By A M Yusuf (Educator and socio-political analyst based in London, UK)
Former Somali Prime Minister Omar Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke’s recent statement on X — “Galkacyo is not Calmiskaad” — is technically correct but politically misleading. The line was posted as a warning against Puntland “waging a war of aggression against fellow Puntland Forces,” a reference to the standoff between Puntland’s government and the Puntland Security Force (PSF) militia. By invoking Calmiskaad in the same breath, Sharmarke implies a false equivalence: that confronting an unlawful armed faction is comparable to confronting terrorists, and that neither deserves the state’s resolve.
No one disputes that Galkacyo is not Calmiskaad. But the comparison obscures what Puntland actually achieved there. The Calmiskaad (Cal-Miskaad) mountains became the entrenched stronghold of ISIS-Somalia under Abdulkadir Mumin, and since Operation Hilaac began in late 2024, Puntland’s Counter-Terrorism Forces — with US and UAE support — have fought a costly, multi-phase campaign to clear it, at real cost in soldiers’ lives. That campaign has protected not just Puntland but Gulf of Aden shipping lanes and regional stability more broadly, often with little tangible backing from Mogadishu.
The PSF dispute is a different matter, and conflating it with Calmiskaad only muddies the picture. Puntland’s presidency has declared the PSF outside its official command structure — a legacy of the 2021 Bosaso clashes that were only defused through elder-led mediation. A state cannot indefinitely tolerate an armed faction operating outside its chain of command; the alternative is a fragmented security architecture that serves no one. Two further threads are tangled into the same moment but are not the same dispute: Puntland’s objection to the federal government’s appointment of Gen. Jimale Takar as commander of the 54th Division, and Puntland’s separate warning to Galmudug against allowing troop and weapons movements through its territory toward Puntland-administered areas. Treating all three — PSF, the federal appointment, and Galmudug — as a single undifferentiated “war of aggression” collapses distinct issues into one and casts the party asserting lawful authority as the aggressor.
There is a history worth recalling here. Sharmarke served as Prime Minister under President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud’s first administration (December 2014–March 2017), the period when Puntland and Galmudug forces clashed repeatedly over Galkacyo — a city long divided between Puntland- and Galmudug-administered zones. Many in Puntland believed Mogadishu treated that crisis as a political opportunity rather than a matter requiring impartial mediation. That memory shapes how his intervention now reads: less a neutral call for restraint, more a continuation of old alignments. It brings to mind the Somali proverb “Fiqi tolkii kama janno tago” — a cleric does not abandon his own even at heaven’s gate.
The broader concern in Puntland and Jubbaland is that President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud is working to bring the federal member states under more centrally compliant leadership, as many perceive has already happened in South West State and Hirshabelle, with similar ambitions suspected toward Galmudug. Whether or not that reading is entirely fair, it is widely held — and it is why politicians from Puntland or Jubbaland seen as aiding efforts to erode their states’ constitutional authority may find favor in Mogadishu in the short term, but risk lasting damage to their standing at home.