It is constitutional sabotage. It is a national disgrace masquerading as leadership.
The tragedy is not merely that this has happened once. It has become normalized.
Somalis now watch presidents, prime ministers, state leaders, speakers, and parliamentarians overstay their legal terms while continuing to issue decrees, appoint officials, loot public resources, sign contracts, intimidate opponents, and pretend legitimacy still exists. They behave like constitutional corpses still walking among the living.
The Somali political class has invented a dangerous doctrine: “Power first, legality later.”
Under this toxic doctrine, elections become optional, constitutions become decorative documents, and mandates become elastic chewing gum stretched endlessly according to personal ambition.
Both Hassan Sheikh Mohamud and Mohamed Abdullahi Farmaajo stand accused in the court of political history of normalizing this reckless culture of mandate extension, constitutional manipulation, and governance through uncertainty. One cannot condemn one while glorifying the other. The disease is bipartisan. The infection is systemic.
And let us not pretend Federal Member State leaders are innocent victims watching from the sidelines.
Many regional leaders who lecture Mogadishu about constitutionalism often perform the same circus in their own administrations. They denounce overreach at the federal level while extending their own mandates quietly at home through manufactured crises, captive parliaments, clan calculations, and choreographed “consultations.”
What hypocrisy!
A leader whose mandate expired but still clings to office is not defending stability. He is defending privilege. He is defending access to contracts, patronage networks, foreign travel, diplomatic immunity, security convoys, and state coffers.
The slogan is always the same: “We cannot create instability.”
But Somalia’s instability is precisely born from leaders refusing peaceful and constitutional transfers of power.
The irony is devastating. Somali politicians endlessly preach democracy while fearing elections. They praise constitutions while violating them. They invoke patriotism while undermining the very institutions that make nations survive.
A government without a valid mandate becomes morally weak, politically illegitimate, and strategically dangerous. Such a regime enters what constitutional scholars call a “lame-duck” period. Its role should be limited to routine administration and facilitating transition — not constitutional rewriting, political intimidation, major resource deals, or security manipulation.
Yet Somali leaders behave differently.
Once mandates expire, some become even more aggressive — as if the ticking constitutional clock drives them into panic mode. They weaponize state institutions, silence critics, distribute public money to loyalists, and attempt to reshape the political landscape before legitimacy completely evaporates.
It becomes less governance and more survival politics.
Somalia’s greatest crisis today is not merely terrorism, poverty, or foreign interference. It is the collapse of constitutional culture. The country suffers from leaders who believe the state belongs to them personally rather than temporarily entrusted to them by the people.
That mentality is the true national security threat.
No republic can survive if every election cycle becomes a constitutional hostage crisis.
No federation can function if mandates are treated as suggestions instead of binding legal limits.
No society can mature politically when leaders refuse to leave office honorably.
Power is not private property. The presidency is not inheritance. Public office is not a family business. The state is not a personal farm.
Somalia cannot build democratic legitimacy on expired mandates and political improvisation.
The nation must establish a new political doctrine: When the mandate ends, power ends.
Anything else is organized constitutional fraud.
And history is merciless toward leaders who confuse temporary authority with permanent ownership of the state.

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WARSAME POLICY & MEDIA NETWORK (WAPMEN)
Commentary and Critical Analysis

In thirteen days, the clock runs out.
The mandate of President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud will expire—not symbolically, not politically, but constitutionally. And yet, in the corridors of Villa Somalia, there is a familiar whisper dressed as legality: “caretaker government.”
Let us be clear from the outset: not every government that overstays its mandate qualifies to become a caretaker. Some become something far more dangerous—an unconstitutional residue clinging to power.
From Constitutional Guardian to Constitutional Violator
The tragedy of this administration is not merely that its time is ending. It is that, during its tenure, it has treated the **Provisional Constitution of Somalia 2012 not as a binding covenant, but as a political tool—stretched, amended, and manipulated without consensus.
Federalism, the fragile glue holding Somalia together, has been weaponized rather than nurtured. Instead of being a neutral arbiter among Federal Member States, Villa Somalia has behaved like a partisan actor—rewarding allies, isolating dissenters, and deepening mistrust across the political landscape.
A government that divides cannot unite.
A government that violates cannot supervise.
And yet, we are told it should now act as a caretaker—a neutral referee overseeing the very transition it has already distorted.
The Caretaker Myth: Neutrality Without Credibility
A caretaker government, by definition, must be:
Politically neutral
Constitutionally restrained
Broadly trusted
This administration is none of the above.
Neutrality is not declared—it is earned.
Restraint is not promised—it is practiced.
Trust is not demanded—it is granted.
What Somalia faces today is not a caretaker arrangement, but the attempted rebranding of a contested authority into a legitimate transitional custodian.
This is not continuity. This is camouflage.
A Familiar Script: The Ghost of 2021
Somalis have seen this movie before.
When former President Mohamed Abdullahi Farmaaji attempted to extend his mandate in 2021, the result was not stability—it was armed confrontation in the streets of Mogadishu, a fractured security apparatus, and the near collapse of the state.
The lesson was supposed to be simple:
No incumbent can unilaterally control the transition that determines its own survival.
But lessons in Somali politics are rarely learned—they are recycled.
Power Without Mandate Is Not Governance—It Is Occupation
Once a mandate expires, authority does not magically transform into legitimacy. It evaporates—unless renewed through consensus.
What remains is not governance. It is power without permission.
And power without permission, in any constitutional order, is indistinguishable from political occupation.
To allow such an authority to:
Manage elections
Reshape institutions
Control security forces
is to invite a predetermined outcome disguised as a democratic process.
The Federal Fault Line: A Country Already Divided
Somalia today is not a unified political space. It is a negotiated union of mistrust.
Federal Member States are already fragmented. Some are aligned, others alienated. The center no longer commands confidence—it provokes suspicion.
In such a context, an expired and contested administration acting as caretaker does not stabilize the system—it accelerates its fragmentation.
The risk is no longer theoretical:
Parallel political processes
Competing claims of legitimacy
Security breakdown along federal lines
This is how states unravel—not with a bang, but with a disputed transition.
What Must Be Done: Containment, Not Continuation
Somalia does not need a deceptive caretaker. It needs a contained transition.
That means:
1. Immediate Political Agreement
A negotiated framework between the Federal Government and Federal Member States—before the mandate expires, not after the crisis erupts.
2. Strict Caretaker Limits
If the incumbent remains temporarily, its powers must be:
Narrowly defined
Publicly agreed
Internationally monitored
No constitutional changes. No security manipulation. No political engineering.
3. Independent Electoral Mechanism
The body organizing elections must not be controlled by the incumbent. Anything less is electoral theater.
4. Guarantees Against Abuse
Internal and external guarantees must ensure compliance—not promises, but enforcement.
Final Word: Somalia at the Edge of Legitimacy
This is not just about one man or one administration. It is about the survival of constitutional order in Somalia.
If expired power is allowed to reinvent itself as caretaker authority without consensus, then the Constitution becomes meaningless—and elections become rituals of control, not instruments of choice.
Somalia stands at a familiar crossroads:
One path leads to negotiated transition and fragile stability
The other leads to unilateralism, fragmentation, and crisis
The difference will not be decided by law alone—but by the courage to confront illegitimacy, even when it wears the mask of continuity.
An expired mandate cannot midwife a legitimate future.

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1. Expired Mandate, Recycled Legitimacy Crisis
The central premise still holds: Somalia periodically falls into post-mandate governance without clear constitutional continuity.
As the May 2026 deadline looms, the political system once again approaches a legitimacy cliff. Whether technically expired or politically exhausted, the mandate of the current federal leadership is under dispute in both legal interpretation and political acceptance.
Just like in 2020–2021, the argument is no longer about dates—it is about consent.
2. Caretaker Logic Without Caretaker Behavior
The earlier framework established a caretaker understanding—limited authority, focus on elections, avoidance of major unilateral decisions.
That logic applies even more strongly now.
Yet the contradiction is glaring:
The government behaves as a full sovereign authority
While the political reality treats it as a transitional actor under contest
This is the same structural contradiction seen under Mohamed Abdullahi Farmaajo—only reproduced under a different leadership.
3. Elections as Pretext, Not Process
Then as now, elections are not merely an outcome—they are the battlefield itself.
What you are witnessing is not election preparation, but:
A struggle to predetermine the outcome before ballots—or delegates—ever materialize.
Key patterns repeating:
Control over security organs
Manipulation of electoral frameworks
Delegitimization of opposition actors
Venue and process disputes
The system is not organizing elections; it is an engineering advantage.
4. Security Institutions as Political Instruments
The earlier reference to NISA politicization remains painfully relevant.
The principle was simple:
Any security agency implicated in political interference loses neutrality and therefore legitimacy.
That standard still applies today.
Whether through:
intelligence influence,
selective enforcement,
or intimidation narratives,
the core issue remains unchanged:
Security institutions are not seen as neutral guarantors—but as tools within the political contest.
And once that perception sets in, no election can be trusted.
5. The Mogadishu Power Struggle: Same Script, New Actors
The original conclusion remains the most enduring:
“The conflict boils down to a power struggle between politicians lacking uncontested constitutional legitimacy.”
That is exactly where things stand again.
Today’s tensions between:
Federal Government
Federal Member States
Opposition coalitions
are not ideological—they are positional.
Each side is fighting to:
control the transition
shape the electoral mechanism
secure post-transition dominance
6. Institutional Damage: The Silent Collapse
Perhaps the most important continuity is this:
Every cycle of mandate crisis further erodes institutional credibility.
The damage is cumulative:
Parliament becomes procedural, not sovereign
Executive authority becomes contested, not respected
Federalism becomes transactional, not constitutional
And critically:
Public trust collapses further each time
FINAL ASSESSMENT — NOTHING WAS LEARNED
What your earlier analysis exposed was not a moment—it was a pattern.
And that pattern has repeated under Hassan Sheikh Mohamud almost line-for-line:
Mandate ambiguity → ✔
Caretaker contradiction → ✔
Election manipulation fears → ✔
Security politicization → ✔
Federal breakdown → ✔
The uncomfortable truth:
Somalia does not have a leadership crisis—it has a systemic cycle of illegitimacy.
Until that cycle is broken—through:
genuine constitutional consensus
neutral election mechanisms
and depoliticized security institutions
—every administration, regardless of personality, will replay the same script.
BOTTOM LINE
This is not about one president or one opposition bloc.
It is about a political culture where:
power precedes legality, and legality is rewritten to justify power.
And as long as that remains the governing principle,
every “new” crisis will look exactly like the last one—
just with different names on the door.