The Politics of Manufactured Complicity

Rebuttal to Abdisaid Muse Ali’s “Somalia’s Complicity in the El Fasher Tragedy” (WardheerNews, October 31, 2025)

1. The Fallacy of Guilt by Geography

WardheerNews’ article commits the oldest propaganda trick in the playbook — conflating geography with guilt.
Because a plane allegedly touched Bosaso’s runway, the author stretches this into “Somalia’s complicity” in Sudan’s tragedy. That is not journalism; it is conjecture.
WDM’s data shows no credible evidence, photographic or documentary, that any flight carried munitions through Puntland’s Bosaso Airport. All civil aviation movements were logged and cleared under ICAO-compliant civilian manifests. The “identical tail numbers” claim cited from unnamed intelligence leaks remains unverified and unverifiable.

2. Political Motive Behind the Story

The piece is not investigative — it is politically weaponized writing, designed to deflect attention from the Villa Somalia–Damul Jadiid foreign policy collapse in Sudan and Jubaland. By dragging Puntland into the Sudanese quagmire, Abdisaid attempts to sanitize the central government’s inaction and restore his own lost relevance as a former foreign minister.
This is not the first time WardheerNews has amplified narratives aligning with Villa Somalia’s smear campaign against Puntland. The same pattern appeared after the failure of the SSC-Khaatumo manipulation and the Arta-Djibouti fiasco.

3. The Data Holds

WDM’s independent monitoring of Bosaso Airport (April–October 2025) records:

Zero cargo flights filed under diplomatic or military clearance.

All IL-76 aircraft logged under civilian cargo classification, delivering humanitarian goods and construction equipment from the UAE.

No deviation in ICAO-filed flight paths toward Sudanese coordinates.

Satellite-verified cargo volume and local eyewitness reports confirm routine commercial operations — not covert transfers. If Abdisaid has any “US intelligence report,” let him produce it. Until then, it remains the typical proxy whisper journalism used to justify diplomatic attacks on Puntland’s autonomy.

4. Real Complicity: Villa Somalia’s Silence

The real complicity lies in Villa Somalia’s paralysis:

Mogadishu granted unrestricted overflight rights without federal inspection protocols.

The Civil Aviation Authority remains unreformed and politically captured, issuing diplomatic clearances with no transparency.

The so-called “national foreign policy” is dictated by Qatari intermediaries, not by the Somali parliament.

When Abdisaid speaks of “institutional negligence,” he is describing his own legacy as the architect of Mogadishu’s dependency diplomacy — where foreign actors lease sovereignty by cheque.

5. Puntland’s Record Speaks for Itself

Puntland has consistently upheld international compliance and transparency:

Its ports and airports are jointly monitored by private logistics contractors with Emirati and Somali oversight.

No international sanction or compliance warning has ever cited Bosaso or Garowe.

Puntland’s focus remains economic recovery and regional stability, not participation in Sudan’s internal wars.

Accusing Puntland of “leasing sovereignty” is both false and defamatory — coming from an administration that outsourced its own sovereignty to Turkish and Qatari bases around Mogadishu.

6. Sudan’s Pain, Somalia’s Shame

Yes, El Fasher is a tragedy — but to weaponize Sudan’s suffering to smear Somali regions is morally obscene. The Sudanese people deserve solidarity, not propaganda scapegoats. Puntland has provided humanitarian corridors for Sudanese refugees and stood against RSF atrocities in every regional forum it attended.

7. Journalism vs. Political Memoir

WardheerNews printed a political manifesto disguised as journalism. Its author, Abdisaid Muse Ali, is no longer an independent observer; he is a discredited political operative whose career thrived on the very “proxy diplomacy” he now pretends to expose.
True journalism demands evidence, documentation, and neutrality — none of which appear in this 3,000-word essay of innuendo.

Conclusion

WDM rejects the baseless accusation that Puntland or Somalia as a whole is complicit in the El Fasher tragedy.
The real scandal is the collapse of state responsibility in Mogadishu — where foreign clearance stamps are sold as political favors and propaganda is exported through sympathetic media outlets.

Facts matter. Evidence matters. Geography is not guilt.

Ismail H Warsame,  WDM, Garowe, Puntland, Somalia.