WAPMEN Editorial | Revisited with the Kismayo Communiqué Context

Somalia is no longer merely staring at an avoidable political crisis — it has now named it, anticipated it, and formally prepared for it. What was previously dismissed as speculative alarmism has been elevated into a written contingency by the Golaha Mustaqbalka Soomaaliya, convened in Kismayo recently.

The federal project is no longer eroding quietly. It is being openly challenged by its own stakeholders — not through bullets or barricades, but through pre-emptive political architecture.

The Kismayo Line in the Sand
The most consequential sentence in the Kismayo Communiqué is not rhetorical — it is procedural and revolutionary:
In the event the Federal President refuses to negotiate a consensual way forward before the end of his mandate on May 15, the Golaha Mustaqbalka Soomaaliya shall pursue an alternative national political arrangement.
Stripped of diplomatic language, this is a formal notice of parallel authority.
For the first time since the end of the Transitional Federal Government era, Somali political actors have collectively stated — in advance — that legitimacy will not be inherited by default. If the incumbent president overstays, stonewalls, or manufactures a transition without consent, the response will not be protest alone. It will be institutional duplication.

From Hypothesis to Doctrine
This declaration fundamentally reframes the earlier Garowe–Mogadishu standoff.
What was once whispered — rival conferences, dual parliaments, competing claims — is now codified as a contingency plan. The Communiqué transforms Garowe’s posture from defensive resistance into conditional statecraft.
Garowe is no longer merely warning against federal overreach; it is preparing to outlive it.

Mogadishu, meanwhile, is betting that inertia, international silence, and the myth of inevitability will carry it past May 15 without consequence.
That bet may prove fatal.
Parallel Government Is Not a Threat — It Is an Admission of Failure
Let us be clear: the emergence of a parallel political track is not a coup against federalism. It is an indictment of its abuse.
When negotiation is refused, mandates are violated, and elections are personalized, legitimacy does not evaporate — it relocates.

Somalia has lived this movie before:
1991: Power claimed without consent → state collapse
2000–2004: Competing authorities → transitional purgatory
2025–2026 (looming): Manufactured continuity → institutional bifurcation
The Kismayo Communiqué is a warning shot meant to prevent the repeat — but it also acknowledges readiness for it.

Garowe’s Calculation vs. Mogadishu’s Hubris
Garowe’s strategy is grounded in one premise: sovereignty is collective, not presidential. The federal center is a trustee, not an owner.
Mogadishu’s strategy rests on a different assumption: if you control the capital, you control the country.
That assumption has failed Somalia repeatedly.
Federal Member States are no longer passive recipients of directives. They are co-authors of the state. The public is no longer illiterate. And the international community, however fatigued, cannot indefinitely recognize an authority whose mandate has expired by its own constitution.

The Fork Has Been Marked
The question is no longer whether Somalia could split into parallel legitimacies.
The question is who forced it there.
A negotiated settlement before May 15 keeps Somalia whole.
A unilateral extension after May 15 triggers the very outcome Villa Somalia claims to fear.
The Kismayo Communiqué did not invent this danger.
It simply named the consequence.
Somalia now stands warned — in writing.

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Why Un-negotiated Separation and Federal Over-Reach Are Two Sides of the Same Failure

When Abdirahman Faroole stood before the delegates at the Golaha Mustaqbalka Soomaaliya in Kismayo recently, he did more than recall a grievance. He punctured a national illusion. The separation between Puntland State of Somalia and SSC-Khaatumo was never negotiated, never constitutionalized, and never settled. It was improvised—then normalized by fatigue. What Faroole called federal over-reach is not an episode; it is the predictable outcome of Somalia’s habit of substituting delay for decision.

This debate is often miscast as a territorial quarrel or a clash of personalities. That framing is convenient—and wrong. The real conflict is about legitimacy without renewal. Puntland’s authority in SSC areas did not evaporate overnight; it eroded through representation without influence, inclusion without voice, and loyalty assumed rather than renewed. When legitimacy thins, force tempts. When force appears, trust collapses. That spiral explains far more than slogans ever will.
SSC-Khaatumo’s emergence, in turn, is not an act of political vandalism. It is an audit. Communities do not abandon frameworks that protect them; they exit arrangements that ignore them. The problem is not that SSC asserted itself; it is that Somalia allowed assertion to replace negotiation. Un-negotiated separation hardens positions, militarizes misunderstandings, and leaves every party claiming legality while delivering instability.

Enter the federal center—and here the reckoning sharpens. The Federal Government of Somalia has perfected a dangerous craft: symbolic authority without operational responsibility. From Mogadishu come flags, declarations, and endorsements. What does not reliably come are enforceable guarantees—revenue sharing that works, dispute resolution that binds, security coordination that endures. This is not federal leadership; it is performative sovereignty. When the center inserts itself into unresolved regional disputes without convening binding talks, it does not arbitrate—it aggravates.

To pretend this is a clan war is to misdiagnose a constitutional disease. Puntland was founded as a multi-clan federal bulwark when Somalia was dissolving into armed particularism. That achievement is real—and so is its expiration date if not renewed. Institutions that are not refreshed invite older logics to return. When federal mechanisms weaken, clan arithmetic fills the vacuum. Blaming identity for institutional decay is how governance failures metastasize into existential feuds.

The seductive argument—that SSC should bypass Puntland and align directly with the center—offers shortcuts where only hard roads exist. Somalia’s tragedy is not a lack of symbols; it is a shortage of settlement. Direct alignment would not end ambiguity; it would relocate it. Stability is not achieved by skipping layers of federalism; it is achieved by negotiated inclusion—clear competencies, shared revenues, credible arbitration, and timelines that bind.

Calls for Puntland’s withdrawal from SSC miss the point entirely. Withdrawal without settlement produces vacuums, not peace. Authority cannot be abandoned; it must be transformed. Equally, SSC’s legitimacy cannot be wished away; it must be recognized, negotiated, and constitutionalized. Anything less is theater with consequences.
Strip away the rhetoric and the truth is stark: Somalia keeps fighting the same argument because it refuses to finish the same agreement. The Puntland–SSC rupture is a delayed constitutional reckoning over authority, representation, and consent—prolonged by a federal center that prefers applause to arbitration. History is unforgiving to systems that confuse postponement with stability.
Somalia does not suffer from too much federalism or too little unity. It suffers from unfinished bargains masquerading as settled orders. Until the separation is negotiated, the roles clarified, and the guarantees enforced, legitimacy will keep returning—loudly—where it was once neglected quietly.

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