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.