Another week, another masterclass in political theatre from Villa Somalia. The stage lights dim, a single spotlight hits the podium, and a solemn decree is read: The Federal Government of Somalia severs ties with the United Arab Emirates. Cue the dramatic music, the murmurs of geopolitics, the swirling analysis in foreign capitals. But in the wings, two crucial actors stand frozen, scripts in hand, mouths agape. Their names? Puntland and Jubaland. Their line? They don’t have one. They weren’t given a part in this particular scene.
The plot, as it unfolds, is a farce of such staggering audacity it would make Mogadishu water-fetching donkeys blush. Here is a decision with tectonic implications: slamming shut a door to a nation that has been a primary investor in infrastructure, a key security partner in the fight against Al-Shabaab, and a critical economic lifeline for regions outside the Mogadishu bubble. And it is taken with the consultative grace of a royal decree in an absolute monarchy. The “F” in “FGS,” it seems, stands for “Figment.”
Let’s dissect the grim comedy. The UAE’s footprint is not centralized in the marble halls of Mogadishu. It is in Bosaso’s port, critical to Puntland’s economy and fighting against ISIS in Calmiskaad Mountains. It is in training and equipping Jubaland’s security forces, who are dying on the front lines against extremists every day. To cut this cord without so much as a courtesy call to Garowe or Kismayo is not merely an oversight; it is a blatant declaration that the lived realities, economic survival, and security of millions of Somalis in these states are disposable collateral in Mogadishu’s grand, solitary political calculations.
So, we must ask the question that the architects of this decision clearly consider irrelevant: Why on earth should Puntland or Jubaland comply?
The federal compact—that delicate, painstakingly negotiated idea etched into a provisional constitution—is not a suicide pact. Its core logic is shared burden, shared benefit, and shared decision-making on matters of national consequence. What, pray tell, could be more national than the abrupt alienation of a major Arab power whose influence and investment are hyper-localized in the very regions not consulted? This isn’t federalism; it is a colonial administration dressed in the cheap suit of a government, treating constituent states as recalcitrant provinces to be managed, not partners to be respected.
The message from Mogadishu is now crystalline: “Your investments are ours to obliterate. Your security partnerships are ours to annul. Your economic futures are ours to gamble. And your role is to applaud our sovereignty from the cheap seats.”
Well, here’s the twist in the script that Villa Somalia didn’t anticipate: you cannot build a nation by consistently telling half of it they don’t matter. You cannot demand loyalty while offering only contempt. You cannot preach unity from a podium of isolation.
Every unilateral, destabilizing move of this nature is not an assertion of federal authority; it is an excavation of its own grave. It is a signed affidavit to the people of Puntland, Jubaland, and every other emerging state that Mogadishu views the “federal project” as a one-way street: their resources, their men, their territory are federal concerns, but their voices and their existential interests are not.
The result? A predictable, self-inflicted wound. The fragile, tactical cooperation against Al-Shabaab—which depends entirely on trust and shared purpose between centre and periphery—is poisoned. Investment dries up, not in Mogadishu’s secure enclaves first, but in the regions that needed it most. And the already-gaping chasm of mistrust widens into a permanent geopolitical rift.
Perhaps that is the ultimate, tragic satire. In a desperate bid to project strong, centralized sovereignty to the outside world, Mogadishu has performed a powerful pantomime of its own irrelevance to the internal dynamics that actually determine Somalia’s fate. They have proven, yet again, that the greatest threat to Somali stability is not always in the thorn bushes of the Shabelle, but too often behind the high walls of the capital, where the illusion of control is mistaken for its reality.
The curtain has fallen on this act. The audience in Puntland and Jubaland is not applauding. They are walking out of the theatre, and discussing, in very serious tones, whether to build their own.
Warsame Policy & Media Network (WAPMEN) 