A WDM Editorial Comment
The proposed letter from Puntland President Said Abdullahi Deni to the United Nations should not be read simply as another quarrel between Garowe and Mogadishu. Its significance is larger: one of the principal architects and defenders of Somalia’s federal reconstruction is warning that the political bargain holding the federation together is approaching its limits.
That warning deserves scrutiny rather than automatic acceptance. Puntland makes serious allegations concerning constitutional unilateralism, weapons management, international assistance and the future of UN engagement. Such claims require evidence.
But Mogadishu faces an equally demanding test: answering Puntland’s constitutional argument rather than dismissing it as obstructionism.
At the heart of the dispute is a simple question:
Is Somalia’s federation something the Federal Government administers, or a constitutional compact that the Federal Government and constituent states must govern together?
Hassan Sheikh’s Democratic Promise
President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud recently offered an appealing description of Somalia’s political destination:
“Our aim is to become an effective democracy, where differences are resolved through dialogue, law and elections, not violence.”
Puntland can reasonably answer: then apply that principle to the federal dispute.
Dialogue cannot merely mean asking a Federal Member State to accept decisions after they have effectively been made.
Law cannot mean allowing one level of a federation to determine unilaterally the extent of its own powers.
And elections, however desirable, cannot by themselves settle the prior constitutional question of who possesses authority to design the electoral system.
This is where Puntland’s argument is strongest.
The 2012 Provisional Constitution did not envision federalism as administrative decentralization granted by Mogadishu. Article 54 stated that the allocation of powers and resources was to be “negotiated and agreed upon” between the Federal Government and Federal Member States, apart from four specifically reserved federal functions. Article 52 similarly established principles of intergovernmental cooperation.
That language matters.
Puntland can therefore argue that federal consultation is not diplomatic courtesy. It is embedded in the constitutional architecture.
Mogadishu Has a Rebuttal
The Federal Government nevertheless has a substantial answer.
Mogadishu can argue that Somalia cannot remain indefinitely governed by a provisional constitution adopted in 2012; that Federal Parliament represents the Somali people; that the constitution itself provides an amendment procedure; and that the reforms are intended to replace indirect clan-based political selection with direct universal suffrage and multiparty democracy.
The government can also point out that Puntland itself has sometimes boycotted or declined to endorse National Consultative Council agreements. It can argue that one Federal Member State cannot acquire a permanent veto over national constitutional development simply by refusing to participate.
The Federal Government has maintained that the constitutional process remains open to further amendments and has called upon Puntland to return to the National Consultative Council.
That rebuttal cannot simply be brushed aside.
But neither does it dispose of Puntland’s argument.
The critical distinction is between Parliament’s power to amend a constitution and the political legitimacy of using that power to redefine the federal bargain without agreement from a major constituent state.
Those are not necessarily the same question.
Somalia Public Agenda and its partners have identified precisely this problem: the constitutional and electoral processes remain contested, FGS–FMS relations have been unstable, and Puntland has remained outside important elements of the process. More recent research has proposed either returning to the 2012 framework or renegotiating disputed amendments, together with stronger mechanisms for mediating FGS–FMS disputes.
Puntland Is Not Merely Another Opposition Group
This history strengthens Puntland’s argument.
Puntland existed before today’s Federal Government. It established an administration in 1998 and subsequently participated in the political processes that produced Somalia’s federal institutions.
Its importance to this dispute therefore differs from that of an opposition party seeking advantage over an incumbent president.
Puntland’s argument is institutional:
we helped construct the federal house; the centre cannot now redesign the house and reduce the authority of its constituent units without their agreement.
That claim has historical precedent. Earlier agreements between Puntland and the Federal Government explicitly addressed Puntland’s concerns about constitutional changes and affirmed that completion of the federal constitution should proceed according to the constitutional framework.
The present rupture is therefore the accumulation of an unresolved constitutional argument, not an overnight invention.
In March 2024, Puntland withdrew recognition and confidence from federal institutions pending a mutually agreed constitutional settlement and referendum. The Federal Government responded by urging Puntland back into national consultations. The disagreement has remained fundamentally unresolved.
The Arms Question
This history also explains why Puntland’s concerns about weapons cannot be separated from the constitutional dispute.
Mogadishu has the stronger formal argument in one respect: national defence is expressly among the powers assigned to the Federal Government under the original Article 54.
Puntland therefore should not argue that every federal weapons acquisition requires state permission.
Its stronger argument is about accountability.
Where relations between federal and state governments have deteriorated, there must be credible mechanisms ensuring that internationally supplied weapons remain within authorized national security structures and are not diverted into domestic political conflicts.
The answer should be verification, not accusation.
If Puntland possesses evidence of diversion or misuse, it should submit inventories, serial numbers, transfer records, photographs, procurement documentation and corroborated incident reports to appropriate international mechanisms.
The stronger diplomatic demand is therefore not:
Trust Puntland instead of Mogadishu.
It is:
Trust neither side where independent verification is possible.
That is an argument international partners can evaluate institutionally rather than politically.
UNTMIS: Do Not Confuse a Calendar With a Settlement
The same reasoning applies to the scheduled end of UNTMIS.
Puntland’s strongest case is not that the United Nations should remain indefinitely because Mogadishu cannot be trusted.
It is that an international political transition should reflect political conditions.
If fundamental disagreements remain over the constitution, elections, federal powers and security arrangements, then the international community should ask whether Somalia has achieved the political conditions assumed when the transition timetable was established.
A calendar is not a political settlement.
Puntland should therefore request a conditions-based review of the October 31, 2026 deadline rather than simply demand an indefinite UN presence.
That is narrower, more defensible and harder to dismiss.
Federalism — or Confederation?
There is also a deeper conversation taking place within Puntland political and intellectual circles.
For many years the argument was about making Somali federalism work.
Increasingly, some thinkers have raised another possibility: if the federal compact cannot restrain unilateral centralization, should Somalia consider a confederal relationship instead?
That position is not unanimous Puntland opinion and should not be represented as official state policy.
But its emergence matters.
Under such thinking, Somalia would remain connected through agreed common institutions while constituent states retained substantially greater sovereign authority over their domestic affairs.
Mogadishu’s rebuttal is obvious and serious: such an arrangement could weaken national institutions, produce competing centres of authority and potentially accelerate fragmentation rather than solve it.
That objection deserves consideration.
The Puntland counterargument is equally clear: a federation that repeatedly cannot agree on the division of powers risks becoming federal in name while operating increasingly as a centralized state.
Thus the confederation debate is not merely about constitutional terminology.
It is about trust.
Federalism requires constituent states to trust that powers surrendered to common institutions will remain bounded by the compact.
When that confidence disappears, demands for greater autonomy become predictable.
Independence Is a Different Question
The proposed Deni letter goes further still by warning that Puntland could eventually sever its relationship with Mogadishu.
That should not be conflated with confederation.
Federalism, confederation and independence represent three different constitutional arrangements.
Nor should Puntland claim overwhelming public support for independence without credible evidence. If such a claim is to appear in an official communication to the United Nations, it should be supported by polling or other demonstrable evidence.
But the political warning itself deserves attention.
Puntland was established not as a project to leave Somalia, but as part of an attempt to reconstruct Somalia differently.
That history makes any serious discussion of separation more consequential, not less.
The Strongest Puntland Case
Puntland therefore does not need exaggerated language.
Its strongest case can be expressed in four propositions.
First: Somalia’s federal settlement was founded upon negotiated distribution of authority, not unilateral delegation from Mogadishu.
Second: parliamentary amendment power does not automatically resolve the political requirement for constituent-state agreement when the substance being altered is the federal bargain itself.
Third: national institutions controlling weapons, resources and international agreements require credible safeguards when trust between levels of government has substantially deteriorated.
Fourth: if federal institutions repeatedly prove incapable of producing negotiated settlements, constitutional alternatives — including substantially greater state autonomy or confederal arrangements — will inevitably enter political debate.
Mogadishu has answers to each proposition.
It can invoke parliamentary authority, national sovereignty, universal suffrage, the need for functioning central institutions and Puntland’s own history of withdrawing from national consultations.
Those arguments should be heard.
But Puntland can ask one question in return:
If Hassan Sheikh’s Somalia resolves differences through “dialogue, law and elections,” where is the mutually accepted settlement of the country’s most consequential federal dispute?
That question cannot be answered by a speech at the United Nations.
It requires an agreement in Somalia.
Turn the Letter Into Evidence
President Deni’s proposed communication should therefore become something more substantial than a protest letter.
Turn it into a dossier.
Document the disputed constitutional decisions. Identify the provisions Puntland believes have been breached. Record failed negotiations. Provide evidence supporting allegations concerning security equipment. State precisely what international remedies Puntland seeks. And distinguish demonstrable facts from political conclusions.
Mogadishu should be invited to answer the same record point by point.
That would turn a political confrontation into a testable constitutional case.
The objective should not be to ask the international community to choose Garowe over Mogadishu.
It should be to compel international partners to confront the question Somalia has postponed for too long:
What actually constitutes consent in a federal compact?
Somalia’s crisis is no longer simply about completing a provisional constitution.
It is increasingly about whether the parties still agree on what kind of state that constitution is supposed to create.
President Hassan Sheikh says differences should be resolved through dialogue, law and elections.
Puntland can hold him to those words.
Dialogue requires negotiating with those who disagree.
Law requires limits on the authority of every level of government.
Elections require agreed rules before ballots can confer legitimacy.
And federalism requires consent — because without meaningful consent, decentralization becomes permission granted by the centre rather than power protected by the constitution.
That is the argument Puntland should take to the United Nations.
And that is the argument Mogadishu should be required to answer.
Warsame Digital Media (WDM)
Commentary and Critical Analysis
https://ismailwarsame.substack.com/p/puntlands-warning-and-the-crisis