By Ismail H. Warsame
Warsame Digital Media (WDM)
Critical Analysis, News & Commentary – 2025 Edition
From Pride to Putrefaction
Once the cradle of Somali courage and intellect, Galkayo now reeks—literally—of decay. The city that once produced generals, scholars, and entrepreneurs is collapsing under the stench of neglect. The proud “Rocco Littorio” of colonial times, once named after an Italian warship for bravery, has become the rotting corpse of Puntland’s governance failure.
The smell of uncollected garbage and broken drainage systems wafts through the streets, mingling with the acrid odor of dust and despair. After the rains, filthy runoff floods markets and alleyways, forming stagnant ponds of disease. The once-bustling municipality has disintegrated—its trucks grounded, workers unpaid, and officials absent. Galkayo today is a city without sanitation, administration, or salvation.
And yet, as this misery unfolds, the brave and fine soldiers of Galkayo are fighting and dying in the Cal Miskaad Mountains—defending Puntland from extremist threats and protecting the very state that has abandoned their city.
The Return of Clan Vengeance
The rot is not only physical.
The city bleeds from a new kind of infection—revenge killings, spreading faster than any epidemic. Day after day, clan retaliations take lives in a self-perpetuating cycle of grief and retribution. The law has withdrawn, and the police merely count the dead.
Evenings in Galkayo are ghostly. Residents dare not step outside after sunset. Streets once alive with merchants, taxis, and laughter now echo with the hum of fear. In some neighborhoods, gunfire punctuates the night, and every household fears the next knock could be fatal.
Funerals outnumber weddings. Families mourn by day and barricade themselves by night. The thin fabric of social order has torn apart.
Collapse of Commerce and Civic Life
Business—the lifeblood of Galkayo—has flatlined.
Shops close before dusk, wholesalers move their goods to safer districts, and investors quietly migrate to Garowe, Bosaso, or beyond Somalia altogether. Even the once-thriving livestock trade has slowed to a crawl as insecurity makes transport routes lethal.
Market stalls stand half-empty, and currency dealers whisper that circulation has dried up. The economic arteries are clogged, just like the city’s drainage. Galkayo is not merely unsafe—it is economically asphyxiated.
The Administration That Cannot Govern
President Said Abdullahi Deni’s government has perfected the art of inertia.
Puntland under his rule no longer governs—it waits. Ministries issue statements instead of solutions. Every local crisis is deferred to “a later time” that never comes.
The Deni administration does not multitask; it does not even delegate. Authority has become ornamental—concentrated in Garowe but functionally absent everywhere else. Governors act like political hostages; mayors are ceremonial. There is no effective municipal structure left in Galkayo. Even garbage collection has become a private, clan-based affair.
This paralysis has turned Puntland from a model of federalism into a museum of mismanagement.
The Smell of State Failure
Nowhere is Puntland’s dysfunction more visible—or smellable—than in Galkayo.
Open sewers overflow through the city’s arteries. Piles of waste block alleys. Children play beside gutters bubbling with human refuse. The municipality, once Galkayo’s pride, has ceased to exist in all but name.
The smell of rotten decay has become symbolic—a constant reminder that this is what happens when leadership decomposes in office. The physical filth mirrors the moral corruption of a state that stopped caring.
Administrative Vacuum Across Puntland
Galkayo’s plight is only the loudest symptom of a broader collapse. Across Puntland, every structure of governance—education, policing, public works—is either stagnant or deteriorating.
Civil servants go unpaid for months. Districts operate without budgets. Clan militias, not police, enforce security. And Deni’s government still pretends it has control while it actually presides over a slow-motion implosion.
There is an administrative vacuum everywhere, and Galkayo stands as the capital of that vacuum.
The Dystopia of Everyday Life
To live in Galkayo today is to balance between fear and fatigue.
The youth—unemployed, disillusioned—oscillate between revenge networks, extremist recruiters, and smuggling syndicates. Elders have lost authority, religious leaders have lost influence, and women bear the brunt of insecurity as both victims and breadwinners.
When a society normalizes murder, corruption, and filth, it ceases to be a society. Galkayo has reached that threshold.
A State in Denial
Despite these conditions, Puntland’s officialdom continues to issue cheerful press releases about “stability and progress.”
Reality, however, speaks louder:
Lawlessness reigns.
Municipal services are dead.
Economy is collapsing.
People are terrified.
This is not merely a Galkayo tragedy—it is the death rattle of Puntland’s governance system.
Conclusion: The Smell of Abandonment
Galkayo is not suffering by accident. It is suffering because its leaders chose ambition over administration, optics over obligation, and vanity over vision.
The drainage catastrophe, the revenge killings, the business collapse, and the paralyzed municipality all tell one story: a government that has abandoned its people.
If Puntland continues on this path, Galkayo will not be its exception—it will be its future. And the stench rising from the city’s drains will not be just of waste, but of a failed state decomposing from within.
Editorial Note (WDM)
Galkayo’s condition demands emergency governance, not election slogans. Puntland’s ruling elite must remember: when the heart of a state rots, the whole body follows.
Warsame Policy & Media Network (WAPMEN) 