A WDM Editorial

As fighting unfolds between the Puntland Defence Forces (PDF) and rebellious elements of the Puntland Security Force (PSF), one dangerous temptation must be resisted above all others: do not reduce this confrontation to a sub-clan grievance.
That would not merely be intellectually lazy; it would be politically reckless.
The bullets flying around Bosaso are not the inevitable consequence of ancient clan rivalries. They are the predictable result of years of institutional neglect, constitutional ambiguity, weak political leadership, and repeated failures to build a unified state security system. Personalising the conflict or attaching it to sub-clan identity only obscures the real disease while inflaming the symptoms.
This crisis did not begin yesterday. Nor did it begin with the current exchange of fire. It has been developing for well over a decade.
The Original Sin
The PSF was created as an elite counter-terrorism force outside the normal constitutional security architecture of Puntland. Professionally trained and externally supported, it became an effective fighting force against terrorism. Yet its institutional design contained a fatal flaw.
It evolved as a parallel security institution rather than an integrated component of Puntland’s constitutional chain of command.
That distinction matters enormously.
Every functioning state has one fundamental principle: there can be only one legitimate chain of command for the use of force.
The moment a military or security unit develops operational autonomy beyond civilian authority, the seeds of future confrontation have already been planted.
For years, successive Puntland administrations postponed confronting this contradiction. Instead of resolving it through legislation, institutional reform, political dialogue, and constitutional clarity, leaders preferred temporary political accommodations.
Temporary solutions eventually produce permanent crises.
Parallel Security Structures Never Remain Neutral
History offers countless examples.
Whether in Lebanon, Libya, Sudan, Iraq, Afghanistan, or elsewhere, parallel armed organisations eventually become political actors. Once an armed institution acquires its own command, funding, external relationships, and internal identity, it naturally begins to defend its organisational interests.
This is not unique to Puntland.
It is the predictable behaviour of institutions operating without clear constitutional boundaries.
The longer such ambiguity persists, the greater the risk that competing political centres begin to seek influence over those forces.
That is precisely where Puntland now finds itself.
Loyalty Cannot Be Switched Without Consequences
Reports and accusations that elements of the PSF have aligned themselves with the administration of President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud represent more than an ordinary political disagreement.
If armed personnel established to serve Puntland decide—without constitutional authorization—to transfer their operational loyalty elsewhere, the issue immediately ceases to be an internal personnel dispute.
It becomes a constitutional challenge to Puntland’s authority.
No government anywhere in the world can tolerate armed units independently choosing which political authority they will obey.
Civilian governments may change.
Political parties may change.
Presidents certainly change.
The chain of command cannot.
If security personnel become free agents, the state itself begins to dissolve.
Puntland Also Bears Responsibility
Acknowledging this does not absolve Puntland’s own leadership.
Quite the opposite.
This confrontation reflects years of failure by successive Puntland governments to solve the PSF question before it reached today’s dangerous stage.
Instead of creating a comprehensive legal framework governing elite forces, governments repeatedly postponed difficult decisions.
Instead of integrating all armed units under one constitutional structure, exceptions multiplied.
Instead of strengthening parliamentary oversight and civilian accountability, security policy increasingly revolved around executive decisions.
Instead of building institutions, politics often focused on personalities.
The result is today’s crisis.
Governments cannot indefinitely postpone institutional reform and then express surprise when institutional contradictions eventually explode.
This Is Not About General Diano
Nor is it about any individual commander.
Nor should it become a referendum on President Said Abdullahi Deni.
Nor should it become a political campaign for Hassan Sheikh Mohamud.
The issue is much larger.
Tomorrow another president will occupy Garowe.
Another president will occupy Villa Somalia.
Another generation of commanders will emerge.
If the constitutional questions remain unresolved, the same confrontation will simply return under different names.
Somalia has already wasted too many decades replacing personalities while preserving dysfunctional institutions.
Stop Weaponising Clan Identity
Perhaps the greatest danger now is the attempt to mobilise public opinion through sub-clan narratives.
Every Somali political crisis eventually attracts voices eager to transform institutional disputes into collective clan grievances.
That temptation must be rejected.
A soldier who violates constitutional authority does not represent his clan.
A government enforcing lawful authority is not fighting a clan.
The law deals with individuals, commands, and institutions—not bloodlines.
Once communities begin interpreting constitutional disputes through the lens of genealogy, rational politics becomes impossible.
Justice gives way to revenge.
Citizenship gives way to tribal mobilisation.
The state slowly disappears.
One State Cannot Sustain Multiple Armies
This principle is universal.
Puntland cannot function indefinitely while maintaining multiple armed organisations operating under uncertain legal arrangements.
The answer is not revenge.
Nor humiliation.
Nor collective punishment.
Nor endless military confrontation.
The answer is institutional reform.
That means establishing the PSF’s legal status beyond dispute, clarifying its chain of command, ensuring transparent budgeting and civilian oversight, integrating or restructuring parallel forces where necessary, and creating a negotiated framework with the Federal Government to prevent overlapping mandates and competing loyalties.
Anything less merely postpones the next crisis.
The Moment for Political Courage
Military victories can restore temporary order.
They cannot resolve constitutional contradictions.
Only politics can do that.
Only institutions can do that.
Only leadership willing to place the interests of Puntland above temporary political calculations can do that.
The fighting around Bosaso should therefore serve as a national warning.
States are not destroyed only by external enemies.
Sometimes they slowly weaken because governments postpone difficult reforms, tolerate institutional ambiguity, and allow parallel centres of armed authority to emerge until confrontation becomes inevitable.
Puntland still has an opportunity to correct that mistake.
But only if it understands one fundamental truth:
This is not a war between sub-clans. It is a struggle over the constitutional monopoly of legitimate force.
The sooner Puntland resolves that question through law rather than gunfire, the stronger both its democracy and its security will become. The longer it delays, the more likely today’s confrontation will become tomorrow’s recurring tragedy.

The significance of Laag extends far beyond a military engagement outside Bosaso. It reaches back to the very philosophy upon which Puntland was founded in 1998.
From its inception, Puntland rejected the warlordism that had consumed southern Somalia following the collapse of the Somali state in 1991. While Mogadishu descended into the rule of competing militias, shifting alliances, and neighbourhood warlords, Puntland’s founders consciously pursued a different path. Their objective was not merely to establish another clan administration, but to build a functioning regional state governed by law, institutions, and a unified security apparatus.
President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed understood a principle that remains as relevant today as it was nearly three decades ago: a government that does not control the gun cannot control the state.
Whenever signs of lawlessness emerged, the response was expected to be swift, lawful, and decisive. Political disagreements were never to become excuses for maintaining private armies or rival chains of command. The authority of the state was expected to prevail because without that authority there could be no investment, no commerce, no justice, and no lasting peace.
Laag is therefore not simply about defeating one rebellious force. It is about reaffirming the constitutional doctrine that Puntland has only one government, one command structure, and one legitimate security establishment.
Those who continue to imagine that political influence can be maintained through armed formations are living in yesterday’s Somalia. The era of warlords, self-appointed generals, and privately controlled military units brought nothing but destruction to the Somali Republic. Puntland was established precisely to escape that destructive cycle—not to reproduce it.
The lesson should resonate throughout Puntland. Political competition is legitimate. Criticism of government is legitimate. Peaceful opposition is indispensable in any constitutional order. Armed defiance of the state is not.
The monopoly over the legitimate use of force belongs exclusively to the Puntland State.
Anything less invites the very anarchy from which Puntland painstakingly rescued itself.
Laag should therefore be remembered not as the beginning of another political feud, but as the moment Puntland recommitted itself to its founding covenant: one Constitution, one government, one security command, and one rule of law.

By WDM Editorial Board

History has an unforgiving habit: when its lessons are ignored, it returns—not as memory, but as reality.
That is the uncomfortable question of confronting Somalia today. Can anyone honestly explain how Mogadishu under President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud fundamentally differs from Mogadishu under the old United Somali Congress (USC), when General Mohamed Farah Aydeed dominated the political and military landscape?
The personalities have changed. The uniforms are different. The speeches are more polished. International donors have replaced wartime patrons. But beneath the surface, many Somalis increasingly see familiar patterns emerging.
During the USC era, political power radiated from Mogadishu while military campaigns stretched into the regions. Baidoa became a battlefield. Jubaland became a theatre of endless confrontation. North Eastern Somalia, including Galkayo, experienced repeated military pressure. Central Somalia descended into instability as competing factions fought for influence rather than building institutions.
Three decades later, the questions refuse to disappear.
Why has confrontation once again become the preferred language of politics?
Why are relations between Mogadishu and several federal member states repeatedly defined by coercion instead of constitutional dialogue?
Why has trust between the centre and the regions deteriorated so dramatically?
These are not rhetorical questions. They strike at the heart of Somalia’s fragile post-war settlement.
The tragedy is that Somalia already answered these questions once before.
The Provisional Federal Constitution was not written merely as another legal document. It was drafted after decades of civil war precisely to prevent the return of the winner-takes-all politics that destroyed the Somali Republic. Federalism was not created because it was theoretically perfect. It emerged because decades of conflict demonstrated that excessive centralization had become politically unacceptable to large sections of the country.
The Constitution was therefore a peace agreement as much as a governing framework.
Its purpose was simple: replace military competition with constitutional negotiation.
Replace coercion with consultation.
Replace domination with power-sharing.
Replace force with federalism.
Yet today many Somalis struggle to identify where that constitutional settlement actually survives in practice.
Where is the Provisional Constitution that was supposed to end the civil war?
Where are the constitutional safeguards that protect federal member states?
Where are the institutions meant to resolve disputes peacefully?
Where is the Federal Government acting as an impartial national government rather than appearing, to many critics, as another contestant in Somalia’s endless political competition?
These questions become even more pressing whenever constitutional disputes are answered politically instead of legally.
A genuine federal government does not measure its success by expanding its influence over every regional administration. It measures success by building consensus among diverse political communities.
Federalism demands restraint.
It requires compromise.
It requires acceptance that not every disagreement constitutes rebellion.
Most importantly, it requires recognition that Somalia today is not Somalia of 1969.
Attempts to govern through political pressure or military leverage risk reopening wounds that have never fully healed.
This is why comparisons with the USC period resonate with many observers—not necessarily because today’s circumstances are identical, but because the underlying political logic appears disturbingly familiar.
When regional tensions multiply simultaneously, when constitutional dialogue weakens, when military language begins replacing political language, and when distrust between Mogadishu and the federal member states becomes the defining feature of governance, history begins casting a very long shadow.
Somalia cannot afford another cycle.
The country has already paid too high a price.
Entire generations have grown up knowing little except instability.
Millions have been displaced.
Economic opportunities have evaporated.
Foreign actors have repeatedly filled the vacuum created by domestic political failure.
No responsible Somali should wish to revisit that road.
The solution is not another military victory.
It is not another constitutional shortcut.
It is not another concentration of power in one political centre.
The solution lies in returning to the principles that ended the worst years of civil conflict: constitutionalism, negotiated federalism, respect for regional autonomy within the constitutional framework, and political dialogue before political confrontation.
History offers Somalia two paths.
One path leads back to the logic of the early 1990s, where every political disagreement eventually becomes a security crisis.
The other follows the unfinished promise of the Provisional Constitution, imperfect though it may be, where disputes are settled through institutions rather than force.
Somalia’s future depends on choosing the second path before the first becomes irreversible.
The greatest danger facing the country today is not simply political disagreement. It is collective historical amnesia.
A nation that forgets why it adopted federalism risks rediscovering why it needed it in the first place.