When the army takes to the highway, it is not war—it is hunger on parade. Mutinous Puntland soldiers, unpaid and ignored, now declare the nation’s busiest roads as their new battleground. Checkpoints rise like mushrooms, not out of strategy, but out of despair. Guns are pointed not at enemies, but at commuters. The road becomes a cashbox, and the rifle becomes a receipt.
Traffic stretches for miles. Truckers curse. Families wait in sweltering heat. Vegetables rot before reaching markets, medicine never arrives on time, and the economy clogs up like a sick man’s arteries. All because leaders thought loyalty could be maintained with speeches instead of salaries.
This is the Puntland paradox: soldiers without pay, leaders without authority, people without movement. No delegation of power, no functional chain of command, no coherent state. Just a crumbling road network where sovereignty is reduced to the barrel of a gun and the endless question at every checkpoint: “Halkee lacag taa laa?”
Instead of defending borders, the army now defends empty stomachs. Instead of building the state, it dismantles it one roadblock at a time. Puntland is not dismembered by Somaliland, nor Mogadishu, nor foreign conspiracies—but by its own unpaid soldiers, turning highways into hostages.
And when a government cannot guarantee the free movement of goods and people, it ceases to be a government. It becomes just another bystander in its own collapse.
Scene:
A long highway, jammed with trucks, donkey carts, and buses, stuck in endless gridlock.
At the center, ragged Puntland soldiers in mismatched uniforms set up makeshift checkpoints with sandbags and rusty barrels.
One soldier holds up a STOP sign with “SALARY” written across it.
Another soldier collects money from frustrated drivers, while behind him a billboard reads: “Welcome to Puntland – Where the Road Belongs to the Hungry.”
In the background, government officials are seen hiding inside a palace, looking out the window with binoculars, pretending they see nothing.
Warsame Policy & Media Network (WAPMEN) 