Everybody Owns the Conflict. Nobody Owns the City.
A WDM Editorial
Who owns Galkayo?
The people who permanently live there, build houses, establish businesses, educate their children, pay taxes and invest their savings there?
Or an unlimited clan constituency stretching across Mudug and into the Somali State of Ethiopia, ready to claim Galkayo whenever genealogy calls?
That question lies at the heart of the city’s troubles.
Galkayo has grown enormously. Buildings rise. Land changes hands. Vehicles crowd inadequate streets. Businesses struggle forward. Yet civic ownership has not kept pace with physical expansion.
The result is a peculiar urban tragedy: a city claimed by everybody and properly owned by nobody.
Everybody Owns the Conflict
Galkayo sits inside a much larger clan geography.
Reer Mahad, Reer Xirsi, Reer Khalaf, Reer Bicidyahan, Leelkase and many other communities have historical, pastoral, family and commercial connections extending across Mudug and into Ethiopia’s Somali Region.
There is nothing inherently wrong with this movement. It is part of the history of the region.
The problem begins when genealogy becomes a municipal title deed.
When trouble erupts, people who may ordinarily live far from Galkayo suddenly become its most energetic “stakeholders.” Telephones ring. Relatives mobilise. Elders meet. Money is collected. Armed men appear. An individual dispute becomes a subclan affair.
But when Galkayo floods, where are all these owners?
When drainage fails?
When roads deteriorate?
When garbage accumulates?
When businesses need security?
When the municipality needs revenue?
Suddenly responsibility belongs to somebody else.
Everybody owns the conflict. Nobody owns the drainage.
That is not urban citizenship.
Revenge Has Become an Urban Disease
Nothing exposes Galkayo’s predicament more clearly than recurrent clan revenge killings and the permanent tension surrounding them.
One man kills another. Instead of pursuing the alleged murderer through police and courts, responsibility travels through genealogy. An innocent person sharing the offender’s lineage may become the next target.
Then another killing follows.
Another clan mobilises.
Another reconciliation meeting is organised.
Another temporary calm is declared.
Everybody waits for the next corpse.
This is not justice. It is the privatisation of criminal law by clan.
Crime must belong to the criminal.
If Mohamed kills Ahmed, arrest Mohamed. Mohamed’s cousin did not commit the murder. Neither did his businessman uncle, his distant relative or his subclan.
Until this elementary principle becomes non-negotiable, Galkayo will remain hostage to revenge.
And permanent tension has consequences. Investors hesitate. Businesses relocate. Professionals leave. Families with alternatives move elsewhere.
Insecurity becomes an invisible tax on everybody who remains.
One City, Two Administrations
On top of everything else, Galkayo is divided.
Northern Galkayo is administered by Puntland. Southern Galkayo is administered by Galmudug. The populations of the two sides have historically been associated with rival clan constituencies.
Yet Galkayo remains one urban organism.
Floodwater does not recognise Puntland and Galmudug.
Neither does sewage.
Neither does traffic.
Neither does commerce.
Neither does crime.
The city is geographically one, economically intertwined and socially connected, but administratively divided.
That makes every ordinary urban problem potentially political.
A murder can become an inter-administration problem. A land dispute can become a clan confrontation. A security incident can acquire political meaning. A criminal can cross from one jurisdiction to another inside the same city.
Two administrations may remain. But there cannot be two unrelated Galkayos.
Puntland and Galmudug must have permanent working arrangements on policing, criminal suspects, roads, drainage, land disputes, emergency services and commerce.
The city cannot continue to be administered as two neighbouring clan camps.
There Was Another Galkayo
This is perhaps the saddest part of the story.
There was a time when Galkayo represented something very different.
In the 1960s, Galkayo was a centre of learning in northeastern Somalia. Families from across the wider Majeerteen regions sent their children there to be educated.
Going to Galkayo meant opportunity.
It meant schooling.
It meant exposure to a growing urban society.
It meant preparation for a professional future.
Consider the reversal.
Parents once sent their children to Galkayo for their future. Today, too many people of Galkayo origin have moved elsewhere to secure theirs.
Professionals have left.
Prominent personalities have left.
Established families have relocated.
Businesses increasingly look elsewhere when deciding where to put their capital.
Garowe and other urban centres have absorbed people, investment and professional talent that Galkayo should have retained.
That should worry every clan claiming ownership of the city.
A city does not decline only when its buildings collapse.
A city declines when its best people leave.
When a doctor leaves, Galkayo loses skills.
When a teacher leaves, it loses knowledge.
When an entrepreneur relocates, it loses jobs and capital.
When prominent families decide that another city offers greater security and predictability, Galkayo loses something even harder to replace: confidence.
And there lies the bitter contradiction.
A clan may claim Galkayo forever while its professionals abandon it.
A subclan may fight over territory while its businessmen move their money elsewhere.
Politicians may endlessly invoke deegaan while the people capable of developing that deegaan establish their futures somewhere safer.
That is possession without responsibility.
A City Is Not a Deegaan
Galkayo’s underlying problem is the collision between two different ideas of ownership.
Pastoral society was organised around mobility, water, pasture, kinship and territorial access. It was remarkably adapted to its environment.
But a city operates differently.
A camel can move when water disappears.
A hospital cannot.
A pastoral family can relocate with livestock.
A hotel cannot.
A herd can cross the Ethiopian border.
A drainage system cannot.
A businessman cannot put his warehouse on a camel whenever two subclans exchange gunfire.
Urban life requires permanence.
Permanence creates responsibility.
The family that has built a permanent house has something to protect.
The businessman who has invested his savings has something to protect.
The professional raising children there has something to protect.
The property owner needs functioning roads, policing, drainage, electricity and courts tomorrow, next year and twenty years from now.
That resident has a different relationship with Galkayo from somebody whose interest in the city becomes activated mainly when genealogy calls.
Resident Ownership Must Replace Genealogical Ownership
This does not mean excluding surrounding communities.
Galkayo should remain the commercial centre of a vast hinterland. People from Mudug, neighbouring regions and across the Ethiopian border should trade there, invest there, study there, seek medical treatment there and participate fully in its economy.
But access is not ownership.
Genealogy is not municipal citizenship.
No clan—Reer Mahad, Reer Xirsi, Reer Khalaf, Reer Bicidyahan, Leelkase or anybody else—holds an ancestral title deed to a modern city.
The same principle must apply equally to everyone.
The permanent resident must come first.
Not because of clan.
Because he lives there.
Because she invests there.
Because their children grow up there.
Because they pay the price when Galkayo burns.
Galkayo Must Decide
Concrete buildings alone will not transform Galkayo into a modern city.
Urbanisation requires law.
It requires courts.
It requires professional policing.
It requires disarmament.
It requires municipal taxation.
It requires drainage, sanitation, roads and urban planning.
It requires Puntland and Galmudug to cooperate where the interests of the city demand it.
Above all, it requires a new understanding of ownership.
The clan hinterland cannot periodically take political possession of Galkayo whenever blood is spilled and disappear when the drainage bill arrives.
Permanent residents cannot continue financing a city whose peace can be commandeered by people with little permanent stake in its future.
The test of Galkayo’s recovery is therefore simple.
Are professionals returning?
Are prominent families choosing Galkayo again?
Are businesses bringing capital into the city instead of moving it out?
Are parents confident enough to send their children there for education?
Do young graduates see their future in Galkayo?
The Galkayo of the 1960s attracted young minds from across northeastern Somalia. Today’s Galkayo has universities, hospitals, telecommunications, an airport, diaspora capital and commercial opportunities that generation could scarcely have imagined.
It should be flourishing.
Instead, the city risks becoming physically bigger while losing the very people needed to make it better.
Galkayo must choose.
It can remain a collection of clan territories with concrete buildings.
Or it can become a city.
Everybody cannot own Galkayo when there is a fight and disappear when there is a bill.
The people who stay, build, invest, work, educate their children and accept the same law must become the real civic owners of Galkayo.
The city does not merely need to stop killing its people.
It must stop driving them away.
Division Invites External Threats
Galkayo’s endless subclan rivalry carries another dangerous price: it leaves the city vulnerable to external enemies. Extremists and outside militias prosper where local communities are divided, security forces are distracted and clan grievances can be exploited. Galkayo has experienced this repeatedly—external militia incursions and occupation, terrorist violence and targeted killings that robbed the city of some of its finest professionals and public figures.
The lesson is written in blood.
A city fighting itself cannot effectively defend itself. Revenge killings and subclan rivalry weaken Galkayo from within and leave the door open to forces with far greater designs upon it. Internal peace, therefore, is not merely desirable; it is Galkayo’s first line of defence.