Once upon a time, Mogadishu produced the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC)—a legal innovation so “brilliant” it collapsed faster than a mud hut in the Gu rainy season. Like all great Somali experiments in governance, the UIC was born out of high ideals, khat-fueled debates, and an unshakable faith in recycling old warlords under new titles. Its unintended consequence? The birth of a rebellious teenager called Al-Shabab, who took the family name but never came back for family dinners.

Who is the Mother of Al-Shabab?

The question is not whether Al-Shabab came from the UIC womb—it is whether Mogadishu’s political class still pays child support. If UIC was the mother, then Damul-Jadid was surely the doting uncle, always sneaking the child candy and ideological bedtime stories. Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, then a middle-class academic entrepreneur turned militia sponsor, stood shoulder to shoulder with the Al-Shabab maternity ward, making sure the baby was born strong enough to one day terrorize the entire Somali state.

But let us not forget the SIMAD College Tragedy of 2006. Instead of graduation gowns, bright-eyed students were handed rusty rifles and packed into trucks for the Baydhaba front line—Somalia’s version of a compulsory internship. The Ethiopian army and the TFG gave them their performance evaluation in the form of heavy artillery, and like every unpaid intern, they were discarded and unaccounted for. The crime was never registered, and accountability was sent to the same graveyard as the missing students.

The President’s Amnesia

Fast forward to today, and President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud parades around Villa Somalia as if history began only after his second term swearing-in ceremony. He speaks of “fighting Al-Shabab” with a straight face, while skeptics whisper: “But weren’t you their classmate, neighbor, and at one point, tactical ally?” The irony is thicker than Mogadishu dust: the very man who once outsourced young blood to Al-Shabab’s apprenticeship program now claims to be Somalia’s top anti-terrorist general.

The President’s speeches against Al-Shabab are like a father publicly condemning truancy while secretly buying his delinquent son new sneakers. Everyone claps politely, but the street remembers who funded the bus rides to Baydhaba. Until Hassan Sheikh produces receipts for those lost SIMAD students, his anti-terror campaign remains less about eradicating Al-Shabab and more about editing Wikipedia pages.

A Country That Forgets Too Easily

Somalia’s tragedy is not merely Al-Shabab’s existence, but the collective amnesia that allows perpetrators to rebrand as saviors. Warlords become ministers, extremists become reformists, and sponsors of student militias become “His Excellency.” Meanwhile, the bodies of the unaccounted still echo in the silence of Baydhaba fields.

Perhaps the biggest unintended consequence of the UIC was not just Al-Shabab, but also the normalization of Somali political recycling. Yesterday’s rebel is today’s president, today’s president is tomorrow’s exile, and tomorrow’s exile will return as a peace negotiator sponsored by the UN. And the cycle spins on—slicker than a khat dealer’s tongue.

The Burden of Proof

Until President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud can answer for the Baydhaba students, until he can acknowledge Damul-Jadid’s role in Al-Shabab’s teenage years, and until Mogadishu stops pretending history began last week, every anti-terror campaign out of Villa Somalia will remain suspect.

As for the rest of us, we are left to watch this tragicomedy unfold—another episode in Somalia’s long-running soap opera: “UIC: The Mother That Ate Her Children.”

Once upon a time, American sanctions were supposed to be the magic wand of empire. You point, you punish, and a foreign government trembles into submission. Cuba? Starved. Iraq? Crippled. Iran? Crushed. That was the Washington fantasy. But the 21st century is not the 1990s—and now the magic wand has snapped in the sorcerer’s hand.

Take Venezuela: America’s sanctions were meant to suffocate the oil state into regime change. Instead, the patient didn’t die—it found a Chinese doctor with endless pockets and a taste for oil. Beijing swooped in, oil-for-loans in hand, bypassing the almighty dollar and wiring life support into Caracas. Result? Venezuela may be limping, but it is still standing. China got the energy it craved. And the U.S. got nothing—except the bitter taste of sanctions blowing back like a shotgun fired backwards.

And Venezuela is no isolated mishap. Russia was supposed to collapse under sanctions after Ukraine. Remember the predictions of a “ruble in rubble”? Instead, the ruble wobbled, then stabilized; Moscow rerouted oil and gas eastward, strengthening its axis with China, India, and the so-called “Global South.” The sanctions hurt Europe far more than Russia—German factories paying triple for energy, while Moscow laughed its way into yuan settlements and BRICS expansion.

Everywhere Washington swings the sanctions hammer, cracks appear not in its enemies but in its own global dominance. Iran found new partners in Beijing; Africa, long treated as a sanctions playground, now courts Russian and Chinese investment without Washington’s permission slip. The “rules-based order” has become a punchline, a club where the U.S. writes the rules and everyone else stops showing up.

The deeper truth is this: sanctions were supposed to keep the unipolar moment alive, but instead they have accelerated its funeral. By weaponizing the dollar, America forced the world to search for alternatives—and alternatives they have found. Yuan-denominated oil, BRICS currency talks, barter systems, parallel banking networks: the architecture of a multipolar order is being built brick by brick, financed ironically by the failures of American policy.

So yes, Washington still loves to preach about “sanctioning rogue states.” But the rogues are adapting, and the empire is eroding. What was meant as punishment has become an apprenticeship in resilience for America’s rivals. While the U.S. ties itself in knots of overreach, Beijing and Moscow stroll into the gaps with oil contracts, infrastructure deals, and no sermons attached.

The end result? The sanctions regime is no longer a weapon of power—it is the obituary notice of U.S. hegemony. Washington wanted to crush Venezuela, Russia, Iran, and beyond. Instead, it taught them how to survive without it. That is not strategy—it’s suicide by arrogance.