The Ministry of Discouragement Never Sleeps

By Ismail H. Warsame

A friend of mine said something the other day that was both hilarious and tragic.

“If you share a business idea with government officials or businesspeople in Mogadishu, they immediately become curious. They ask questions. They want to know how it works. Some even try to persuade you to join them in a business partnership. But in Puntland, before you have finished your first sentence, someone interrupts: ‘Forget it. It will never work here.”

Whether that observation applies in every case is beside the point. It captures a mindset that many entrepreneurs have encountered. But, the situation is a becoming almost an echo chamber here.

Welcome to Puntland—the only place where failure is declared before the feasibility study is even written.

Elsewhere, people ask, “How can we make this work?”

Here, the first question is, “Why bother?”

Elsewhere, investors look for opportunities.

Here, self-appointed experts look for excuses.

Elsewhere, entrepreneurs search for markets.

Here, pessimists search for reasons why markets cannot exist.

It is almost a science.

No business proposal is too small to be discouraged.

“I want to establish a fish-processing factory.”

“It won’t work.”

“I want to export livestock products.”

“It won’t work.”

“I want to manufacture building materials.”

“It won’t work.”

“I want to establish a software company.”

“It won’t work.”

“I want to develop renewable energy.”

“It won’t work.”

“I want to build a tourist resort.”

“It won’t work.”

By the end of the conversation, one begins to wonder how Puntland itself still manages to exist, given that apparently nothing works.

The unofficial national anthem has become:

“It won’t work here.”

One is tempted to establish a Ministry of Discouragement.

Its motto?

“Destroying optimism since 1998.”

Its departments would include the Directorate of Doubt, the Bureau of Negative Predictions, and the National Authority for Killing New Ideas.

Their annual performance report would proudly announce:

“This year we successfully discouraged another 500 entrepreneurs before they invested a single dollar.”

Mission accomplished.

The irony, of course, is that many of the same people who dismiss every local idea will enthusiastically celebrate the very same concept once it succeeds elsewhere.

If someone opens the identical business in Nairobi, Dubai, or Mogadishu, suddenly the conversation changes.

“I always knew it would succeed.”

Of course you did.

After telling everyone it would fail.

No society has ever become prosperous by manufacturing pessimism.

Every successful economy began with someone whom others considered unrealistic.

Every major company was once “a foolish idea.”

Every innovation was once dismissed.

The difference is that dynamic societies allow ideas to compete.

They test them.

They refine them.

They finance them.

They learn from failure.

They try again.

Societies that instinctively ridicule enterprise eventually discover that their brightest minds quietly relocate to places where ambition is welcomed rather than mocked.

Investment follows confidence.

Innovation follows freedom.

Prosperity follows both.

Puntland does not suffer from a shortage of ideas.

It suffers from a shortage of belief.

The greatest natural resource any nation possesses is not oil, minerals, ports, or livestock.

It is the imagination of its people.

The day a society begins discouraging imagination, it starts importing everything except excuses.

Perhaps it is time to retire the old national slogan of pessimism.

Instead of asking, “Why will it fail?”

We should begin asking,

“What would it take to make it succeed?”

That single change in attitude may prove more valuable than any foreign aid package, donor conference, or development strategy ever written.

Because nations are not built by those who predict failure.

They are built by those stubborn enough to ignore the experts who insist that nothing can ever be done.

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By Ismail H. Warsame

History often records not only the decisions leaders make, but also the advice they refuse to hear. In politics, ignoring sound counsel can prove more costly than making an honest mistake. Puntland today finds itself confronting exactly such a moment.

At the height of the escalating constitutional, political, and governance confrontation between the Federal Government of Somalia and Puntland, the then Puntland State Commission (TCFN) prepared what may have been one of the most constructive policy proposals presented to President Said Abdullahi Deni. It was not a document of confrontation. It was not a declaration of secession. It was not an emotional political statement. It was a roadmap for preventing Somalia from sliding once again into constitutional collapse and political fragmentation.

The proposal warned against repeating Somalia’s tragic history.

Using then crisis in Gedo as an example, it argued that disputes should never be settled through coercion, military pressure, flight restrictions, collective punishment, or marginalization of stakeholders. Instead, dialogue, compromise, and consultation with traditional elders, religious scholars, and community leaders were presented as the only sustainable path.

That warning has since proved remarkably prescient.

More importantly, the proposal went beyond criticism. It outlined an eleven-point national agenda that could have fundamentally reshaped Somalia’s federal future.

It called for:

• A genuine National Reconciliation Conference.
• A new political compact between the Federal Government and Federal Member States.
• A consensual national constitution approved through a popular referendum.
• Respect for existing Federal Member State constitutions until such a constitution exists.
• A negotiated settlement on revenue sharing, foreign aid, and political power.
• Agreement on debt relief, public finance, and fiscal management.
• Protection against unilateral federal legislation affecting member states.
• Consensus on the electoral system.
• Agreement on national security architecture and armed forces.
• Joint cooperation against terrorism.
• A negotiated settlement regarding the status of Somalia’s capital.

Even today, one would struggle to identify a single point that is unreasonable.

Indeed, virtually every constitutional crisis Somalia currently faces revolves around one or more of these unresolved issues.

Yet President Deni chose another path.

Instead of transforming Puntland into the intellectual and political leader of a nationwide constitutional dialogue, his administration increasingly confined itself to reactive politics. Every federal provocation was answered after the fact. Every constitutional violation became another political dispute rather than an opportunity to rally Somalis around a coherent alternative vision.

Leadership is not merely resisting what one opposes.

Leadership is offering the country a destination.

That opportunity was missed.

Today Somalia finds itself trapped in precisely the constitutional deadlock the proposal sought to avoid. Relations between the Federal Government and several Federal Member States remain deeply strained. Constitutional legitimacy continues to be contested. Questions surrounding elections, power-sharing, resource allocation, security-sector governance, and the status of Mogadishu remain unresolved.

None of these crises emerged overnight.

They accumulated because political actors repeatedly substituted tactical victories for strategic settlement.

The tragedy is not that Puntland lacked ideas.

The tragedy is that it failed to champion its own ideas.

The TCFN proposal demonstrated that Puntland possessed the intellectual capacity to articulate a genuinely national vision—one based on negotiation rather than coercion, constitutionalism rather than improvisation, and consensus rather than unilateralism.

Instead, that vision remained largely confined to internal papers while day-to-day politics consumed the national agenda.

History rarely offers second chances.

But it does offer lessons.

The lesson is unmistakable: federalism cannot survive if every disagreement becomes a constitutional confrontation. Equally, Somalia cannot be governed indefinitely through unilateral decisions emanating from Mogadishu while expecting Federal Member States to accept outcomes they neither negotiated nor endorsed.

Federalism is not simply an administrative arrangement.

It is a permanent culture of negotiation.

The ignored proposal understood that fundamental truth.

Events since then have only reinforced its wisdom.

Somalia still requires a comprehensive political settlement. It still requires an inclusive national reconciliation conference. It still needs a mutually agreed constitutional order. It still needs a consensus on elections, national security, public finance, and the status of the capital.

In other words, the solutions proposed years ago remain the solutions required today.

The cost of ignoring good advice is now visible across Somalia’s fractured political landscape.

The question is no longer whether that proposal was correct.

The question is whether Somalia’s leaders are finally prepared to rediscover the wisdom they once chose to ignore.

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“Anaga oo aragtidaa ka duuleyna, Dawladda Puntland waxay u soo jeedineysaa dadweynaha Soomaaliyeed, Dawladda Federaalka, Dawladaha Xubnaha ka ah iyo Beesha Caalamkaba:
1.In la qabto Shirweyne Dib-u-Heshiisiin Qaran oo aragti midaysan ka yeesha dawlad-dhiska Soomaaliya;
2.In la dhiso Madal Cusub iyo Heshiis Qaran oo u dhaxeeya Dawladda Federalka iyo kuwa Xubnaha ka ah, si loo helo hannaanka cusub oo si dhab ah ku salaysan wada xaajood iyo go’aan qaadasho wada ogol ah;

3. In la helo Dastuur Qaran oo Soomaali oo dhan heshiis ku tahay, afti dadweynana loo qaado;
   4.In la ixtiraamo Dastuurada Dawladaha Xubnaha ka ah Hannaanka Federaalka inta laga helayo Dastuur Qaran, sida ku xusan qodobka (3);
   5.In dib-u-eegis iyo isla ogol lagu sameeyo wadaaga khayraadka, deeqaha caalamka, awood-qaybsiga, iwm;
   6.In laga heshiiyo geedi-socodka Deyn-Cafinta, Maamulka iyo Maaraynta Maaliyada;
   7.In aan Baarlamaanka Soomaaliya la horgeyn karin Hindise-Sharciyeed wax u dhimaya arrimaha masiiriga ee dawladaha Soomaaliya (FGS & FMSs);
   8.In laga heshiiyo, si wada ogol ah, Hannaanka Doorashooyinka Dalka.
   9.In laga heshiiyo, si wada ogol ah, dhismaha Ciidamada Xoogga Dalka iyo ciidamada amniga ee kala duwan ee Dawladda Federaalka hoos yimaada;
   10.In lala wada dagaalamo argagixisada;
   11.In meel la saaro Maqaamka Caasumadda Dalka, si wada ogol ah. Madasha Wadatashiga Qaran iyo Gobol keli ah oo ku lifaaq ah meel ma wada geli karaan”