By Ismail H. Warsame
Garowe, Puntland, Somalia; Toronto, Canada
ismailwarsame@gmail.com | @ismailwarsame
Editor’s note: This is a developing story. Casualty figures and territorial control claims below come from Somalia’s Defense Ministry, Reuters, The Associated Press and regional outlets including Hiiraan Online and Radio Shabelle. Claims made by spokesmen for ousted South West State President Abdiaziz Hassan Mohamed Laftagareen have not been independently verified and are identified as such.
Baidoa, the administrative capital of South West State, came under assault Aug. 17 in the most violent episode yet of a political rupture that has been building in Mogadishu’s relationship with its federal member states since March.
Somalia’s Defense Ministry said the attack began around 5 a.m. local time, when militia loyal to Laftagareen and fighters from Al-Shabaab struck military positions using two vehicles rigged with explosives. Federal troops repelled the assault and said they killed nearly 30 attackers. A hospital official in Baidoa told the AP the fighting also killed four civilians and wounded 98 others, including 28 women. Laftagareen’s spokesman disputed the government’s account and claimed, in a Facebook post that could not be independently confirmed, that his forces had captured parts of the city and called on federal troops to surrender. Federal and regional officials denied that claim and said security operations were ongoing to clear remaining fighters.
However the competing claims settle, one fact is not in dispute: This was not a spontaneous eruption. It is the latest, and by far the bloodiest, in a string of attacks Laftagareen-aligned militia have carried out against federal and Southwest security forces since the March 30 takeover. Fighting broke out May 22 on Baidoa’s northern outskirts, at Idoow Dhagoole, when Southwest forces said they foiled an attempted militia incursion. Eight days later, on May 30, Laftagareen fighters entered the city at dawn and briefly seized the Afar Irdood junction in central Baidoa, disrupting security around the presidential palace and airport before withdrawing; regional officials put the death toll at six to eight. Bay region’s police commander said at the time the city had been “fully secured,” a claim federal and regional authorities would have to repeat within weeks.
How Baidoa got here
South West State had functioned, however imperfectly, as one of Somalia’s more stable federal member states under Laftagareen, who had governed since December 2018. That stability cracked in March, when Somalia’s federal parliament passed constitutional amendments extending the terms of federal institutions from four years to five. Puntland, Jubaland and other federal member states rejected the amendments as adopted without national consensus. Laftagareen sided with them, withdrawing his support for President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud’s electoral roadmap.
When South West’s regional parliament moved to re-elect Laftagareen under its own timeline on March 28, the federal government declared the vote illegal. Two days later, federal troops entered Baidoa alongside armed groups aligned with Laftagareen’s regional opponents. At least two people were killed and 25 wounded in that clash. Laftagareen resigned hours later, then reversed himself from exile in Nairobi, saying he had been “pushed out illegally” and remained South West’s legitimate president. Sheikh Aden Mohamed Nur Madobe was installed in his place June 10, elected by the regional assembly with 88 of 90 votes cast.
The pattern is now familiar across Somalia’s federal system: A member state resists a Villa Somalia-driven timeline or policy, and Mogadishu answers not through negotiation but through the deployment of national forces to install a more compliant administration. Puntland has resisted the same pressure through political and military disengagement rather than confrontation. Jubaland’s relationship with Mogadishu has followed a similarly adversarial arc. South West State, lacking Puntland’s institutional depth or Jubaland’s armed autonomy, could not resist in the same way — and so the confrontation moved from parliamentary maneuvering to gunfire in Baidoa’s streets.
Regional stakes
Baidoa’s instability is not purely a Somali internal affair. The city sits inside what regional analysts describe as Ethiopia’s southern “buffer belt” — a security zone running through Bay, Bakool, Gedo and Hiiraan regions that Addis Ababa has long treated as a forward line protecting its own territory from Al-Shabaab infiltration and cross-border insurgent movement. Ethiopian troops operating under the African Union Support and Stabilization Mission in Somalia have for years helped secure Baidoa Airport, though reports from July indicated Ethiopian forces there had been instructed to withdraw amid speculation that Egyptian troops, newly authorized as AUSSOM contributors, could take their place — a realignment that adds a layer of strategic anxiety in Addis Ababa on top of the security fallout from renewed fighting. Kenya, which has stationed troops in Somalia’s south under the same AU mission and remains sensitive to any spillover that could destabilize its own border areas, is likewise watching the Southwest crisis as part of a wider pattern of federal-versus-state confrontations, alongside Jubaland’s parallel standoff with Mogadishu over Gedo, that could unsettle the security architecture both Addis Ababa and Nairobi have built along their frontiers with Somalia.
What comes next
President Mohamud’s own mandate, under the original 2012 Provisional Constitution’s four-year timetable, expired May 15. Villa Somalia argues the March amendments retroactively extend that mandate to 2027; Puntland, Jubaland and South West’s opposition reject that reading. That unresolved dispute over the legitimacy of the federal government itself sits underneath every subsequent escalation, including Monday’s attack on Baidoa.
Baidoa is not an isolated flashpoint. It is a proof point. If Mogadishu can use national forces to settle a succession dispute in one federal member state, the same logic can be applied elsewhere — and Puntland’s own wariness toward federal overreach becomes harder to dismiss as posturing.
This is a developing story and will be updated as verified information becomes available.