By Ismail H. Warsame, Qardho, Karkaar Region, Puntland

There was a time when Qardho’s air was thick with argument, debate, and political ferment — a city that never slept without a new controversy. From clan assemblies to student circles, from mosques to teashops, the voice of Qardho was the pulse of Puntland’s civic life. It was here that ideas clashed, policies were tested, and political currents were sensed before they reached Garowe. Qardho earned its reputation as the “City of Debates and Controversies,” where nothing passed unquestioned and no leader escaped scrutiny.

Today, something is changing. The once noisy crossroads of Puntland’s political thought is learning a new rhythm — that of quiet, cool calculation. The political tempest that once defined Qardho’s public squares has given way to reflective silence, economic pragmatism, and slow, deliberate planning. The city that once spoke loudly is now thinking deeply.

In recent years, Qardho has emerged as a learning hub — a city of affordable education, housing, and calm community life. Its universities, training centers, and private schools are drawing youth from across Puntland. This intellectual transformation is reshaping Qardho’s identity from a political battlefield to an academic haven. Yet, beneath this positive evolution lies a worrying trend: opportunity is slipping away faster than it is created.

Job scarcity has become the city’s quiet crisis. The very youth who animate Qardho’s new intellectual scene are also the ones boarding buses, flights, and ships — seeking work in Garowe, Bosaso, Mogadishu, and beyond. The irony is painful: a city known for nurturing brains now exports them. The debates have stopped not because the people have lost curiosity, but because they are too busy surviving.

Qardho’s streets, once echoing with political chants and intellectual arguments, now hum with the sound of construction — affordable housing projects, small shops, and the buzz of daily hustle. The city is learning to measure progress not in decibels of debate, but in bricks, books, and banknotes. It’s a quiet evolution, one that could either anchor its future or flatten its spirit.

The challenge now is to balance Qardho’s newfound calm with its old courage — to blend calculation with conviction. A city that stops talking risks becoming stagnant, but a city that only talks and never builds remains poor. Qardho must find the middle path: to build its economy without losing its voice, to nurture its youth without pushing them away, to remain the thinking heart of Puntland while securing a future for its sons and daughters.

The future of Qardho depends not on the silence of its streets, but on the smart, deliberate ideas that grow within them. The city that once led debates must now lead development — with the same passion, purpose, and courage that once made it the intellectual capital of Puntland.

WDM — Talking Truth to Power.

By Ismail H. Warsame
City of Qardho, Karkaar Region, Puntland

When a leader exhausts all logic, he resorts to decrees. When that leader is Firdhiye, the result is an economic suicide pact, imposed upon the already-battered families of Laascaanood.

In a move that would embarrass the most creative of Mogadishu’s financiers, the so-called Firdhiye Administration has demanded that local financial institutions and telecom-linked money transfer agencies surrender five million U.S. dollars. This sum, he claims, is to fund the phantom treasury of his “North East State” project. One must ask: does he mistake Laascaanood for a financial hub, or believe companies like Dahabshiil and Amal Express mint currency in their back offices?

Adding institutional insult to this economic injury, he has ordered these vital agencies to relocate their headquarters to Laascaanood. This presumes a world where global finance orbits his self-styled Ministry of Fiction. Not even Somaliland’s long-standing political campaign has staged such a theatrical and economically destructive farce.

This is not governance; it is a ransom note written in the language of authority. Shuttering remittance services is not statecraft—it is an act of economic terrorism against the most vulnerable. It is an assault on widows awaiting funds for rent, on orphans reliant on diaspora support for schooling, and on families depending on those transfers for mere sustenance. Firdhiye’s decree deliberately severs the primary economic lifeline that has sustained Laascaanood in its fragile recovery.

Who stands to gain from this collapse? Certainly not the people of SSC-Khaatumo, whose remittance-dependent economy now teeters on the brink. The only logical conclusion is that Firdhiye believes by bankrupting the city, the desperate diaspora will be coerced into funding his political fantasy.

Laascaanood’s struggle is being twisted into a tragic satire—a self-imposed siege where the would-be liberator becomes the chief architect of his people’s deprivation. The liberation Laascaanood urgently requires is from this very cycle of irrational leadership and economic sabotage.

True financial ecosystems are built on trust and stability, not on extortion and empty slogans. If reason prevails, remittance agencies must prioritize the people’s welfare over political pressure. Capital flees instability; it is not conjured by it.

WDM Verdict:
Firdhiye’s “North East State” resembles less a government and more an armed GoFundMe campaign, with the people of Laascaanood held as collateral.

WDM (Warsame Digital Media)
“Talking Truth to Power”

By Ismail H. Warsame, City of Qardho, Karkaar Region

In a fresh display of political blindness, a cluster of self-styled “Puntland opposition parties,” mostly operating from Mogadishu hotel lobbies and political backrooms, have voiced their opposition to the recent Puntland–Somaliland understanding on security cooperation. It is an unfortunate, though predictable, stance — one that exposes their detachment from Puntland’s ground realities and their quiet servitude to DamulJadiid’s shadow networks in Villa Somalia.

Let’s get this straight: Puntland’s leadership has the constitutional right and political maturity to engage with any neighboring administration — including Somaliland — on issues that directly affect the peace, stability, and economic lifeline of its people. Security coordination and mutual understanding between the two sides are not acts of betrayal; they are the very essence of responsible governance in a volatile region.

Those opposing this initiative from Mogadishu, however, are not thinking of Puntland’s interests. They are echoing the whispers of DamulJadiid operatives who have long sought to destabilize Puntland from afar, to weaken its institutions, and to create internal friction that could be exploited politically in Villa Somalia’s favor. These are the same cynical actors who inspired and funded the Aaran Jaan network that violently disrupted Garowe’s peace a few years ago.

Their motives are transparent. They thrive on chaos. They oppose anything that strengthens Puntland’s autonomy and legitimacy. In their narrow political calculus, peace and cooperation are threats to their political survival — because their only currency is confusion.

The Mogadishu-based “Puntland opposition” should be honest with the people: they are not fighting for democracy in Puntland; they are fighting for relevance in the capital. Their statements are not drafted in Garowe or Qardho; they are dictated by handlers in Villa Somalia who see Puntland’s stability as a political liability.

The people of Puntland are not fooled. They understand that coexistence with Somaliland, however complex, is a pragmatic necessity. Border communities, shared clans, trade routes, and the collective fight against terrorism demand coordination — not hostility. The Mogadishu opposition’s short-sightedness only confirms that they are far removed from the land they claim to represent.

Let it be said clearly: Puntland’s peace and progress will not be dictated from Mogadishu’s hotel corridors. The State of Puntland was founded on the principle of self-determination, negotiation, and local consensus — not on imported chaos.

WDM Verdict:
The Puntland opposition operating from Mogadishu has lost both political compass and credibility. Their hostility toward Puntland–Somaliland cooperation mirrors the same destructive mindset that once unleashed Aaran Jaan’s violence in Garowe. Puntland will continue to talk, negotiate, and cooperate for the sake of peace — with or without their approval.

© WDM – Warsame Digital Media, 2025
“Talking Truth to Power.”

Warm greetings from the great traditional city of Qardho, in the heart of Karkaar Region, Puntland — a land of history, courage, and enduring Somali resilience.
Arriving here this afternoon, I am once again reminded that Qardho is not just a city — it is the living symbol of Puntland’s spirit and the heartbeat of Somali self-determination.

Stay tuned to WDM for truth-driven analysis and fearless commentary from the ground — unfiltered, unapologetic, and always committed to reality.

Ismail H. Warsame
Founder, Warsame Digital Media (WDM)

Dear Esteemed WDM Readers,

At Warsame Digital Media (WDM), we don’t write to please. We write to awaken. Every essay, editorial, and academic paper published here is a mirror held to the Somali soul — reflecting the unfiltered reality of our politics, our personality, and our fractured national psyche. What you read on these pages is not fiction, not propaganda, but a reality check on where Somalia stands and where it is heading.

For students of Somali Studies, historians of our turbulent past, and analysts of our uncertain future, these writings are not mere commentaries — they are living documents of a nation still struggling to understand itself. Each article challenges the comfort of denial, exposing the deep contradictions within Somali leadership, society, and self-perception.

But truth-telling comes at a price. WDM survives not on advertisements or political patronage, but on your participation, your intellectual engagement, and your generosity. If you believe that independent Somali thought must be preserved, nurtured, and amplified — then join us.

Contribute your ideas. Comment with courage. Subscribe and share. Donate to sustain this Somali-led platform for truth and national reflection.

Let’s build together a culture where honesty replaces hypocrisy, and knowledge overcomes ignorance.

With appreciation and resolve,
Ismail H. Warsame
Founder & Chief Editor, Warsame Digital Media (WDM)
Talking Truth to Power — One Article at a Time

By Ismail H. Warsame

In a rare moment of political sobriety, President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud and Jubaland leader Ahmed Mohamed Islam “Madoobe” sat across from each other in Kismayo yesterday — a meeting many in Somalia’s fractured political scene never thought possible. Yet, instead of welcoming this bold act of dialogue, much of the public chatter — the “political noise machine” of Mogadishu — has chosen to focus on what might have gone wrong, rather than what finally went right.

This meeting, however brief, represents something profoundly important in Somali politics: the courage to talk amidst mutual suspicion and political exhaustion. It is easy to wage wars of words from Mogadishu podiums or clan-based press briefings. It is far harder to sit down face-to-face in a region where power, loyalty, and geography are all contested. Whoever enabled this encounter deserves recognition — for in Somalia, dialogue itself is an act of defiance against the politics of perpetual stalemate.

But make no mistake: the test begins now.

President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud has often been accused — with justification — of treating federalism as an inconvenience rather than a constitutional reality. His administration’s flirtation with the idea of a so-called “New Jubaland,” or attempts to carve out a “North East State” to rival Puntland, would not only destroy the fragile trust earned in Kismayo but would ignite the very tensions he claims to be resolving.

Let it be clear: you cannot unify Somalia by dismantling the federal foundation upon which its fragile peace rests. Any attempt by Villa Somalia to engineer parallel administrations or divide existing federal states from within will backfire politically and strategically. It will not weaken regional leaders — it will strengthen their legitimacy, uniting their constituencies against what they will see as naked centralist aggression.

Moreover, such reckless political experiments — creating new Jubaland, new North East State, or any other artificial constructs — will not create peace or prosperity. Instead, they will turn Somalia into an ungovernable mosaic of fiefdoms, where every faction declares its own “statehood,” and where the authority of the federal government becomes nothing more than a hollow echo. This path leads not to unity, but to the unraveling of Somalia as we know it.

President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud must also understand that the issue at hand is far bigger than Ahmed Madoobe’s political legitimacy in Kismayo. It is not about who controls Jubaland’s port or commands local loyalty — it is about Somalia’s very survival as a state. Every move from Villa Somalia today echoes across the fragile federal system. A single miscalculated decision can either pave the way for a more cohesive federation — or accelerate Somalia’s descent into irreversible fragmentation.

The Kismayo meeting was therefore not just another handshake; it was a test of statesmanship. Hassan Sheikh Mohamud has been given an opportunity to rise above the politics of vengeance and vindication. If he chooses dialogue over division, and genuine federal partnership over administrative manipulation, history might finally remember him as the man who learned from his own mistakes.

But if he returns to Mogadishu with the old mindset of domination — hiding behind the rhetoric of “reform” while scheming to create a New Jubaland or North East State — then this fleeting moment of hope will turn into yet another episode of Somalia’s tragic political déjà vu.

In the end, the path forward is simple but steep: talk more, interfere less, and respect the federal equation. Somalia does not need another federal member state in crisis; it needs a federal president who understands the value of coexistence.

For once, let dialogue mean more than damage control.

——–

WDM Conclusion:
The Kismayo meeting should not be dismissed as political theater. It is a mirror showing the possibility of reconciliation — if only the actors involved resist the temptation to break it. Somalia’s survival depends not on creating new states, but on respecting the ones that already exist.

— Warsame Digital Media (WDM)
“Talking Truth to Power.”

By Ismail H. Warsame, WDM Founder

Introduction: The Echo of Old Wounds

In the current uproar surrounding Puntland–Somaliland “security cooperation,” one hears not so much the clash of political logic as the tremor of old psychological fears. Laascaanood’s anxiety is not rooted in facts or tangible concessions but in the emotional residue of betrayal, marginalization, and historical trauma. The real problem is not that Garowe and Hargeisa talk—it’s that Laascaanood has never fully trusted anyone to talk on its behalf without suspicion of being sold out.

When history is weaponized by insecurity, perception becomes reality. The current leadership in Laascaanood, particularly figures like Firdhiye, mistake dialogue for compromise and cooperation for conspiracy. Yet the truth is far less dramatic and far more strategic: mutual understanding—no matter between whom—is always in the collective interest of the Somali people.

Historical Context: When Abdullahi Yusuf and Egal Talked

The unease we see today is not new. During the formative years of Puntland, when the late Abdullahi Yusuf engaged in discussions with Somaliland’s Mohamed Haji Ibrahim Egal, Puntland’s own vice president from SSC territory, Mohamed Abdi Hashi, objected. His words were striking:

“We don’t mind when you talk with leaders of Hawiye, but you must talk to the leaders of Isaaq through us.”

This wasn’t a political demand—it was a psychological reflex. It revealed a deep-seated insecurity that SSC’s agency could be bypassed, that others could determine its fate behind closed doors. It is an emotional scar from decades of marginalization—first under northern domination, then southern neglect.

Laascaanood’s fear, therefore, is a memory, not a policy. It’s the aftertaste of exclusion, not an objective assessment of current realities.

The Fallacy of Firdhiye’s Politics

Firdhiye’s rhetoric is historically shortsighted. His worldview is trapped in the narrow confines of clan sentiment rather than strategic foresight. By portraying every cross-border understanding as a “betrayal of SSC,” he inadvertently isolates his constituency from the broader currents of Somali politics.

He fails to understand that communication between Puntland and Somaliland is not about surrender; it’s about stability. It’s about preventing further bloodshed in a region where every gunshot echoes across multiple states and every misunderstanding can spiral into conflict.

The politics of paranoia is not leadership—it’s insecurity dressed in extremist clothing.

Puntland’s Strategic Rationality

Puntland’s leadership, past and present, has recognized one immutable fact: sustainable peace requires talking to everyone—including rivals. Abdullahi Yusuf understood this when he negotiated with both the Hawiye and the Isaaq leadership. Said Abdullahi Deni knows this when he maintains dialogue even with adversaries.

True leadership is not about pandering to fears but about managing them. Puntland’s talks with Somaliland—whether over security coordination, border stability, or trade routes—do not negate SSC interests; they safeguard them. Because a stable northern frontier is in Puntland’s interest, and therefore in SSC’s interest too.

The Bigger Picture: Dialogue as Security

Somalia’s tragedy is that every conversation is treated as conspiracy and every handshake as surrender. The country’s disintegration into clan fiefdoms has turned politics into psychological warfare. But dialogue—especially between Puntland and Somaliland—is not betrayal; it is the essence of statecraft.

If Laascaanood truly seeks autonomy, it must transcend its paranoia. It must learn that influence is not preserved by emotional veto but by strategic engagement. Real power lies in shaping conversations, not in silencing them.

Conclusion: Healing the Psychological Faultline

The Laascaanood dilemma is a symptom of a deeper Somali condition—the inability to separate emotion from interest, fear from strategy. What Abdullahi Yusuf understood, and what SSC leaders have yet to grasp, is that politics is not about perpetual grievance but about building bridges that outlast the emotions of the day.

Laascaanood’s fears are understandable, but they must not dictate policy. The wounds of history will not heal through isolation but through honest, mutual understanding. Puntland and Somaliland talking is not a threat—it is therapy for a fractured homeland.

WDM COMMENTARY:
Somalis must learn to replace suspicion with strategy. When Puntland and Somaliland engage, SSC should not retreat into psychological trenches—it should join the table with confidence, not fear.

By Ismail H. Warsame | WDM Analysis

1. Introduction: The Danger of Historical Simplification

The digital age has democratized history-telling but also weaponized misinformation. Social media platforms like X (formerly Twitter) have turned complex historical debates into viral narratives built on partial truths and populist outrage. One such case is the viral thread by @LtKhalifa, which purports to expose the “corruption and failures” of Somalia’s first civilian government under President Aden Abdulle Osman (Aden Adde) between 1960 and 1969. The thread, citing alleged “CIA declassified documents,” claims that the Somali Republic received over $330 million in foreign aid—equivalent to $3 billion today—yet achieved nothing tangible in national infrastructure or governance.

While emotionally compelling, this narrative commits several logical fallacies, relies on unverifiable evidence, and distorts the historical context of a newly independent African state navigating postcolonial chaos and Cold War geopolitics.

2. The Fallacy of the “CIA Declassified” Evidence

The most eye-catching claim in the thread is that “CIA declassified documents” show that Aden Adde’s civilian government “took $330 million in aid.” This statement raises immediate red flags:

1. No source citation or document link is provided. The CIA’s CREST archive contains thousands of declassified documents on Somalia, yet none confirm this figure. Without citation, the claim remains anecdotal hearsay masquerading as evidence.

2. The figure itself—$330 million in the 1960s—is implausibly high. At independence, Somalia’s annual GDP was under $100 million, and total U.S. and U.N. aid combined during that decade did not exceed $150 million. To allege that Aden Adde alone “took” this sum is historically inaccurate and economically illogical.

3. The inflation-adjusted conversion (“$330 million equals $3 billion today”) is also methodologically flawed. Using the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI calculator, $330 million in 1965 equals roughly $3.3 billion today—but this assumes the original number was accurate, which it was not.

This misuse of “CIA” branding is a rhetorical trick often found in conspiracy or pseudo-academic narratives—invoking institutional authority to lend credibility to otherwise baseless assertions.

3. The Infrastructure Myth: “No Road Between Hargeisa and Berbera”

Another major claim is that “despite massive aid, Aden Adde failed to build a deep-water port for Mogadishu, and there wasn’t even a road between Hargeisa and Berbera.”

This too collapses under scrutiny:

Mogadishu already had a functioning port built and expanded during Italian administration in the 1950s. What Somalia lacked was a second deep-water port in the north—something that came later under Chinese-Somali cooperation during the 1970s.

The Hargeisa-Berbera road existed as a colonial-era route. It was unpaved but functional for livestock and trade. The later Chinese reconstruction (1972–1974) upgraded it—not built it from scratch.

The Aden Adde administration did prioritize education, civil service development, and agriculture, laying institutional groundwork rather than vanity infrastructure projects.

To claim “there wasn’t even a road” is a factual distortion typical of ahistorical social media narratives that equate “development” only with concrete and steel, ignoring institutional and administrative capacity-building.

4. The Corruption Narrative: Moralizing Without Evidence

The thread describes the Aden Adde era as “largely unpopular” and “rampantly corrupt.” Again, no documentation supports this sweeping indictment. In fact, comparative political studies (see: I.M. Lewis, A Modern History of the Somali, 2002; Abdi Ismail Samatar, The State and Rural Transformation in Northern Somalia, 1989) indicate the opposite:

Somalia’s first decade was remarkably democratic for its time. The 1967 peaceful transfer of power from Aden Adde to Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke was the first voluntary handover between civilian presidents in independent Africa.

The corruption that did exist—patronage, clan favoritism, and weak bureaucracy—was typical of postcolonial African states but not systemic looting. Somalia’s bureaucracy was small, donor-dependent, and largely transparent under international supervision.

The “unpopularity” claim ignores that Aden Adde lost a democratic election, not a coup. His defeat reflected political pluralism, not popular rebellion.

The moral absolutism of the thread—portraying Aden Adde’s government as a failed kleptocracy—collapses under historical evidence and scholarly consensus.

5. Misreading the Political Economy of the 1960s

The 1960s Somali economy was aid-dependent but not aid-wasteful. The problem was structural dependence, not theft. Key realities include:

Somalia inherited two incompatible colonial economies—British pastoralist north and Italian agrarian south—without fiscal or infrastructural integration.

Foreign aid was fragmented across Cold War lines: Italy, the U.S., the USSR, and China all funded competing projects, creating institutional incoherence, not enrichment.

The government had no sovereign control over customs, ports, or central banking until the late 1960s. Blaming Aden Adde for lack of modern infrastructure is akin to blaming a toddler for not running.

These nuances vanish in the thread’s simplistic cause-effect logic: “Aden Adde got aid → Aden Adde failed → therefore he was corrupt.” This is the post hoc fallacy—assuming correlation equals causation.

6. The Colonial Comparison Fallacy

The author also claims that “livestock and agricultural exports had to be shipped from the south to Berbera,” implying economic paralysis. This argument confuses colonial logistics with postcolonial neglect.

Berbera was historically the British export port for northern Somali livestock—its dominance persisted due to geography, not Aden Adde’s failure.

Somalia’s southern exports (bananas, sugar, hides) were shipped from Mogadishu and Kismayo, which were already operational ports.

The infrastructural imbalance between north and south was colonial inheritance, not corruption.

This reasoning exemplifies the anachronism fallacy—judging a 1960s African republic by 21st-century standards of infrastructure, and then concluding “failure” where structural constraints existed.

7. The Narrative of Neglect and the Myth of “Strongman Efficiency”

Threads like Lt. Khalifa’s often set up a contrast: Aden Adde’s “weak democracy” versus Siyad Barre’s “strong state.” This is an old fallacy that romanticizes authoritarian modernization while vilifying pluralist governance.

Yes, Barre built roads, ports, and factories—but through coercion, centralization, and Soviet funding, not national economic strength.

Aden Adde, in contrast, respected civil liberties, elections, and parliament, choosing institutional integrity over industrial showmanship.

To label him a failure because he didn’t “build a port” is to misunderstand governance itself. State legitimacy is built not just with cement, but with law, participation, and accountability—qualities Aden Adde’s administration embodied before being overthrown by militarism in 1969.

8. The Modern Impulse to Rewrite History

The popularity of such threads reveals more about contemporary Somali disillusionment than about 1960s reality. Young Somalis, alienated by current corruption and statelessness, project their anger backward, seeking villains in history to explain the present.

But revisionism without rigor is intellectual escapism. It replaces historical inquiry with digital tribalism—simplifying the past to validate current political or clan loyalties. The invocation of “CIA documents,” “billions lost,” and “failed leaders” without evidence is a form of historical populism: emotionally satisfying but empirically hollow.

9. Conclusion: History as a Discipline, Not a Battlefield

Somalia’s First Republic (1960–1969) was not perfect—it was messy, experimental, and constrained. Yet it remains the most democratic and law-abiding era in Somali history. Its leaders were flawed human beings, but not thieves of billions.

The Lt. Khalifa thread fails as history because it substitutes moral outrage for analysis and rumor for evidence. History cannot be rewritten through viral indignation; it must be reclaimed through documentation, context, and humility before facts.

As WDM has long argued: Without historical literacy, a nation becomes prisoner of its myths.

References

Lewis, I. M. A Modern History of the Somali: Nation and State in the Horn of Africa. 4th ed. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2002.

Samatar, Abdi Ismail. The State and Rural Transformation in Northern Somalia, 1884–1986. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989.

Laitin, David D., and Said S. Samatar. Somalia: Nation in Search of a State. Boulder: Westview Press, 1987.

CIA CREST Archives. “Somalia—Economic and Political Situation Reports, 1961–1968.” Accessed 2025.

United Nations Economic Commission for Africa. Annual Economic Report on Somalia, 1964–1968. Addis Ababa: UNECA.

By Ismail H. Warsame

In Somali politics, déjà vu is not a coincidence—it’s a governing principle. What you saw yesterday, you’ll see again tomorrow, only with a new set of tired faces pretending to be reformers. The script is older than the Somali Republic itself: clans quarrel, politicians pretend, donors pay, and the people pray.

Two constants define this endless political rerun: Clan and Conflict. Everything else is decorative chaos. Add in the chronic mistrust of politicians and public institutions—born in the ashes of civil war—and you get the perfect Somali cocktail: flattery, fraud, and failure served with a sprinkle of false hope.

Now comes Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, the self-appointed “smartest politician” Banadir ever exported. He thought he could charm Ahmed Madoobe with the same tired tricks he used on Sheikh Sharif and Abdul-Aziz “Laftegreen.” But Kismayo wasn’t fooled. Ahmed Madoobe, the survivor-in-chief of Somali power plays, smiled politely while keeping his political dagger under the table.

Hassan Sheikh had to cut short his trip—a premature evacuation of ego. It turns out that Jubaland’s political chessboard doesn’t play by Mogadishu’s recycled scripts. He discovered, perhaps too late, that his usual combination of clan manipulation and sweet talk only works north of Afgooye.

And so, the Cycle of Stupidity continues:

1. The President overestimates himself.

2. The regions resist.

3. Talks collapse.

4. Donors issue statements.

5. Everyone pretends progress was made.

No surprises. No lessons learned. Just the eternal Somali loop of power without purpose—where the past is never past, and the future is always yesterday.

WDM: Talking Truth to Power

Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, Ahmed Madoobe, Said Abdullahi Deni and Abdirahman Irro represent the fluid Somali character.

By Ismail H. Warsame

Abstract

This paper explores the paradoxical nature of Somali political and social behavior through the lens of history, identity, and clannism. It argues that the unpredictable alliances and betrayals that define Somali politics are not mere political opportunism, but deeply rooted in the social structure and survival mechanisms of a pastoral society. The central thesis posits that the permanence of clannism, rather than ideology or religion, defines Somali identity and continues to shape its volatile political landscape. The essay examines historical precedents, social anthropology, and political developments to demonstrate how this “fluidity of loyalty” has both sustained and sabotaged the Somali state.

1. Introduction: The Enigma of the Somali Psyche

Somalis have long fascinated scholars, colonial administrators, and political observers for their capacity to shift alliances, reconcile mortal enemies, and reengage in conflict without lasting institutional memory. The paradox of Somali personality lies in this “elasticity of enmity”—a quality that renders yesterday’s enemy an ally today, and tomorrow, a sworn adversary again. This cyclical behavioral pattern, often misinterpreted as political immaturity, in fact, reflects the pastoral logic of survival in an environment where fluidity of loyalty was a strategy for adaptation rather than betrayal.

As I. M. Lewis observes, Somali society is “highly segmentary, egalitarian, and unstable in its political balance” (Lewis 1994, 17). This instability is not an accident of modernity but a structural inheritance of nomadic life. The Somali political personality remains shaped by this anthropology of shifting solidarities—a pattern that modern institutions have failed to discipline or transcend.

2. Clannism as the Permanent Political Identity

Clannism is not merely a social affiliation in Somali life; it is the primary lens of reality. From kinship systems to political representation, economic exchange, and even religious allegiance, clan identity remains the ultimate arbiter. In the words of Abdi Ismail Samatar, “the clan is the only durable political institution that survived both colonial rule and state collapse” (Samatar 1992, 639).

Foreign powers and Somali politicians alike have exploited this permanence. During the colonial partition of the Somali territories, both British and Italian administrators relied on clan rivalries to pacify resistance movements. After independence, Somali leaders continued this practice—repackaging clannism under nationalist rhetoric while reproducing its divisive logic.

The collapse of the Somali state in 1991 exposed this permanent fault line. The central government, deprived of nationalist legitimacy, fragmented along clan lines, producing warlord fiefdoms. As Alex de Waal notes, the Somali civil war became a “clanized anarchy” in which the pursuit of security was inseparable from the assertion of lineage (de Waal 1996, 114).

3. The Political Utility of Unpredictability

Somali unpredictability is not entirely irrational. In a political culture where fixed alliances can be fatal, fluidity becomes a rational survival mechanism. This dynamic explains the shifting coalitions in Somali politics—from the Somali Salvation Democratic Front (SSDF) and Somali National Movement (SNM) aligning with Ethiopia in the 1980s against Siad Barre, to Puntland’s fluctuating relations with Mogadishu.

The Somali elite often manipulate this unpredictability to sustain personal or clan power. As Menkhaus (2014) argues, Somali politics functions as a “permanent negotiation,” where no agreement is binding beyond its immediate utility. In this sense, the “Somali personality” mirrors the pastoralist ethos: mobility, pragmatism, and opportunism are virtues in a volatile environment.

4. Irreversible Damage and the Failure of Institutionalization

The repeated exploitation of clan divisions has eroded the moral fabric and collective trust necessary for state-building. Federalism, designed to balance clan interests, has instead institutionalized them. The 4.5 power-sharing formula, intended as a temporary measure, ossified clan identity into constitutional architecture. As a result, political allegiance to the Somali nation remains weaker than allegiance to the clan.

This structural dilemma makes the Somali political crisis not merely a failure of leadership but a failure of social cohesion. Once trust is privatized along kin lines, the national project becomes permanently compromised. The damage, as the thesis of this paper contends, may be irreversible without a radical reimagination of Somali identity beyond clan calculus.

5. Conclusion

The unpredictable character of the Somali personality, long perceived as a defect, is in fact a mirror of the society’s adaptive genius—a legacy of nomadic survival transposed into the modern state. Yet, when exploited by cynical elites and external powers, this fluidity becomes a weapon of self-destruction. Somalia’s tragedy lies in the transformation of a cultural virtue into a political vice. Unless the Somali polity finds a moral equilibrium between clan identity and civic nationalism, the cycle of unpredictable alliances and betrayals will remain its defining curse.

Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, Ahmed Madoobe, Said Abdullahi Deni, and Abdirahman Irro embody this paradox. Their politics of shifting alliances, pragmatic recalibrations, and strategic betrayals are not aberrations but reflections of the national psyche itself. Unless Somalia discovers a moral equilibrium that reconciles clan loyalty with civic nationalism, the cycle of unpredictable alliances and betrayals will remain its defining curse—and perhaps its enduring mirror.

Bibliography

de Waal, Alex. “Contemporary Warfare in Africa: Changing Contexts, Changing Strategies.” IDS Bulletin 27, no. 3 (1996): 6–17.

Lewis, I. M. Blood and Bone: The Call of Kinship in Somali Society. Lawrenceville, NJ: Red Sea Press, 1994.

Menkhaus, Ken. “State Failure, State-Building, and Prospects for a ‘Functional Failed State’ in Somalia.” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 656, no. 1 (2014): 154–172.

Samatar, Abdi Ismail. “Destruction of State and Society in Somalia: Beyond the Tribal Convention.” Journal of Modern African Studies 30, no. 4 (1992): 625–641.

Samatar, Ahmed I. The Somali Challenge: From Catastrophe to Renewal? Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1992.

WDM EDITORIAL SATIRE
By Ismail H. Warsame, WDM

The Federal Illusion: Mogadishu’s Mirage Factory

For three decades, Mogadishu has been selling Somalis a dream called “federalism” disengeniously while dismantling it from within—serving a half-cooked meal cold and salted with clan manipulation It was meant to heal the wounds of dictatorship and balance of power between center and periphery. Instead, it became a political snake oil sold by Villa Somalia to keep its rent-collecting machine alive.

Centralists in Mogadishu never believed in federalism; they merely tolerated it until the “right moment” to strangle it. But in doing so, they’ve destroyed their only bridge to national unity. Puntland and Somaliland will never crawl back into the belly of Mogadishu’s centralist monster. The more Mogadishu resists devolution, the closer Somalia drifts toward confederalism—not as theory, but as survival.

Confederalism: Somalia’s Unwritten Constitution

Confederalism is not imported from Brussels or Washington. It is embedded in Somali social DNA. Before colonial borders, Somalis organized around clan confederacies: the Hawiye Confederacy, the Dir Confederacy, the Digil and Mirifle Confederacy, the Darood Confederacy. These were not centralized kingdoms but organic power-sharing unions—where autonomy and consensus coexisted.

So when modern politicians chant “national unity” while begging foreign donors to fund it, they are defying history. Somalis have never been governed by command from one center. Even the late Siyad Barre, with tanks, torture, and Soviet backing, failed to centralize this restless nation. What makes today’s recycled elites think they can?

Puntland and Somaliland: The Unfolding Reality

Whether Mogadishu likes it or not, the map of Somali governance has already redrawn itself. Puntland is practically a functioning republic within a dysfunctional federation. Somaliland, though politically estranged, has demonstrated what local governance can look like—warts and all. Together, these two entities embody a new Somali logic: self-rule before symbolism.

Even if tomorrow’s president of Somalia hails from Garowe, Galkayo, or even Hargeisa, the old unitary state will not resurrect. Once sovereignty is shared, it cannot be re-centralized. That door is permanently closed. The best Mogadishu can hope for is a confederal arrangement—a loose partnership of equals sharing defense, currency, and diplomacy, but not subordination.The Way Forward: Accepting Somali Reality

The Way Forward: Accepting Somali Reality

The writing is on the wall, written in both Somali history and current political geography. Confederalism is not secession—it’s the only realistic bridge between unity and autonomy. Those clinging to the fantasy of a centralized Somali state are clinging to a ghost.

The question is not whether Somalia should move toward confederalism—it already is. The question is whether Mogadishu’s elites will accept it peacefully or resist until the system collapses again.

Federalism was a compromise. Confederalism is destiny. The sooner the political class in Villa Somalia accepts this, the better for the survival of what remains of the Somali Republic.

—

WDM STAMP:
“Truth doesn’t destroy nations. Denial does.” – WDM.

Somali politics has long been a theater of the absurd, but the latest act—featuring Puntland’s Said Abdullahi Deni and Jubaland’s Ahmed Madoobe—plays less like a strategic alliance and more like a mismatched sitcom. The scene is set: two rivals compelled to share a stage not by shared vision or belief in a greater Somalia, but by the unifying pressure of Hassan Sheikh Mohamud’s Damul Jadiid regime.

Deni, the perennial aspirant, still chases the Villa Somalia mirage with the desperation of a man dying of thirst. The sting of 2022, when Madoobe abandoned him at the political altar, remains fresh. Yet in Somali politics, betrayal is the coin of the realm. Now, Deni has no choice but to place his bets on the very man who shattered his ambitions. The smile he offers Madoobe is not one of friendship, but of grim resignation—the look of a gambler who knows the dice are loaded but rolls them all the same.

Across the table, Ahmed Madoobe operates in pure survival mode. He has perfected the art of outlasting regimes without committing to a single, meaningful principle. His alliances are like sandcastles on the shores of Kismaayo: meticulously built at high tide, only to be washed away by the morning sun. Is he reliable? He is steadfast only in his own self-interest. To allies and adversaries alike, he is a political mirage—shimmering with promise from a distance, dissolving into nothing upon approach.

Presiding over this spectacle from Villa Somalia is Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, a leader slowly and publicly deflating. By May 2026, he will not be a symbol of authority but an empty vessel, hissing with the last gasps of influence. His legacy is already settling as a fine dust of governance failures, corruption, and the hollow projects of Damul Jadiid. Even his traditional Hawiye base is fractured, leaving him isolated and exposed.

What is most striking amid this political circus is the profound vacuum at its center. Somalia’s battered governance has no credible successor waiting in the wings. The Deni-Madoobe pact is not a roadmap to a better future; it is a detour into the politics of mutual necessity. It is the politics of “for now,” a temporary ceasefire in a war of all against all.

The Somali people deserve visionaries, but they are perpetually handed gamblers, opportunists, and fading icons. The only certainty is that this alliance will end as all such arrangements in Somalia do: with concealed knives beneath the table, polished smiles for the cameras, and history repeating itself in a farce of forgotten promises.

WDM Verdict: This is not the birth of a coalition. It is the sight of two political fossils huddling for warmth against the cold wind of public discontent, while the Damul Jadiid regime implodes from the vacuum of its own failed leadership.

Warsame Digital Media WDM: https://ismailwarsame.blog/2025/08/06/wdm-needs-your-support-subscribe-donate-now/
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In Puntland, the career ladder has just two rungs: the one you stand on, and the one you fantasize about from the bottom.

Take the young man from Laascaanood. He didn’t make headlines for founding a company or winning a seat in parliament. His news was quieter, more tragic. He abandoned his job at the Horn Petrol Station in Garowe—a position that, in its stability, was already the envy of many—to chase the shimmering promise of Oman. He was sold a vision of the Gulf desert as a land of greater opportunity than Puntland’s dusty roadside kiosks.

His career progression was not what his family pictured when they bid him farewell at the bus station. Instead of climbing a corporate ladder, he was handed a stick and assigned to herd camels across sun-scorched plains. Then, fate added a cruel twist: a diabetes diagnosis, unimpressed by his foreign visa, took a violent turn. The blunt herding stick of his new life became a “pointed objective,” and his health, fragile to begin with, shattered. The result was the unthinkable: the amputation of his lower leg.

The irony is a physical blow. A man who once fueled the engines of Puntland at the Horn Petrol Station now cannot walk without assistance. This is more than a personal tragedy; it is a political verdict on a system that has spectacularly failed its people.

The Mirage Economy

Let’s be clear: in Puntland today, meaningful work is as mythical as a forest in the Haud. The Horn Petrol Station was not a dream job, but it was a lifeline—it meant work, bread, and a shred of dignity. Yet, the potent myth of Gulf wealth lured him away. His “promotion” abroad saw him demoted from petroleum attendant to camel attendant. This is the inevitable result when a society exports its human capital like a raw commodity, having failed to build the industries to employ it at home.

Our elites dine on stories of oil concessions and donor conferences, their prosperity propped up by diaspora remittances. Meanwhile, the common man is trapped in a devil’s choice: pump petrol at Horn Petrol or polish camel hooves abroad. The very leaders who vacation in Dubai malls leave their citizens to tend livestock in the deserts those malls overlook.

State-Sponsored Ignorance

To blame this tragedy solely on one man’s poor choice is to miss the point entirely. This was a systemic failure, a case of state-sponsored ignorance.

It is the ignorance of leaders who see vocational training as an expense, not an investment. It is the ignorance of policymakers who treat remittances as an economic strategy rather than a symptom of failure. It is the ignorance of a society that applauds politicians for building villas in Garowe while its youth are building a resume of servitude overseas.

Our protagonist from Laascaanood was a product of this system. He was ignorant of his own value, of his rights, of the very concept that his nation owed him a future. He left his pump at Horn Petrol believing the mirage was real, and he paid for that belief with his leg.

The Final, Bitter Punchline

And so we arrive at the satirical punchline, so absurd it borders on parody: Puntland’s economy is so barren that losing a limb in a Omani camel pen can be framed as a step up from a job at the Horn Petrol Station. This is the theater of the absurd we now call normal.

If Puntland cannot—or will not—forge a real economy for its youth, this exodus will not just continue; it will define us. We are not exporting engineers, doctors, or innovators. We are exporting desperate men, and what we get back in return are the amputees of our own collective neglect.

—

Based on a true story.

  October 4, 2025 

WDM SATIRE

The West has perfected a new export commodity: its own criminals.

When once upon a time Europe exported philosophy, democracy, and industrial technology, today it exports convicted felons – all nicely packaged with “Somali-Swedish” or “African-American immigrant” labels. The United States, under policies promoted by the Trump administration, is now a leader in this field, actively negotiating deals with African nations to accept “third-country” deportees . Sweden, the so-called land of Nobel Prizes and neutrality, has become the Nobel laureate of deportation hypocrisy.

Instead of investing in rehabilitation or bearing the full cost of incarceration for its own societal dregs, the West now treats Africa like a dumping ground for toxic waste. Except this time the waste breathes, steals, and kills. The rhetoric is flowery – “third-country deportation,” “security cooperation,” and removing “uniquely barbaric monsters” from American soil . But peel the diplomatic wrapping paper, and you find something uglier: a form of human trafficking in reverse, a practice that echoes the dynamics of “waste neocolonialism,” where environmental burdens are shifted onto the Global South .

Poverty as Landfill

Why Somalia? Why Eswatini? Because poverty and political vulnerability make it easy. Fragile states and desperate leaderships are presented with a “carrot and stick” approach by Western powers . As one analyst noted, some African governments agree to receive convicted deportees as a “goodwill gesture, aiming to improve US ties and be in Trump’s good books” . Western governments engage in “robust high-level engagements,” and then load a “Special Plane” with hardened criminals for delivery. Somalia and Eswatini get more instability and more gang wars, while Washington and Stockholm get cleaner streets, lower prison bills, and applause from their far-right echo chambers.

This practice is not accidental; it is a systemic feature. It mirrors the “hypocrisy of the Western aid regime,” where governments that officially promote human rights simultaneously support and engage in policies that undermine the sovereignty and safety of African nations . The very countries expressing outrage at regional security collaborations are the ones offloading their security problems onto the same region .

Nordic Hypocrisy Meets African Complicity

What we are watching is not just deportation. It is a joint-venture between Western hypocrisy and African complicity. It is a marriage of convenience between smug bureaucrats in Washington and officials in Mogadishu or Mbabane. The U.S. waves the flag of the “rule of law,” claiming deportees “received due process and had a final order of removal from an immigration judge” , while critics argue the receiving nations are betraying their citizens’ right to security. In Eswatini, opposition leaders have denounced the move as making their country a “criminal dumpsite” and an abuse of national sovereignty .

A Grim Satire of “Aid”

Aid used to be (in theory) for schools, clinics, and roads. Today, it can include budget lines for dumping criminals. Development cooperation is being reduced to crime outsourcing. While the U.S. insists it offers no financial reward for accepting deportees , the broader system of aid and engagement creates powerful incentives. Somalia gets killers and a broken social order, while Eswatini, with its prisons already operating at over 170% capacity, is forced to house foreign criminals . Meanwhile, officials fly to Geneva to lecture about “partnerships for peace.”

WDM Final Word

When citizens of Somalia or Eswatini are forced to live with foreign-trained, Western-naturalized gangsters disguised as “returnees” or “third-country nationals,” one must ask: what kind of sovereignty is this? What kind of leadership trades its people’s safety for geopolitical goodwill?

This is not merely deportation. It is neo-colonial waste management, a direct parallel to the export of hazardous electronic and plastic waste to the developing world . And the garbage, tragically, is human.

Sweden–Somalia Secret Deal: When Transparency Died in Stockholm and Mogadishu

Ekot has dropped a political bombshell that neither Stockholm nor Mogadishu can sweep under the carpet. For all the talk of “transparency” and “accountability,” the Swedish government cut a 100 million kronor secret deal with the Somali Prime Minister’s Office—a deal tied directly to the forced deportation of Somali citizens, including convicted criminals, from Sweden.

“Former Minister Johan Forssell stood in December 2023 boasting about “efficiency and transparency” in aid reform. One week earlier, his government signed off on a backroom arrangement that reeks of hypocrisy. This was not aid. This was a ransom payment—a crude exchange: money for migrants.”

Somali Complicity: Leaders for Sale

Breaking news from WDM sources confirms that Prime Minister Hamse Abdi Barre, his Director General Jamaal Guutaale, and his close adviser Ahmed Dahir (Uleex) were central to this shady deportation scheme. Somalia’s fragile sovereignty was auctioned off for cash, while Mogadishu officials enriched themselves under the cover of “UNDP partnership.”

The Somali public was kept in the dark because exposure would have destroyed the regime’s credibility at home. Instead, Somali leaders quietly signed away dignity, turning deported Somalis into bargaining chips for political rent.

Swedish Hypocrisy: Transparency Betrayed

Swedish Foreign Ministry and Sida staff were ordered to keep the deal secret. Freedom of Information requests were blocked, documents were systematically masked, and silence was enforced. For a government that lectures the world about democracy, this is a shameful betrayal.

Sweden’s global brand as a beacon of open, principled aid is now in tatters. What credibility remains when aid is reduced to a political bribe to keep deportees out of Stockholm’s suburbs?

The Dirty Alliance

This deal illustrates the corruption of both elites:

In Mogadishu: leaders who sell sovereignty for cash.

In Stockholm: politicians who lie to their people while using aid to outsource domestic political headaches.

Both sides hoped secrecy would protect them. Ekot has proven them wrong

The Unanswered Questions

Who in Somalia personally pocketed this money?

What was UNDP’s role in sanitizing the transaction?

Why is Minister Benjamin Dousa now pretending “there was no formal agreement”?

Why are Swedish officials still unnamed and unaccountable?

Final Word

This is not migration policy. This is human trafficking in diplomatic clothing.
This is not aid. This is political bribery dressed as development cooperation.

Sweden and Somalia have both betrayed their people. One sold transparency, the other sold sovereignty. The victims are ordinary Somalis—treated as commodities in a cynical marketplace of political expediency.

WDM calls for full exposure of all officials, Somali and Swedish alike, involved in this shameful bargain.

Breaking News: Names Behind the Secret Pact

WDM sources confirm that Prime Minister Hamse Abdi Barre, his Director General Jamaal Guutaale, and his close advisor Ahmed Dahir Hussein (Uleex) are reportedly involved in orchestrating Somalia’s end of the Sweden deportation-for-aid scheme. These names connect directly to the Somali executive office that demanded the aid redirection into their control.

On the Swedish side, the officials who greenlighted and executed this pact remain in the shadows—shielded by bureaucratic silence and political ambiguity. Their identities are not speculation; they exist. They signed. They moved money. They facilitated deportations. The fact that they remain unexposed is an indictment of Stockholm’s press and oversight institutions. The Swedish architects of this scheme should be named, scrutinized, and held to account with the same rigor.

The scandal in one paragraph

Ekot has exposed a secret 100-million-kronor arrangement struck in December 2023: Sweden rerouted aid so that projects near Somalia’s Prime Minister’s Office gained greater influence, and in return Somalia agreed to accept forced deportations. Cash first landed in 2024 (SEK 40m), with a further SEK 60m disbursed this summer under a UNDP tie-in with the PM’s Office—while deportations spiked to 28 last year. Both sides sought secrecy; Sida staff raised alarms; and independent analysts called it a high-risk set-up with vague goals and weak indicators. That’s not cooperation; that’s calibrated political rent-seeking with human beings as the currency.

But here is the deeper problem: Ekot Report didn’t go far enough to expose the corrupt officials from both sides who engineered and benefited from this bargain. By focusing on the structures and not the names, the scandal remains half-covered. Accountability without naming names is accountability denied.

Why this is worse than Ekot’s framing

1. Conflict-of-interest by design
Routing state-to-state aid so the Prime Minister’s political circle has enlarged influence collapses the firewall between development funds and patronage. In a country ranked 179/180 on TI’s 2024 Corruption Index, that’s not naïveté—it’s foreseeable capture.

2. Policy swap that commodifies citizens
Tying returns to rents turns deportees into bargaining chips. Even Sweden’s own line—“we linked aid and migration to increase returns”—admits the quid-pro-quo logic while deflecting operational responsibility to Sida and embassies. Responsibility without control = impunity.

3. Vague objectives = audit-proof slush
Experts reviewing the project describe general goals and unclear indicators—code words auditors use when money is structurally untraceable to outcomes. When a project’s theory of change is fog, patronage becomes the de facto KPI.

4. Secrecy is the red flag, not a footnote
Ekot reports both governments wanted the deal secret. Secrecy in aid conditionality isn’t “sensitive diplomacy”; it’s pre-meditated opacity that disables parliaments, watchdogs, and press from doing their jobs.

5. Converging allegations demand urgent scrutiny
Somali political figures have publicly alleged pay-per-deportee kickbacks tied to European removals. These are accusations, not proven facts—but they raise the risk profile of this arrangement and increase the burden of proof on both governments and UNDP.

WDM verdict

This is not a one-off bureaucratic misstep; it is an architecture of plausible deniability: Stockholm claims policy wins (“returns up”), Mogadishu claims development wins (“funds in”), while citizens bear the hidden costs and political networks harvest the visible gains.

And yet—Ekot Report failed to name the corrupt officials on both the Somali and Swedish sides. Without names, without accountability, this “exposé” becomes another layer of cover for the guilty.

The fix isn’t spin. The fix is sunlight, documents, names, audits, and enforceable safeguards—now.

1. The First Somali Republic (1960–1991)

The Somali Republic was established on 1 July 1960 following the union of the former British Somaliland Protectorate and the Italian-administered Trust Territory of Somaliland. This republic existed under a unitary framework:

1960–1969: A multiparty parliamentary democracy.

1969–1991: A centralized military regime under Mohamed Siad Barre, following a coup d’état.

Despite the change in governance style, the state remained the same republic. A coup does not constitute the founding of a new republic unless accompanied by a new constitutional order. The collapse of central authority in January 1991 marked the end of the First Republic.

—

2. The Interregnum and Statutory Vacuum (1991–2004)

From 1991 to 2004, Somalia experienced state collapse. Various reconciliation efforts—Djibouti (1991), Addis Ababa (1993), Arta (2000)—produced transitional arrangements, but none achieved the legal durability or institutional consolidation of a republic. This period was therefore characterized by:

Absence of a functioning central state.

Proliferation of factional and regional administrations.

Internationally mediated but temporary transitional authorities.

This was not a republic but rather a vacuum in national sovereignty.

—

3. The Second Somali Republic (2004–Present)

The adoption of the Transitional Federal Charter (October 2004, Nairobi) constituted the founding of a new republic with a federal character. Key features distinguishing it from the First Republic include:

Federalism: The charter established Somalia as a federal state, in contrast to the unitary model of 1960.

Power-Sharing: Clan-based representation (the “4.5 formula”) was formalized as the framework for transitional governance.

Institutional Reset: A new presidency, parliament, and council of ministers were created under transitional mandates.

In 2012, the Provisional Federal Constitution replaced the Charter, entrenching the Federal Republic of Somalia. Despite ongoing political fragility, this framework remains in force, and Somalia is still legally in its Second Republic.

—

4. On the Misconception of a “Third Republic”

The idea of a “Third Republic” is a misconception rooted in:

Conflation of regime changes with republics. Military coups or leadership turnovers do not amount to the founding of a new republic without constitutional refoundation.

Weak civic education. The erosion of historical and constitutional literacy has led to blurred distinctions between governments, regimes, and republics.

Political rhetoric. Actors may invoke “Third Republic” for rhetorical or aspirational purposes, but it lacks constitutional basis.

—

5. Correct Periodization of Somali Statehood

First Republic (1960–1991): Unitary state, collapsed in 1991.

Statutory Vacuum (1991–2004): State collapse, transitional experiments.

Second Republic (2004–Present): Federal framework, established by the 2004 Charter and entrenched by the 2012 Provisional Constitution.

—

Conclusion:
Somalia remains in its Second Republic. Any discussion of a “Third Republic” would only be accurate if Somalis adopt a new constitutional settlement that supersedes the federal arrangement. Until then, the term is historically and legally unfounded.

By Ismail H Warsame, MSc, PhD Candidate, Author of Talking Truth to Power in Undemocratic Tribal Conttext.         
Warsame Digital Media (WDM).     September 30, 2025

Keywords: criminal justice, wealth inequality, bail, pretrial detention, public defense, prosecutorial discretion, legal aid, social control.

Abstract: The Western world proudly proclaims itself the cradle of democracy, human rights, and the rule of law. Its courtrooms are stages for a noble performance of impartial justice. Yet, behind this veneer of order and due process lies a system deeply compromised by a fundamental bias: not of ideology, but of income. The machinery of justice, while coded in the language of fairness, often functions as an instrument of social control that systematically disadvantages the poor and marginalizes communities of color. This paper argues that the foundational principles of Western justice are subverted by a wealth-based tiering of the system, evident in the practices of pretrial detention, the crisis of legal aid, and the perverse incentives of prosecutorial conduct, ultimately transforming the ideal of justice from a fundamental right into a purchasable commodity.

Wealth-Based Detention: The Presumption of Innocence at a Price

The cornerstone legal principle of “innocent until proven guilty” is critically undermined at the juncture of the bail hearing. In theory, bail ensures a defendant’s return to court; in practice, it has become a mechanism for the detention of the indigent. As legal scholar John Pfaff argues, the rapid expansion of pretrial detention is a primary driver of mass incarceration in the United States. For the affluent, bail is a procedural formality; freedom is purchased, allowing them to await trial at home, maintain employment, and collaborate intensively on their defense. For the poor, however, pretrial detention is the default. Unable to afford even modest sums, they remain in jail for months or even years. The consequences are catastrophic: jobs are lost, homes are forfeited, and families are fractured—all before a verdict is reached. This dynamic creates a coercive pressure to plead guilty, regardless of actual guilt, simply to escape jail time. This is not a punishment for a proven crime, but a severe penalty for poverty, effectively creating a two-track system where liberty is contingent on wealth.

The Illusion of Defense: The Systemic Failure of Legal Aid

The Sixth Amendment right to counsel is guaranteed, but the quality and efficacy of that counsel are not. The institution of legal aid and public defense, intended to level the adversarial playing field, is in a state of chronic crisis. Public defenders are often heroic in their efforts but are hopelessly overburdened, carrying caseloads that far exceed professional standards and make vigorous representation a mathematical impossibility. This systemic underfunding creates an inherent conflict. As organizations like the Brennan Center for Justice have documented, defenders are institutionally enmeshed within the very state apparatus they are meant to challenge, leading to a “meet ’em and plead ’em” culture in many jurisdictions. The accused is not represented by a gladiatorial advocate but by a case manager operating under triage conditions. This profound resource disparity means that from the outset, the defense is outmatched by a prosecution armed with the full investigative and financial power of the state, rendering the constitutional right to counsel a hollow formality for many.

The Incentive for Conviction: Prosecutorial Discretion and the Pursuit of Victory

The prosecutor’s ethical duty is to seek justice, not merely to convict. However, the institutional and professional incentives within the prosecutorial system often prioritize conviction rates. As legal scholar Angela J. Davis demonstrates, prosecutors wield immense discretionary power with minimal accountability, and their decisions are frequently influenced by political and career ambitions. Each conviction becomes a quantifiable “win,” a credential for election campaigns or a stepping stone to a judgeship. This transforms the courtroom from a search for truth into an adversarial arena where the primary goal is victory. The pressure to secure plea bargains and high-profile convictions can eclipse the ethical duty to disclose exculpatory evidence or pursue dismissals in weak cases.The casualties of this careerist competition are, predictably, those who lack the social and economic capital to mount a formidable defense: the poor, minorities, and other marginalized groups. This dynamic reinforces the system’s discriminatory outcomes and undermines its legitimacy.

Conclusion: The Corrosion of a Democratic Ideal

The evidence from these three critical areas—pretrial detention, public defense, and prosecutorial incentives—reveals a justice system that is not merely malfunctioning but is fundamentally flawed in its design. A system that promises equal protection under the law while delivering outcomes predicated on financial capacity is a monument to systemic hypocrisy. It perpetuates cycles of poverty and incarceration, erodes public trust, and betrays the core democratic principle that the law should be a shield for the vulnerable. The commodification of justice ensures that the system remains self-perpetuating, processing the marginalized to feed the prison-industrial complex. Meaningful reform—such as the abolition of cash bail, the radical reinvestment in public defense, and the creation of robust prosecutorial oversight—is necessary to begin restoring integrity. Until there is a collective will to dismantle these profit-driven and punitive structures, Western courts will remain sophisticated engines of inequality, betraying the very ideals they were established to uphold.

——

Bibliography

Davis, Angela J. Arbitrary Justice: The Power of the American Prosecutor. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.

Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335 (1963).

Gottschalk, Marie. Caught: The Prison State and the Lockdown of American Politics. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015.

Pfaff, John F. Locked In: The True Causes of Mass Incarceration and How to Achieve Real Reform. New York: Basic Books, 2017.

Rabbit, Leah, and Emily Zubrovsky. “The Causes and Consequences of Overworked Public Defenders.” Brennan Center for Justice, August 10, 2022.

Subramanian, Ram, et al. Incarceration’s Front Door: The Misuse of Jails in America. New York: Vera Institute of Justice, 2015.

Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. New York: The New Press, 2010.

September 29, 2025

Ladies and gentlemen, take your seats. The house lights are dimming on Somalia’s most enduring production, a theatrical masterpiece in its fifth encore: The Election. The script is cat-eared, the actors are reciting lines from a decade ago, and the audience knows every beat by heart. Yet, the show must go on, meticulously stage-managed by the Damul Jadid crew, who have at least invested in some new, distracting scenery.

Center stage, the Federal Parliament performs its signature act. This esteemed body has perfected the art of the rubber stamp to such a degree that it could single-handedly solve the national liquidity crisis, if only its endorsements were legal tender. As its mandate wheezes to a close, the only anticipated explosions are the synthetic ones—carefully curated to divert attention from the crumbling set.

In the wings, the opposition is rehearsing its own tragicomic subplot. It’s a symphony of ambition without an orchestra, where leaders hold daily press conferences to passionately debate who should be the conductor. Their primary mobilization strategy appears to be the strategic deployment of press releases and the occasional heated argument with their own reflections. The public? They are not in the audience; they are just the backdrop.

Our leading men are in fine form:

Said Abdullahi Deni, who once envisioned a triumphant march into Villa Somalia, now watches his political capital evaporate faster than a puddle in the Mogadishu sun. His path to power has narrowed to a tightrope, and he’s balancing it over a pit of his own making.

The ever-mercurial Ahmed Madoobe continues his residency as the master gamesman of Jubaland. He plays a solitary game of cards, dealing from a deck only he can see. His strategy is a masterpiece of ambiguity: a bluff here, a strategic fold there, all designed to ensure that no matter who claims to win, the house—Madoobe’s house—always wins.

Then there is Somaliland, the perennial solo artist demanding a separate stage and a starring role in the international program. They’ve been hammering at the door of global recognition for so long, the only thing that’s splintered is the handle of their own hammer. With Laascaanood acting like shifting sands beneath their feet, their diplomacy has devolved into a hopeful monologue to an empty hall.

And let us not forget the SSC territories, the human chessboard in President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud’s grand strategy. They are the pawns pushed forward with bold declarations, waiting for a move that resembles a plan rather than a gambit. Their future is the subject of a high-stakes teashop bet, where the only certainty is that they won’t be holding the winnings.

So, the circus is in town. The same clowns, the same tired tricks, the same roar of the crowd that is really just a sigh of collective exhaustion. The true genius of this production is its funding model: the audience pays for the ticket with their children’s futures, and the run of the show is guaranteed, indefinitely.

https://wardheernews.com/federalism-as-a-somali-solution-not-an-ethiopian-imposition-a-rebuttal/?fbclid=IwdGRzaANEZ5JjbGNrA0RlZWV4dG4DYWVtAjExAAEeCVjRrHoCcSxQdPNnoRCbxXjFNaiPv4Nump2vjZWerUS9FmJVCXpcFVjfB2A_aem_G6zXFk8fVmKIo4UiWKLmQQ&sfnsn=mo

https://x.com/GuledWiliq/status/1971305480988541296/video/1

So, ladies and gentlemen, we finally got it. The head of state of the Federal Somali Republic—yes, the man supposedly tasked with defending its sovereignty—steps up to a press podium and calls Somaliland a country. You heard it right. Not a “region,” not a “self-declared administration,” not even the diplomatic cliché of “Somaliland authorities.” Nope. Straight from the Villa Somalia dictionary of political blunders: country.

Is Hassan Sheikh Mohamud stupid, ignorant, or just auditioning for a UN press officer role in Hargeisa?

A President Who Can’t Read His Own Constitution

The same constitution he swore to uphold clearly spells out that Somalia is one, indivisible, sovereign state. Yet here he is, in front of flashing cameras, doing public relations for a secessionist project. If this isn’t political malpractice, then Somalia must have invented a new category: treason by microphone.

Somaliland Leaders Must Be Laughing

Imagine the scene in Hargeisa. Ministers sipping tea, watching Hassan on flat-screen TVs, bursting into applause. “He finally said it! We don’t need recognition from Washington, Brussels, or the African Union anymore—Mogadishu’s very own president just gave it to us live on air!” Congratulations, Mr. President. You just became Somaliland’s unpaid foreign minister.

Somalia’s Unity: Outsourced and Auctioned

This is the tragicomic state of affairs: while Ethiopian soldiers are “peacekeeping” in Beledweyne, Al-Shabaab is planting IEDs, Puntland is bleeding in CalMiskaad mountains, and youth are fleeing across deserts to die in dinghies—our president is busy redefining geopolitics at a press conference, handing out sovereignty like it’s a charity project.

The WDM Verdict

Somalia doesn’t need enemies. Not when its president is on the payroll of stupidity. Not when the man trusted with holding the Somali flag can’t distinguish between “state,” “federal member state,” and “country.” Hassan Sheikh Mohamud has just graduated summa cum laude in Diplomatic Idiocy.

And if the Somali public doesn’t shout back, loud and clear, then tomorrow he’ll be calling Puntland a kingdom, Galmudug an emirate, and Banadir a papal state.

WDM Stamp of Shame: Hassan Sheikh Mohamud – Somalia’s accidental secessionist-in-chief.

Introduction: The Misplaced Blame
A persistent narrative within certain Somali political circles claims federalism is the root cause of the nation’s instability,insecurity, and fragmentation. This centralist critique, often tinged with nostalgia, conveniently identifies the federal member states—Puntland, Jubbaland —as the primary obstacles to unity. This essay argues that this diagnosis is not merely incorrect; it is a dangerous diversion. The true engine of Somalia’s dysfunction is not the federal model itself, but the Mogadishu regime, which has systematically sabotaged the federal compact while expertly scapegoating it for its own catastrophic failures.

The Organic Origins of Federalism: A Shield, Not a Weapon
To blame federalism for Somalia’s collapse is to fundamentally misread history.Federalism was not an imported ideology imposed upon a functioning state. It was an organic, necessary response to the total vacuum left by the collapse of the centralist dictatorship in 1991. For decades, the Mogadishu-centric state was built on repression, clan favoritism, and rampant corruption, leading to its inevitable implosion. In the ensuing chaos, local communities were left to fend for themselves, forging regional administrations to provide security, justice, and basic services that Mogadishu could not. Therefore, federalism is not the cause of disintegration but a pragmatic framework to manage diversity and rebuild a fractured nation from the bottom up. It is a shield against the very tyranny that shattered the country.

The Mogadishu Regime: A Cartel of Division
The so-called Federal Government of Somalia(FGS) often operates less as a national unifier and more as a rent-seeking cartel, sustained by international donor funds and foreign security proxies. Rather than nurturing the federal project as envisioned in the Provisional Constitution, it has waged a relentless campaign of political and financial attrition against the member states. The regime in Mogadishu has perfected a cynical strategy of divide-and-rule, manipulating clan tensions and pitting regional administrations against one another to prevent a united front that could demand accountability.

This sabotage is not merely rhetorical; it is operational. Critical national functions like border control, immigration, and customs—the very levers of sovereignty—are concentrated in Mogadishu. The unchecked demographic shifts and security threats often blamed on the federal states are, in reality, enabled by a central regime that treats entry permits and border policy as political currency. While member states are accused of separatism, it is Mogadishu that fails to provide equitable infrastructure, economic opportunity, or even a reliable share of national resources, thereby creating the very conditions of neglect it then decries.

The Centralist Mirage: A Return to Failure
The argument that recentralizing power would”save” Somalia is a recipe for repeating the catastrophes of the past. The hyper-centralized state is the failed model that led to civil war. Dismantling federalism would not restore unity; it would strip communities of their hard-won autonomy and reignite the very conflicts that the federal structure seeks to manage. While the current federal system is imperfect and its implementation often contentious, it remains the only viable mechanism for balancing power and ensuring that all Somali communities have a stake in the national project. To weaken it is to empower the same centralizing impulses that destroyed the nation.

Conclusion: Accountability Over Allegory
The problem is not federalism.The problem is a Mogadishu regime that refuses to be a government for all Somalis, thrives on manufactured crises, and evades accountability by blaming the federal architecture. Somalia’s path forward does not lie in dismantling the federal system but in strengthening it. This requires building genuine partnership between the center and the states, adhering to the constitution, and, most importantly, holding the Mogadishu regime responsible for its role as a saboteur rather than a savior. True patriotism demands that we identify the real culprit, not its convenient scapegoat.

The government’s new visa system doesn’t welcome the diaspora—it monetizes their return.

September 25,2025

At the gleaming terminals of Heathrow, JFK, and Frankfurt, a new ritual of rejection unfolds. Somali travelers arrive, clutching hard-won passports from distant nations—some are worn leather testaments to stateless survival; others, fresh plastic tokens of a state supposedly reborn. Their reward for this journey home is bureaucratic whiplash: “Double Visa Required. Pay, or turn back.”

These are the diaspora Somalis—the very people who fled the ruins of civil war, who funded schools in Puntland, built hospitals in Somaliland, and whose remittances have long served as the nation’s de facto life support. Now, their own government greets them with a surcharge on their identity. The recent launch of the federal E-Visa system, demanding payment from all foreigners, deliberately ignores the unique status of the diaspora, treating them not as sons and daughters of the soil, but as revenue streams.

The irony is profound. A generation ago, the military regime of Siad Barre sowed the seeds of conflict by denying travel rights to citizens from the north. Today, a government in Mogadishu, whose authority barely extends beyond its own capital, asserts the power to tax the diaspora’s return to regions like Puntland and Somaliland—effectively demanding a fee for the right to visit their family homes. This is not federalism; it is a shakedown enabled by software. Why collect one fee when the architecture of a fractured state allows for two?

They call this “modernization.” But behind the glossy interface lies an extraction scheme with the ingenuity of a cartel and the empathy of a pickpocket. This is not digitization; it is the monetization of longing.

This policy is not governance; it is humiliation masquerading as administration. The diaspora is left to wonder: What was the sacrifice for, if the “rebuilt” homeland greets them not with open arms, but with an online payment portal?

Somalia’s E-Visa is not a travel document. It is a satirical masterpiece—a ticket to nowhere, embossed with a state seal. It teaches a final, brutal lesson: that the most intimate predation often comes from the hand that claims to hold your own passport.

Tonight, Frontier University in Garowe, Puntland State, played host to a spectacle courtesy of the May Fakaraan Society. The main attraction was Faisal Roble, a Los Angeles–polished “urban planning” guru, flown in at great expense to lecture us on the gospel of asphalt, the sacrament of zoning codes, and the mystical virtues of public parks. Somalia, he declared in an imaginary PowerPoint certainty, must surrender to “modern urbanisation.” The hall, filled with eager converts, nodded, clapped, and scribbled in their notebooks as if transcribing divine revelation.

Yet, while Roble’s mental slides glowed with sterile visions of boulevards and roundabouts, a quieter, more profound reality was being paved over. The nomadic soul of Somalia—the camel herder guided by jingling bells and ancient stars—is being silently entombed beneath imported cement. The irony is a bitter pill, thicker than the smog over Mogadishu’s gridlock: a society that once mocked permanent walls now scrambles to build gated compounds; a people who once measured wealth in the strength of their herds now chase status in half-finished villas and the gleam of a Toyota V8.

What we call progress is not progress at all—it is a poorly staged parody. We have imported the worst excesses of the world: the cancerous sprawl of Los Angeles without its revenue, the hollow towers of Dubai without their plumbing technicians, the suffocating traffic of Nairobi without its resourceful matatus. And what of the true nomads? They are exiled to the margins, to IDP camps where they herd plastic bottles across dust-blown wastes, a tragic pantomime of their former dignity.

A more honest title for Faisal Roble’s lecture would have been: “From Camel Culture to Cement Culture: A Guide to Excavating a Nation’s Soul.” For what remains of Somali identity when the campfire tale is extinguished by generator hum? When the clan’s mobile parliament, once convened beneath a generous acacia, is replaced by the sterile bureaucracy of a municipal office? We are a people sustained by poetry and camel’s milk, yet we are raising a generation on imported soda, dodging open sewers that mock our aspirations.

The truth is, urban planning here has little to do with planning and everything to do with a deep, collective panic. It is the panic of an elite that mistakes concrete for civilization and fences for safety. It is the panic of a government that cannot manage a septic tank yet dreams of sketching skylines. It is the panic of a people who have traded timeless mobility for a 30-year mortgage, barter for predatory bank loans, and inherent dignity for the conditional charity of diaspora remittances.

Yes, cities will rise in Somalia. But if we pave over the nomadic spirit—the very bedrock of our adaptability and strength—we will not become an urban nation. We will become a nation of displaced souls in concrete labyrinths, a country that modernized its facade while selling its soul for scrap.

So we are left with the defining question: Will Somali urbanisation build a future, or merely pour a concrete grave for the last echo of the camel bell?

The Onion: Global Affairs Edition

Dateline: Mogadishu / Washington D.C. / The Green Zone of Reality

In a moving ceremony held securely within Mogadishu’s international airport—a bubble so secure most Somalis need a visa to enter their own capital—U.S. Ambassador Richard Riley stood before a handpicked group of Somali police officers and declared a resounding victory for… well, for something.

“I see before me a group of Somalis who are dedicated to the protection of their country and its people,” the Ambassador beamed, presumably reading from a teleprompter that carefully censored the words “unbalanced tribal militia,” “clan wars,” and “holistic approach”.

The new Crisis Response Team (CRT), a unit trained and equipped with a generous grant, is now officially certified to respond to terrorist attacks. This is a brilliant strategy, akin to funding an elite team of highly trained umbrella bearers to mop up water in a living room while politely ignoring the fact that the roof is on fire because you’re actively arming some of the residents to set fire to their neighbors’ sections.

The Clan-Tastic “National” Army

The cornerstone of this dazzling success is the international community’s unwavering commitment to building a “national” army. This involves a sophisticated, time-tested strategy: identify a few clans you can work with, give them guns, and call them the Somali National Army (SNA). What could possibly go wrong?

This approach is not without its critics. As recently as 2023, the Jubaland state government publicly accused federal actors of using the fight against Al-Shabaab as a pretext to arm clan militias for the purpose of destabilizing the regional state. A Jubaland minister warned that such a move was a “recipe for disaster,” hinting that “a more dangerous outfit was likely to emerge” from the attempt. But these concerns are clearly just the tedious complaints of local officials who don’t appreciate the elegant simplicity of international peacebuilding.

This policy brilliantly ignores the fact that Al-Shabaab itself, despite its claims to transcend clan politics, is deeply enmeshed in and manipulates these very dynamics. By adopting a similar strategy of co-opting some clans and alienating others, the internationally-backed government is essentially fighting fire with gasoline. The table below illustrates the chaotic genius of this approach.

Actor Stated Goal Satirical Reality (The “Clan-Blind” Strategy)
International Donors Build a unified, national security force. Fund and arm clan-based militias, creating parallel structures that undermine the very state they claim to build.
Federal Government of Somalia Extend its authority and defeat Al-Shabaab. Exploit clan rivalries for short-term military gains, risking long-term inter-clan conflict that could dwarf the current insurgency.
Al-Shabaab Establish an Islamic state that transcends clan. Masterfully exploit the grievances created by the government’s clan-based favoritism, using it as a powerful recruitment tool.

A Return to the Good Old Days (Of Civil War)

The ultimate satire is that this policy is not new; it’s a nostalgic revival of the conditions that led to the state’s collapse in 1991. By strengthening armed clan identities, the strategy expertly undermines the project of building a unified national identity. The fear among analysts is that a poorly managed campaign could simply plunge the country back into open clan-based fighting, but from the perspective of an arms dealer or a diplomat counting short-term “victories,” that’s a problem for a future funding cycle.

The real “Crisis Response Team” needed isn’t the one graduating in Mogadishu. It’s a team needed to respond to the crisis of a foreign policy that, in its desperate search for a simple solution, is actively reassembling the very bomb it claims to be defusing. But don’t worry, the diplomats are safe in their Green Zone, and the PowerPoint presentations showing declining Al-Shabaab attack statistics are absolutely stunning.

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This satire is based on analysis and reporting from sources including the Security Council Report, the European Union Agency for Asylum, the European Union Institute for Security Studies, and news reports detailing internal Somali politics.

From Eldoret to Villa Somalia

Take a watch this historic video:

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/16FnZEw4r4/

In the theater of statecraft, there are no accidents—only carefully crafted illusions of inevitability. The 2002 Somali Peace and National Reconciliation Conference, which began in Eldoret and concluded in Mbagathi, was presented as a forum of equals: a gathering of warlords, clan elders, and civil society under the auspices of IGAD. But for our circle within Abdullahi Yusuf’s camp—I served then as his Chief of Staff in the Puntland administration—the conference was not a dialogue. It was a stage. And we intended to ensure that when the curtain rose, Yusuf would be the lead actor.

The Stratagem: A Calculated Entrance

Our maneuver was elegant in its simplicity, devastating in its effect. We would orchestrate Abdullahi Yusuf’s entry into the main conference hall to occur moments before the arrival of the IGAD Heads of State. This was not left to chance; it was a precise operational detail.

The result was political theater at its most potent. As Yusuf entered, the room’s focus—the diplomats, the journalists, the collective anticipation—snapped to him. The energy shifted. Then, the IGAD leaders processed in, not as the main event, but as guests arriving at a reception already in full swing, hosted by the commanding figure of Abdullahi Yusuf. The intended hierarchy was instantly inverted.

The Payoff: A Narrative Seized

Diplomatic conferences run on rigid protocols, each handshake and introduction meant to reinforce a predetermined order. Our choreography shattered that order. Yusuf was not presented by others; he presented himself through the sheer force of timing and presence. The optics became an unassailable argument: here was a man who commanded the room not by force of arms, but by the authority of his bearing. Rival faction leaders watched, marginalized by a spectacle they had not anticipated. The international community witnessed a leader who looked the part.

The Strategic Imperative: Why Theater Matters

Eldoret was more than a peace talk; it was an attempt to conjure a state from the void of anarchy. IGAD and its international partners were not seeking the most powerful warlord; they were desperate for a credible head of state—a symbol of order. Legitimacy in a collapsed state is not merely about control; it is about perception. It is a performance that must be believed before it can be institutionalized. We understood that to win the presidency, Yusuf first had to perform the presidency. Eldoret was his audition, and he passed unequivocally.

The Legacy: From Stagecraft to Statecraft

The resonance of that single day in Eldoret defined the entire transition. As the talks moved to Mbagathi, Yusuf carried the aura of a frontrunner. Donors engaged him as the central player, IGAD mediators saw him as the anchor for stability, and Somali delegates, however reluctantly, began to orient their strategies around his perceived inevitability. His subsequent election as President of the Transitional Federal Government in Nairobi in 2004 was not a sudden victory but the logical culmination of a legitimacy narrative set in motion two years prior.

The Enduring Lesson

Cynics will call it manipulation. Strategists will recognize it as the essential art of political positioning. In moments of profound uncertainty, leadership is often decided not by who has the most compelling platform, but by who most effectively dramatizes their claim to power. We engineered that moment of drama. We understood that before a leader can govern a reality, he must first command the stage.

We wrote the script for Eldoret. And history played its part.

A single photograph can eclipse a thousand press releases. On one side of the table sits the American delegation—postures rigid, expressions guarded, every movement a study in controlled diplomacy. Theirs is a language of power spoken through closed folders and measured gestures, a performance where confidentiality is the ultimate currency.

Across from them, the delegation representing President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud presents a jarring contrast. Notebooks lie open, blue folders are strewn about, pens scratch away without restraint. It is not transparency on display, but vulnerability. The inner sanctum of Villa Somalia appears laid bare for foreign appraisal. More alarming than the lack of discretion is the delegation’s composition: it resembles not a cabinet of state professionals, but an assembly of kin, where bloodlines seemingly outweigh institutional credentials.

This visual chasm reveals the core of Somalia’s diplomatic disadvantage. The Americans arrive with a unified strategy; Mohamud arrives with a coterie of clansmen. One side operates behind a shield of disciplined secrecy; the other parades a casualness that borders on negligence. While Washington ensures no word is spoken out of turn, Mogadishu’s representation ensures that even our weaknesses are on the negotiating table.

This is the essence of our political stagnation. We face international power brokers who operate with the precision of a state machinery, while our leadership counters with the informality of a family council. Negotiations in such settings are not between equals. They are between a well-oiled institution and a gathering in government attire, pretending to statehood.

Somalia deserves a delegation that meets discretion with discretion, strategy with strategy, and national interest with unwavering resolve. We must demand a government that understands diplomacy is not a family affair, but the serious business of safeguarding sovereignty. Until then, we will continue to bargain away our future at tables where only one side knows the rules of the game.

Abstract
This paper analyzes the political confrontation between Puntland President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed and Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi’s government following the 2000 Arta peace process.Drawing on the eyewitness account of Ismail H. Warsame, Chief of Staff of the Puntland Presidency, it argues that Ethiopia’s strategy of coercive mediation—using diplomatic pressure to enforce its security interests—was met with sophisticated resistance. The study demonstrates how Yusuf leveraged tactics of boycott, alternative alliance-building, and the invocation of sub-state institutional legitimacy to counter both Ethiopian hegemony and perceived manipulation by Djibouti. This clash crystallized a pattern of deep-seated distrust, revealing that sustainable political solutions in Somalia cannot be imposed by external actors but must emerge from processes that respect local agency.

Introduction
The collapse of the Somali state in 1991 created a political landscape where emergent regional entities like Puntland pursued autonomy while neighboring states,particularly Ethiopia, intervened to shape outcomes. Prime Minister Meles Zenawi’s government adopted a dual role as both mediator and power broker in Somalia, driven by a policy of “securitized regionalism” aimed at neutralizing threats and maintaining influence (Abbink, 2003). This paper examines a critical episode in this dynamic: the attempt by Ethiopia to compel Puntland’s Abdullahi Yusuf to endorse the Transitional National Government (TNG) created at the Djibouti-hosted Arta Conference, and Yusuf’s decisive resistance.

Using the first-hand testimony of Ismail H. Warsame (2021), a central participant in these events, this study contends that the post-Arta confrontation was not merely a diplomatic dispute but a defining moment that highlighted the limits of external coercion. It reveals how Somali leaders, even from a position of relative weakness, exercise significant agency by strategically navigating the demands of regional powers. The enduring legacy of this clash is a persistent distrust that continues to complicate relations between Somalia and Ethiopia.

The Arta Conference and the Roots of Contention
The Arta Conference(2000) was a significant international effort to re-establish a central government in Somalia, resulting in the TNG. However, the process was flawed. From the perspective of Puntland officials, including Chief of Staff Ismail Warsame, the conference was compromised by the meddling of Djiboutian President Ismail Omar Guelleh, who was seen as steering outcomes to favor certain Mogadishu-based actors (Warsame, 2021). Furthermore, the exclusion of major armed factions and regional leaders like Yusuf led Puntland to reject the TNG’s legitimacy. For Yusuf, endorsing Arta meant surrendering Puntland’s hard-won autonomy to a process he viewed as illegitimate and externally manipulated.

Ethiopia’s Coercive Mediation
Alarmed by the TNG’s perceived links to Islamist elements,Ethiopia moved to control the political fallout. As recounted by Warsame, Addis Ababa deployed a strategy of coercive mediation. This involved dispatching a private jet to transport the Puntland delegation to Djibouti, where senior Ethiopian officials like Foreign Minister Seyoum Mesfin applied direct pressure on Yusuf to join the TNG. The objective was clear: to incorporate and thereby neutralize a powerful rival by bringing him under the umbrella of an Ethiopian-influenced government. Yusuf was faced with a choice: submit to Ethiopian and Djiboutian dictates or chart an independent course.

The Repertoire of Somali Agency: Boycott, Alliances, and Institutional Legitimacy
Abdullahi Yusuf’s response demonstrated a sophisticated repertoire of resistance.His strategy was threefold:

1. Conditional Demands: He countered Ethiopian pressure not with a flat refusal, but with a strategic condition: the inclusion of Mogadishu’s powerful warlords, who had also been excluded from Arta. This was a move to undermine the TNG’s exclusivity and strengthen his own bargaining position.
2. Symbolic Boycott: Yusuf and his delegation ultimately refused the Ethiopian-chartered flight, opting instead for commercial travel. This was a powerful symbolic act, asserting independence from Addis Ababa’s orchestration.
3. Invocation of Institutional Sovereignty: Most significantly, Yusuf insisted that any decision to join the TNG required consultation with Puntland’s legislative council. This elevated his resistance from a personal stance to a defense of Puntland’s institutional sovereignty, providing a legitimate platform to reject external coercion.

This combination of tactics illustrates that Somali actors were not passive recipients of foreign policy but active strategists working to defend their political interests and institutional projects.

Consequences and Enduring Distrust
The immediate consequence was a sharp rift between Yusuf and Zenawi.Ethiopia temporarily shifted its support to other Somali figures. The fluidity of Somali politics, however, led to a paradoxical outcome: by 2004, Yusuf became president of the Ethiopian-backed Transitional Federal Government (TFG). This shift underscores the pragmatic, interest-driven nature of alliances in the region. However, the foundational distrust born from the Arta confrontation persisted. Yusuf’s presidency remained fraught with tension and ultimately ended in 2008 amid disagreements over Ethiopian military presence, proving the instability of arrangements built on coerced cooperation.

Conclusion
The clash between Abdullahi Yusuf and Meles Zenawi over the Arta Conference was a microcosm of broader regional dynamics.Ethiopia’s coercive mediation collided with the determined agency of a Somali leader who skillfully used diplomatic conditioning, symbolic actions, and claims to institutional legitimacy to resist. The episode demonstrates that while external powers can influence Somali politics, they cannot control them without generating resistance and enduring suspicion. The lesson for contemporary state-building and mediation efforts is clear: sustainable peace requires inclusive processes that respect local autonomy and agency. Solutions imposed through pressure risk replicating the very cycles of conflict and fragmentation they aim to resolve.

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References

Abbink, J. (2003). Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa after the Cold War: The politics of securitization. African Affairs, 102(406), 507–523.

Warsame, I. H. (2021, January 31). Departing ways with Meles Zenawi government. Warsame Digital Media. https://ismailwarsame.blog/2021/01/31/departing-ways-with-meles-zenawi-government/

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/18n5FN9cU7/

Executive Summary

Puntland’s gravest threat is not foreign invasion but government inaction. The blood spilled in Garowe’s elections has gone unanswered; criminals roam free, emboldened by silence. Now, Mogadishu-aligned actors shift their operations into Garowe itself, embedding within clan networks and pushing SSC-style alternatives to hollow Puntland from within—while President Deni looks away, chasing Villa Somalia. Refusal to enforce the law is complicity. Each unpunished crime invites the next; each silence cedes sovereignty. Puntland is not a pawn on Mogadishu’s chessboard. It demands leadership with courage to defend its institutions before the point of no return.

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Full Editorial

The law is not ornamental prose for dusty shelves nor a polite suggestion to be ignored at will. It is the foundation of governance—the shield that protects rulers and ruled alike. When broken and left unenforced, it ceases to be law at all. What follows is impunity, and impunity is the slow poison that kills a state from within.

Puntland today stands at that precipice. Pre-election violence that should have provoked swift justice was buried under silence. Who answers for the blood spilled in Garowe during the last election cycle? Dozens of lives were lost—yet not a single perpetrator has been held to account. Instead, those responsible are emboldened, regrouping and destabilizing Puntland from Mogadishu and Laascaanood, daring the state to act. They test the limits of our patience and sovereignty with confidence that there will be no reckoning.

And what has been the response from the Deni Administration? A studied look in the other direction. Call it cowardice, call it cynical calculation—the result is the same: Puntland’s stability pawned off for short-term political convenience. Worse still, these dark forces are not hiding in caves or compounds. They walk freely in Garowe itself—the seat of government—shielded by clan structures and emboldened by local advocates. This is not merely negligence; it is betrayal.

What is the broader plan? The shift of political operations from Mogadishu into Garowe is no accident. It is a calculated strategy to destabilize Puntland at its core while Deni’s focus drifts toward Villa Somalia. Federal-aligned actors have perfected this playbook: infiltrate through local allies, fuel clan divisions, and legitimize alternative administrations like SSC-Khaatumo to chip away at Puntland’s territorial and political coherence. The aim is simple—hollow Puntland from within while presenting Mogadishu as the indispensable center of power.

President Deni seems to believe appeasement will smooth his way to the throne of Villa Somalia. But Puntland is not a pawn on Mogadishu’s chessboard. It is a hard-won state, built with blood, sacrifice, and struggle. To gamble with its security for personal ambition is a sin history does not forgive. The price of inaction will be fragmentation: Garowe reduced to a hollow capital, districts peeling away under the lure of federal patronage, and Puntland’s bargaining power within the union stripped bare.

Let us be clear: refusing to enforce the law is not neutrality—it is complicity. Every crime unpunished becomes an invitation to the next. Every silence from leadership is an endorsement of chaos. Each failure to act chips away at Puntland’s sovereignty until nothing is left but a fragile shell ripe for takeover.

Leaders who trade their people’s future for personal gain are condemned not by rhetoric but by history itself. Puntland deserves more than silence, more than cowardice, more than transactional politics. It demands leadership that defends its institutions, enforces its laws, and shields its people. The hour is late, but not yet past saving—if courage replaces calculation before the point of no return.

General Ahmed Qalyare’s martyrdom in the shadows of the CalMiskaad Mountains casts a long light—illuminating a path of supreme sacrifice and exposing the precipice we now face. His fall marks a decisive, and deeply treacherous, turning point. We have entered the conflict’s twilight, where a cornered enemy is at its most lethal, lashing out with the desperate cunning of a wounded beast. Their strategy has narrowed to the ambush in the narrow pass, the booby-trapped trail, the bomb buried in the dark.

In this hour, the greatest threat is not the enemy’s strength, but the whisper of complacency. The courage of Puntland’s forces has brought us here, but ISIS wages a war on the psyche. Their true aim is to poison our resolve with fear, to slow our advance with hesitation, to cloud our vision with exhaustion.

Therefore, we must temper our grief into a weapon of sharper steel. General Qalyare’s sacrifice must forge an even greater discipline, a deeper web of intelligence, and a more relentless campaign to scour the enemy from their mountain lairs. Every valley, every cave, every silent path in the CalMiskaad must be met with unwavering vigilance. The last mile of this journey is often the most dangerous.

To honor the General is to reject the hollow comfort of ‘mission accomplished.’ We honor him not with words, but with action—by ensuring his blood waters the roots of an unshakeable, enduring vigilance. This war will only be over when the last hideout is silent and the last vestige of this ideology has been erased from the land.

General Qalyare has passed the torch. It now burns in our hands—a flame of remembrance and a flare of warning. We must navigate this twilight with the caution of those who know the night, and the iron resolve of those who are determined to greet the dawn. The future is waiting to be written by our next actions.

Date: September 22, 2025
Author:WDM Policy Unit
Subject:Urgent Policy Interventions Required to Halt Environmental Degradation and Secure Puntland’s Economic Future

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1. Executive Summary

Puntland faces an existential environmental crisis characterized by rapid desertification, deforestation, and soil erosion. This degradation directly threatens the state’s economic stability, primarily by undermining the livestock sector and the viability of key infrastructure like the Bosaso trade corridor. The current trajectory, if unaddressed, will lead to increased food insecurity, displacement, and economic collapse. This brief argues that the crisis is not inevitable but is exacerbated by a lack of targeted policy and governance. It proposes immediate, actionable policies focused on banning destructive charcoal exports, launching a large-scale reforestation program, and integrating climate resilience into core economic planning.

2. Context and Problem Analysis

The environmental situation in Puntland has reached a critical point. Anecdotal and observational evidence points to a severe decline in vegetative cover and soil health.

· Economic Lifeline at Risk: The road from Garowe to Bosaso, the state’s primary trade artery, traverses increasingly degraded land. This threatens transport routes and symbolizes the erosion of the natural capital upon which the economy is built.
· Primary Drivers: The key drivers of this crisis are:
  1. Unregulated Charcoal Production: The cutting of trees for charcoal, often for export, is a primary cause of deforestation, destroying biodiversity and reducing soil cohesion.
  2. Climate Shocks: Increased frequency of droughts and flash floods exacerbates land degradation, creating a vicious cycle of poverty and environmental loss.
  3. Policy Gap: The absence of stringent environmental regulations and a strategic vision for natural resource management has allowed these destructive practices to continue unchecked.

3. The Core Challenge: A Governance Gap

The central challenge is a deficit in governance and political will. Environmental protection is often treated as a secondary concern, disconnected from economic and security priorities. The ongoing focus on short-term political maneuvering and revenue collection (e.g., E-Visa fees) occurs at the expense of long-term strategic planning for sustainable development. This failure to act decisively is the greatest amplifier of the environmental threat.

4. Policy Recommendations

The following interventions are recommended for immediate implementation by the Puntland government.

Recommendation 1: Enact and Enforce a Ban on Unregulated Charcoal Production and Export.

· Action: Issue an immediate executive order declaring unregulated charcoal production and export an economic crime, as it destroys long-term economic assets for short-term gain.
· Implementation: Task the Ministry of Environment, in collaboration with security agencies, with enforcing the ban at production sites and key checkpoints on the Bosaso road.

Recommendation 2: Launch a State-Led, Mass Reforestation and Land Rehabilitation Program.

· Action: Establish a “Puntland Green Future Initiative” with the goal of planting ten million native trees annually.
· Implementation: Mobilize public works programs, engage youth groups and local communities, and provide incentives for landowners to participate. This program should be a top priority for public investment.

Recommendation 3: Mainstream Climate Resilience into All Economic Planning.

· Action: Mandate that all major infrastructure projects, including port expansions and road developments, include an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and a climate resilience plan.
· Implementation: The Ministry of Planning must integrate these requirements into its approval process. Development partners should be engaged to provide technical and financial support for building climate-resilient infrastructure.

5. Conclusion

The environmental crisis in Puntland is fundamentally a governance crisis. The choices made today will determine whether Puntland secures a prosperous future or succumbs to irreversible decline. The policy recommendations outlined above provide a clear roadmap for action. By prioritizing environmental security, Puntland’s leadership can protect its people, ensure long-term economic stability, and fulfill its fundamental responsibility to safeguard the state for future generations.

—

WDM Policy Unit advocates for evidence-based policy solutions to promote sustainable development and good governance in the Horn of Africa.

By WDM

Garowe’s past holds a ghost of a different landscape. The late Abdirahman Shuke, former PDRC director, recalled a greener childhood. Today, the city is not just dusty; it feels like a stage for a dystopian drama where the wind is the primary antagonist. The surrounding countryside has become a grim theater of despair, where starving livestock, displaced herders, and charcoal merchants act out a final, desperate play that is consuming the last of the region’s natural wealth—a crisis enabled by political neglect.

The road east from Garowe to Bosaso, Puntland’s economic lifeline to the Gulf of Aden, is a monument to this political failure. This is not a route of development, but a funeral procession for the land itself. The highway cuts through a landscape so severely degraded it resembles a moonscape—a place where the wind now erodes the economy as fiercely as it does the soil, each gust carrying away another layer of Puntland’s future, a direct result of inaction.

If Bosaso is the beating heart of Puntland’s economy, then the surrounding environment is the life-support system that sustains it. That system is now in critical condition, and the diagnosis points to a failure of governance. The advance of desertification, the scouring of arable land by flash floods, and the relentless cutting of trees for charcoal are collectively suffocating the region’s economic potential. No port expansion or foreign investment deal can resuscitate an economy built on dead soil, a reality our leaders refuse to confront.

Confronted with this existential threat, the political response has been a masterclass in negligence. Leadership is preoccupied with divisive squabbles over E-Visa revenues, tribal posturing on social media, and the perpetual calculus of the next election. They are debating who should rule in Villa Somalia while the very foundation of Puntland’s prosperity—its land—turns to dust. We risk a future where Bosaso’s port imports food aid for a starving population instead of exporting livestock to sustain it, a direct consequence of political priorities.

Globally, this locally orchestrated tragedy is either ignored or met with cynical mockery. Climate deniers, from boardrooms to political rallies, dismiss the science as a hoax—a luxury of disbelief afforded to those not yet watching their livelihoods blow away on the wind. The West often frames climate change as a distant, political abstraction, while the Global South lives its brutal, tangible reality. Yet, this global indifference does not absolve Puntland’s own leadership; it makes their proactive role more critical.

It is time to stop dismissing this crisis as an unavoidable “act of God.” This is an act of man, and a failure of politics: a man-made apocalypse fueled by industrial emissions abroad and enabled by local short-sightedness and a catastrophic lack of governance.

WDM CALL TO ACTION

Climate change is not merely an environmental issue; it is the ultimate test of our political will. Puntland must choose to reforest or face irreversible decline. This demands immediate, concrete action that places responsibility squarely on the state:

· A Moratorium and a Mission: Enforce a ban on unregulated charcoal production and launch a massive, state-led reforestation campaign. For every tree cut, ten must be planted. This is a primary function of government, not an optional program.
· Accountability: Treat the export of charcoal not as commerce, but as an economic crime that mortgages the future for temporary gain. The law must recognize the gravity of this destruction.
· Political Reckoning: Make ecological stewardship the central metric of leadership. Any official who ignores this crisis must be held accountable at the ballot box before the next sandstorm buries Bosaso’s lifeline for good.

The alternative is not just a struggling state, but a cautionary tale of political failure written on the dust-blown shores of the Gulf of Aden.

BREAKING: Maddow, Colbert, and Kimmel Just Walked Away From the System — And Built a Newsroom That Has Networks Shaking.
https://harmonieshub.com/posts/ld-breaking-maddow-colbert-and-kimmel-just-walked-away-from-the-system-and-built-a-newsroom-that-has-networks-shaking-ld/

Rachel Maddow, Stephen Colbert, and Jimmy Kimmel have stunned the media world by joining forces to launch an independent newsroom, free from advertisers, corporate gatekeepers, and editorial restraints. Their mission is clear: to expose corruption, challenge power, and deliver journalism that speaks directly to the people.

Frustrated by years of network pressure and watered-down narratives, the trio is tearing down the old rules of broadcasting. Maddow brings her piercing analysis, Colbert his fearless satire, and Kimmel his sharp late-night edge — a fusion designed to disrupt an industry that has grown complacent.

As legacy networks scramble to respond, audiences are rallying behind this bold experiment, calling it the rebirth of real journalism. What began as a daring collaboration now looks like a movement — one that could mark the start of a new era in media.

OP-ED BY MP DR. ABDILLAHI HASHI ABIB (Redrafted by WDM for effect)

September 21, 2025

BREAKING NEWS FROM THE PARLIAMENT FLOOR:

Ladies and gentlemen of Somalia, brace yourselves. While you were busy worrying about inflation, power cuts, and Al-Shabab taxes, a new flight is preparing to land at Aden Adde International Airport this Monday at exactly 17:00 hours — and no, it’s not Turkish Airlines bringing diaspora doctors or UN food aid. It’s Stockholm’s latest gift to Mogadishu: 28 convicted Somali-Swedish criminals, including one INTERPOL-flagged child predator.

Yes, you heard me. Mogadishu — once the proud White Pearl of the Indian Ocean — is now officially the world’s first tax-free penal colony, courtesy of corrupt deal-makers in Villa Somalia.

—

THE SMOKING GUN: THE “SPECIAL CASE” DEAL

For six months, our so-called “officials” — Ahmed Dahir, Kamal Gutale of the PM’s Office, and Yahya Hagi, the unelected “De Facto DG” of Immigration — have turned Mogadishu into a revolving door for European rejects. For a mere $45,000 per head, these gentlemen of high office have been happily importing Europe’s finest: rapists, gang leaders, and yes, pedophiles, freshly deported from Sweden, Norway, and the UK.

If this were a livestock contract, at least we’d get a quarantine certificate. Instead, these criminals are quietly released into the streets of Mogadishu — no tracking, no parole officers, no plan. Just dumped like toxic waste.

—

THIS IS NOT IMMIGRATION — IT IS TREASON

Let us be very clear:

This is not “repatriation.”

This is not “diaspora return.”

This is bribery, state capture, and human trafficking at the highest levels.

Mogadishu’s streets are already struggling under the weight of unemployment, insecurity, and militia checkpoints — do we now need Scandinavian gangsters setting up branch offices of Stockholm’s Somali Mafia in Hamar Weyne?

—

THE CALL TO ACTION

I demand:

1. Immediate cancellation of Monday’s “Special Case” flight.

2. Arrest and prosecution of every official who signed this secret deal.

3. A parliamentary inquiry into how Mogadishu became Europe’s preferred crime-disposal site.

4. A national policy that forbids importing convicts as a form of development aid.

Somalia is not for sale. We are not Europe’s landfill.

—

A FINAL WORD TO EUROPE & THEIR LOCAL AGENTS

If Stockholm, Brussels, or London wish to rehabilitate criminals, they have excellent prisons, psychologists, and probation programs. Don’t export your social failures to us. Mogadishu is struggling to keep its own streets safe — we do not need to add “Swedish gang wars” to the agenda.

As a candidate for President of Somalia, I vow this betrayal will be stopped dead in its tracks. The Pearl of the Indian Ocean deserves better than to become Europe’s Guantanamo Bay.

Respectfully but ruthlessly,

Dr. Abdillahi Hashi Abib, BA, MA, MASc, Ph.D
Member, Foreign Affairs Committee
Candidate for President of the Federal Republic of Somalia

abdillahi.abib@parliament.gov.so / dheemaal@yahoo.com
W: +1-571-436-7586 | M: +252-6108-22469

Mogadishu, September 21, 2025 – Warsame Digital Media (WDM) is issuing an urgent humanitarian appeal following the displacement of residents from Mogadishu’s Daynile district. Our offices are receiving desperate pleas for help, with many asking for as little as $5 to meet basic needs.

This crisis stems from the recent government demolition of homes and neighborhoods, actions that have left countless families homeless, hungry, and without shelter. When a state’s policies force its citizens to beg for survival from the diaspora, it fails in its most fundamental duty.

We call on our readers and the international community to help. Even a small contribution can provide a lifeline.

· Donate: Contribute to reputable charities operating in Mogadishu.
· Share: Raise awareness of this crisis.
· Act: Demand accountability from those in power.

Do not let these cries for help go unanswered. Stand with the people of Daynile.

——
Warsame Digital Media is an independent Somali news outlet committed to reporting truth and advocating for the public interest.

#Mogadishu #Daynile #Somalia #HumanitarianCrisis

Reputable Mogadishu-Based Charities / NGOsSomali Charity for Relief and Development (SCRD) Community-driven sustainable development; humanitarian assistance; advocacy; health, education, WASH, and economic empowerment. Mogadishu. Email: info@somalicharityrelief.so
Juba Foundation Works with displaced communities; provides education, shelter, protection, health, nutrition, WASH; relief & emergency programs. HQ: Waberi District, House No.8, Maka Al-Mukarama Road (behind Cinema Somalia), Mogadishu. Phone: +252 61 5571454. Email: info@jubafoundation.org
Hormuud Salaam Foundation Local foundation doing humanitarian work (often shelter, livelihoods, etc.), focused in Mogadishu and areas around. Opp. Imamu Shafie School, KM4, Hodan District, Mogadishu. Email: info@hormuudsalaamfoundation.org. Phone: +252 1 859259 / +252 1 859258.
Nile Foundations Works in Mogadishu (and other parts of Somalia) on health, community development, possibly emergency relief. KM5, Zoobe Street, Mogadishu. Email: nilefoundations@gmail.com. Phone: 0613361655.
Elman Peace & Human Rights Center Founded in Mogadishu; work includes peace building, empowerment, human rights, assistance for gender-based violence survivors via Sister Somalia; counseling, housing support, advocacy. Based in Mogadishu. (They have a strong track record and recognition locally & internationally.)
IIDA Women’s Development Organisation Women’s empowerment, advocacy, peacebuilding, training, rights of children and youth; works in Mogadishu and beyond. HQ in Mogadishu. Contact via their website (IIDA) for specific donation channels.

Benjamin Netanyahu is a man besieged, not by Hamas rockets, but by a shifting reality he long believed he could control. His shock is palpable—not stemming from any pang of conscience for the tens of thousands dead in Gaza, but from the deafening silence now emanating from sections of his once-reliable cheering section in the West. His lifelong political insurance policy—“do whatever you want, America will pay the bill and provide diplomatic cover”—is showing catastrophic cracks, threatening to expire in full view of the world.

In a monstrous gamble, Netanyahu went full rogue. Betting that the sheer, brutal arithmetic of violence—carpet-bombing one of the most densely populated places on earth, systematically starving its people, and flattening its hospitals and universities—would finally “solve” the Palestinian question. This strategy, however, is born of his own cynical creation. For years, his policy was to financially prop up Hamas, funneling Qatari millions into Gaza to bolster the militants as a wedge against the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, deliberately sabotaging the prospects for a unified Palestinian state and a negotiated peace. He believed he could manage a controlled burn of a contained conflict. Now, the fire he fed has consumed his legacy.

Instead of security, he has achieved a darkly historic first: becoming an Israeli prime minister openly branded a war criminal on the floors of Western parliaments and denounced by a U.N. commission of inquiry. For the first time in living memory, the phrases “international law” and “Israel’s actions” are being uttered in the same breath across global media—and not as a cynical punchline, but as a serious indictment.

This is Netanyahu’s Gaza Gamble: a scorched-earth campaign of collective punishment so extreme, so televised, and so digitally documented that it has forced the world to use vocabulary it had reserved for history’s darkest chapters. The irony is lethally tragic. He believes this carnage is saving Israel. In truth, he is single-handedly excavating its diplomatic grave. The foundational myth of Israel’s eternal impunity is shattering.

This tragedy is compounded by the haunting accusations surrounding the October 7th attack itself. Beyond the failed strategy of empowerment, some within Israel’s own security establishment and bereaved families now level a far more damning charge: that Netanyahu, warned of potential violence, gave standing-down orders to forces near Gaza, a catastrophic miscalculation or neglect that left kibbutzim and military bases vulnerable to Hamas’s heinous assault. Whether born of arrogance or incompetence, this failure is the original sin of the ensuing apocalypse, a fact that fuels the domestic fury against him.

One day very soon, Netanyahu will wake to a chilling discovery: his entire war machine is sustained not by righteousness, but by the waning patience of a single superpower, the diminished influence of a powerful lobby, and the world’s fast-depleting reserves of political hypocrisy.

And here is the strategic blunder that will define his legacy: he has deliberately, viciously blurred the critical lines of identity. There is a profound difference between the nation of Israel and the political project of Zionism, just as there is a chasm between the terror group Hamas and the two million Palestinian civilians of Gaza. By conflating them, Netanyahu has made every Israeli bomb a referendum on Israel’s own legitimacy, radicalizing a new generation and alienating its most crucial allies. He has become Hamas’s greatest, if unwitting, recruiter.

Meanwhile, the international response paints a picture of a world order in crisis. Western capitals, gripped by a guilty paralysis, are now breaking ranks in an unprecedented wave. In a stunning diplomatic rupture, key European nations are formally recognizing Palestinian statehood against the explicit wishes of the United States, signaling that Washington’s veto at the UN Security Council is no longer a magic wand to halt global consensus but a symbol of its own isolation. This move leaves the U.S. and Israel as outliers, clinging to a failed status quo. Much of the Global South—the Muslim world, Asia, Africa, and Latin America—watches this Western fracture with grim validation, having long seen not a complex conflict but a stark colonial nightmare, and are rapidly moving to isolate Israel in every international forum. Theirs is not sleepwalking, but a gathering storm of a new geopolitical alignment, one where Western double standards on human rights are no longer tolerated.

Netanyahu’s ultimate tragedy—and Israel’s—is that he may yet claim a pyrrhic victory in Gaza, reducing it to rubble and calling it peace. But in the process, he has mortgaged his nation’s future for a fleeting moment of vengeful dominance. He will have lost the war for history, forever remembered not as a protector of Israel, but as the architect of its deepest isolation—the leader who first empowered a monster, then failed to protect his people from it, and finally unleashed a hell that shattered his country’s standing on the world stage.

Ismail H Warsame                              Warsame Digital Media (WDM)   September 21, 2025

Abstract

While international counter-terrorism discourse concerning Somalia has predominantly focused on the Federal Government in Mogadishu and the threat of al-Shabaab in the south, the semi-autonomous state of Puntland has conducted a sustained, iterative counter-insurgency (COIN) campaign in its northern territories for over three decades. This article argues that through a process of tactical adaptation and strategic learning, Puntland has developed an effective, locally-led doctrine focused on severing the logistical connection between vulnerable port settlements and mountainous insurgent sanctuaries. By analyzing five distinct conflict phases from the rise of Al-Itihaad al-Islami (AIAI) to the recent offensive against Islamic State affiliates in the Cal Miskaad range, this study demonstrates how regional authorities can develop a sustainable capacity to degrade transnational terrorist cells. This history, often overlooked due to its remote theater and fragmented documentation, offers a significant case study in the primacy of terrain and logistics in asymmetric warfare. The analysis draws on United Nations monitoring reports, historical studies, and the firsthand accounts of local officials like Ismail H. Warsame to articulate a coherent narrative of Puntland’s strategic evolution.

Keywords: Somalia, Puntland, Counter-Insurgency, Al-Shabaab, Islamic State, Terrorism, Horn of Africa, Logistics, Regional Security

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Introduction: The Littoral-Highland Battlespace

The strategic geography of Northern Somalia presents a quintessential challenge for counter-insurgency (COIN). The rugged Cal Miskaad and Golis mountain ranges, with their complex systems of caves and wadis, offer natural sanctuary for non-state actors.[^1] This terrain is juxtaposed with a long, porous coastline dotted with isolated villages and inlets, providing critical access points for personnel and material. The persistent objective for a succession of jihadist groups has been to fuse these two domains—mountain sanctuary and littoral logistics—into a durable operational base.[^2]

Despite the strategic significance of this region, the sustained conflict within Puntland’s borders has received scant scholarly attention compared to the upheavals in South-Central Somalia. This gap in the literature exists because much of Puntland’s conflict has unfolded in inaccessible terrain, was reported in scattered field dispatches and monitoring group memos, and was often overshadowed by concurrent political crises in Mogadishu.[^3] This article synthesizes these fragmented sources to construct a coherent historical narrative. It posits that through a process of iterative learning across three decades, Puntland’s security forces have evolved from reliant on ad-hoc militias to a professionalized, integrated command structure capable of executing a sophisticated COIN doctrine. This doctrine, culminating in the 2024-25 Cal Miskaad offensive, is predicated on a single, consistent strategic imperative: control the coastline to isolate the highlands, thereby rendering terrain-based sanctuaries unsustainable.

The Precedent: Al-Itihaad al-Islami and the Foundational Lessons (Early–Mid 1990s)

Before “counter-terrorism” became a pillar of international engagement with Somalia, Puntland’s founding authorities faced their first organized Islamist challenge. In the early 1990s, Al-Itihaad al-Islami (AIAI), then the most coherent Islamist formation in the country, briefly established a governance project in the major port city of Bosaso.[^4] AIAI sought to impose its Sharia-first system as warlordism raged elsewhere, effectively using the port as a source of revenue and legitimacy.

This experiment was short-lived. SSDF-aligned forces, representing Puntland’s nascent governing authority, rolled back AIAI’s control in the north, while a devastating Ethiopian military intervention smashed its rear bases around Luuq and in the Ogaden corridor.[^5] This initial episode was formative. It imparted two enduring lessons that would echo through subsequent conflicts: first, port cities are high-value strategic prizes whose control is essential for any group seeking sustained operations; and second, the northern mountain ranges, while not the primary front in this early episode, were recognized as potential sanctuaries and force-multipliers. The response also set a precedent for cooperation with external actors, namely Ethiopia, which has remained a recurring feature of Puntland’s security strategy.[^6]

Phase I: The Islamic Courts Union and the Battle of Bandiradley (December 2006)

The rise of the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) in 2006 and its rapid territorial expansion presented a direct conventional threat to Puntland. In late 2006, ICU forces surged northward, with the strategic town of Bandiradley becoming the forward pressure point. The battle for Bandiradley was a short, sharp engagement. Puntland forces, operating in concert with militias from Galmudug and with critical support from Ethiopian units, broke the ICU’s line and pushed it south.[^7]

Strategically, the victory at Bandiradley halted an Islamist pincer movement aimed at Galkayo—a key economic hub—and the artery of the Bari road.[^8] It served as a blocking action, buying Puntland crucial time to harden its internal defenses and consolidate its territorial control. This phase demonstrated Puntland’s initial capacity to integrate external military support and local militias to defeat a conventional advance, reinforcing the lesson that the mountain passes were critical terrain that must be denied to an invading force.

Phase II: The Galgala Insurgency and Attritional Warfare (2009–2011)

Following the conventional defeat of the ICU, the conflict evolved into a protracted insurgency. A former AIAI member, Mohamed Said “Atom,” nested cells and ambush teams within the limestone folds of the Galgala-Calmadow range.[^9] Atom claimed affiliation with al-Shabaab, which was now the dominant jihadist force in the south, operating with a degree of autonomy as a franchise.[^10]

Puntland’s counter-insurgency response became attritional. The Puntland Security Force (PSF), a more professionalized unit, led raids and conducted painstaking ridge-to-ridge clearances. The critical strategic effort, however, was the gradual isolation of Atom’s supply lines extending to the coast.[^11] By late 2010 and into 2011, the hills remained contested but Atom’s cadre had been bled dry and scattered. The Galgala campaign proved a vital lesson: mountainous terrain offers immense advantages to guerrillas, but only if they can maintain a steady flow of logistics. A strategy of littoral denial could starve a mountain-based insurgency.

Phase III & IV: Littoral Maneuver and Jihadist Fracture (2016)

The year 2016 witnessed a tactical shift by insurgents and a fracturing of the jihadist landscape, testing Puntland’s adaptive capacity.

In March, al-Shabaab executed a strategic pivot towards littoral warfare. Fighters landed by boat and overran the small port of Gara’ad (Garacad), briefly opening a second front while operations in Galgala continued.[^12] Puntland forces counter-attacked within days and restored control, but the message was unambiguous: the coastline was a critical vulnerability, and any unpoliced cove could be transformed into a staging point.[^13]

Later that same year, a new threat emerged. An ISIS-aligned splinter faction led by ‘Abd al-Qadir Mu’min seized the coastal town of Qandala, hoisting its flag for several weeks before being ejected.[^14] This event had significant implications. Puntland now faced two distinct jihadist brands—al-Shabaab and ISIS-Somalia—competing for the same strategic space. The response demonstrated Puntland’s growing sophistication; it learned to contain both groups simultaneously and, crucially, to deny either a permanent port facility, adhering to the core principle of its emerging doctrine.

Phase V: The Cal Miskaad Offensive and Doctrine Culmination (2024–2025)

The most recent and large-scale operation represents the maturation of the Puntland Doctrine. In a coordinated multi-service offensive, units from the PSF, Darawish, PMPF, and police surged into the Cal Miskaad range to dismantle the strongholds of ISIS-Somalia.[^15] This campaign was notable for its integration of external enablers, who provided precision strike capabilities, alongside highly mobile local forces with superior knowledge of the terrain. The operation rolled up base clusters, reopened key tracks, and provoked a costly, mass-casualty counterattack by ISIS on December 31, 2024—a sign of the pressure applied. By early 2025, officials reported dozens of sites cleared and significant territory retaken.[^16]

The Cal Miskaad offensive was not merely a tactical victory. It was the culmination of a doctrine hammered out over three decades: treat the littoral-mountain system as an integrated battlespace, close the coves, and starve the hills. It also carried a potent political message: regional forces, with targeted external support, can effectively degrade transnational terrorist cells without waiting on a centralized national command from Mogadishu.[^17] This aligns with the long-standing principle of self-reliance chronicled by local observers of Puntland’s political development.[^18]

Analysis: The Through-Lines of a Doctrine

Synthesizing these five conflicts reveals the consistent pillars of Puntland’s strategic approach:

1. The Primacy of Logistics over Terrain: Every militant surge, from AIAI to ISIS, targeted a port or coastal landing point. Puntland’s strategy correctly identified that controlling terrain is secondary to controlling its sustenance. A mountain sanctuary is worthless without a pipeline of resources.[^19]
2. Adaptive Learning: Puntland’s command structure evolved iteratively in response to new threats. Its forces transformed from ad-hoc militias to a specialized PSF, and finally to an integrated command capable of coordinating multiple units and leveraging external precision support. This organizational learning curve proved steeper than the tactical adaptations of its adversaries.
3. The Efficacy of Regional Initiative: The consistent success factor was local leadership and knowledge. Forces from Puntland, with an intimate understanding of the human and physical geography, proved to be the most effective instrument for COIN in this complex environment. This aligns with the observations of insiders like Ismail H. Warsame, who has chronicled Puntland’s institution-building and its strategic principle of self-reliance in security matters.[^20] The model of local lead with targeted, enabling external help has been the only one to consistently achieve tactical and strategic effects.

Conclusion

The history of conflict in Puntland is not a series of disconnected skirmishes but a continuous, thirty-year arc of strategic learning. The “Puntland Doctrine” that emerged is a pragmatic, terrain-specific approach to counter-insurgency that understands the critical link between logistics and sanctuary. As articulated by local figures like Warsame, this doctrine is rooted in a pragmatic assessment of local needs rather than abstract theories imposed from outside.[^21] The 2024-25 campaign in the Cal Miskaad mountains is not an isolated event but the logical endpoint of a strategy refined since AIAI first tested the defenses of northern ports.

This case study offers broader lessons for security studies and COIN theory. It underscores that effective counter-insurgency often depends on granular, local knowledge and regional initiative rather than solely on centralized national strategies. It also reaffirms the timeless military axiom that logistics, not just terrain, dictate the viability of an insurgency. For policymakers, the Puntland case argues for a model of security cooperation that empowers capable local actors with the precise support they need, rather than imposing top-down, one-size-fits-all solutions. The untold story of Puntland’s long defense of its ridgelines and coastline is, ultimately, a story of strategic adaptation and the enduring importance of controlling the means of sustenance in war.

—

Notes

[^1]: Ken Menkhaus, Somalia: State Collapse and the Threat of Terrorism (New York: Routledge, 2004), 45-48.
[^2]:United Nations Security Council, Report of the Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea, S/2017/924 (New York: United Nations, 2017), 12-15.
[^3]:Stig Jarle Hansen, Al-Shabaab in Somalia: The History and Ideology of a Militant Islamist Group (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 112.
[^4]:Matt Bryden, The Rise and Fall of Al-Itihaad al-Islami in Somalia (Nairobi: UNPD Somalia, 1999), 22.
[^5]:Bryden, Rise and Fall, 28-30.
[^6]:United Nations Security Council, Report of the Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea, S/2010/91 (New York: United Nations, 2010), 51.
[^7]:Hansen, Al-Shabaab in Somalia, 134.
[^8]:United Nations Security Council, S/2010/91, 54.
[^9]:United Nations Security Council, Report of the Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea, S/2022/822 (New York: United Nations, 2022), 19.
[^10]:Hansen, Al-Shabaab in Somalia, 156.
[^11]:United Nations Security Council, S/2017/924, 21.
[^12]:United Nations Security Council, S/2017/924, 34.
[^13]:United Nations Security Council, S/2017/924, 35.
[^14]:United Nations Security Council, S/2017/924, 38-40.
[^15]:United Nations Security Council, S/2022/822, 25.
[^16]:United Nations Security Council, S/2022/822, 27-29.
[^17]:Ismail H. Warsame, “Puntland’s Strategy Against Terrorist Groups,” WardheerNews, October 15, 2016, https://wardheernews.com/puntlands-strategy-terrorist-groups/.
[^18]:Ismail H. Warsame, “The Genesis of Puntland State of Somalia,” (self-published monograph, 2018), 45.
[^19]:Menkhaus, State Collapse, 72.
[^20]:Warsame, “Puntland’s Strategy Against Terrorist Groups.”
[^21]:Warsame, “The Genesis of Puntland State of Somalia,” 102.

—

Bibliography

Bryden, Matt. The Rise and Fall of Al-Itihaad al-Islami in Somalia. Nairobi: UNPD Somalia, 1999.

Hansen, Stig Jarle. Al-Shabaab in Somalia: The History and Ideology of a Militant Islamist Group. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013.

Menkhaus, Ken. Somalia: State Collapse and the Threat of Terrorism. New York: Routledge, 2004.

United Nations Security Council. Report of the Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea. S/2010/91. New York: United Nations, 2010.

———. Report of the Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea. S/2017/924. New York: United Nations, 2017.

———. Report of the Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea. S/2022/822. New York: United Nations, 2022.

Warsame, Ismail H. “Puntland’s Strategy Against Terrorist Groups.” WardheerNews, October 15, 2016. https://wardheernews.com/puntlands-strategy-terrorist-groups/.

———. “The Genesis of Puntland State of Somalia.” Self-published monograph, 2018.