In the 21st century alone, Palmyra, Tigray, the Buddhas of Bamiyan, Odessa, and Khartoum, and many more besides, have all borne witness to targeted cultural violence, wiping out centuries and millennia of worship, artefacts, and unique histories that can never be reclaimed. Some have been targeted for theological or religious reasons– such as the ancient sites in Palmyra by Daesh– or part of a broader genocidal attempt to stamp out a civilisation– as was the case in Tigray– or simply greed– like the looting of the Khartoum museums by the Rapid Support Forces. But in many cases, it denotes a rewriting of history, an attempt by a political movement or armed group to coerce and impose their particular vision for the country on the objects, buildings, and cultural identities that comprise it.
One has to hand it to the Somali Regional State (SRS) President, Mustafa Omer Agjar; in a country not without unpopular politicians, he has a striking ability to aggravate so many in a single stroke. Without warning, on 27 July, the Somali Regional State Council announced that 14 new woredas, four zonal administrations, and 25 municipal leadership offices were to be established. The outcry has been furious and immediate, with senior Oromo and Afar politicians voicing their displeasure at what they perceive as irredentism by the SRS in their regions. Overhauling administrative units along the Oromia-SRS boundary was always likely to prove highly contentious, but the host of changes has triggered major protests in several towns within the SRS as well. With a year out from elections, the much-loathed Agjar appears to be continuing to consolidate his position as regional president.
Last week, a new Somali federal state entitled "North Eastern State of Somalia" (NES) (Dowlad Goboleedka Waqooyi Bari Soomaaliya) was proclaimed and endorsed by Villa Somalia. The culmination of a months-long project directed by the Ministry of Interior, the transformation of the Laas Aanood-based SSC-Khaatumo administration into a supposed 'federal state'-- the first since Hirshabelle-- is being hailed by Somali nationalists as a victory against the 'secessionism' of Somaliland and Puntland's independence from Mogadishu. Though not in full control of either, NES is meant to encompass both Sool and Sanaag, and has been finally bulldozed into existence in the face of public opposition from Puntland, Somaliland, and much of the Warsangeli that the new state claims to represent. The cynical electoral politics of Mogadishu are pushing northern Somalia and Somaliland to the brink of conflict once again.
Two weeks go by, and at least one new maritime agreement on the Somali peninsula has reared its head, with another retaliatory pact to potentially soon follow. The first was between Taiwan and Somaliland, following Hargeisa's Foreign Minister Abdirahman Dahir Osman's visit to Taipei in late July, during which he secured a cooperation agreement between the coastguards of Taiwan and Somaliland. And the inevitable Beijing-Mogadishu response has now arrived, with the Chinese Embassy in Somalia announcing that it has discussed enhancing "cooperation" with the federal government's Coast Guard. As ever, the officials reaffirmed their commitment to "safeguarding national sovereignty and territorial integrity of China and Somalia."
On 5 June, South Sudanese President Salva Kiir declared a six-month state of emergency in Warrap State and Mayom County in Unity State, authorising sweeping security powers justified under 'restoring stability' after a spate of violence in late May. Following intense political violence in Nasir against the White Army earlier this year, the latest emergency decree – and the disarmament campaign that followed – are part of a broader strategy aimed at violently consolidating regime control in the fractious peripheries. And so, amid Kiir's regime succession planning, the ruling clique of Dinka politicians has sought to quash any remaining opposition through its mass arrests and military campaigns in Juba and outside its control, and simultaneously redirecting resource flows to the capital.
Gedo has long served as a useful barometer for the health of relations between Nairobi, Mogadishu, and Addis. Straddling the tri-border Mandera Triangle, the Mareehaan-dominated region of Jubaland has been a key staging post for Al-Shabaab's continued infiltration into Kenya and Ethiopia for years. And as such, both Nairobi and Addis have a vested stake in Jubaland as a security buffer zone against the jihadists, developing close ties with key political actors within Gedo and the southern Federal Member State-- which they helped co-establish in 2013. Over a decade later, with Hassan Sheikh Mohamud back at the helm in Mogadishu, the focus has returned to Gedo, as he has resorted to a well-known destabilising playbook by attempting —and failing —to wrest the Mareehaan into Villa Somalia's orbit. But amid the government's months-long campaign to destabilise Gedo, including seizing Garbahaarey and Luuq from control of Jubaland to carve out Darood tents for its rigged elections, Addis has remained silent-- until now.
Ethiopia is fast approaching another grim anniversary-- two years of the Fano insurgency in the Amhara region, an armed conflict that shows no sign of abating and that has exacted a savage humanitarian toll. In August 2023, a disparate collection of former militiamen from the Tigray war, former Amhara Special Forces, and disgruntled farmers under the banner of 'Fano' militias escalated their operations, attacking and seizing government buildings and military posts in the Amhara region. In the preceding months, the government had sought to suppress elements of their former allies, seeking to arrest and disarm the varied movement with prominent strains of Amhara nationalism, but to no avail. And in the two years since Fano fighters briefly seized Lalibela on 1 August 2023, much of the Amhara region has witnessed a near-total breakdown in governance and law and order, with several thousand killed and many tens of thousands displaced.
It is now official: Somalia’s National Security Adviser (NSA) Hussein Sheikh Ali, aka “Hussein Ma’alin’ has stepped down. On his X (formerly Twitter) handle, Hussein described himself as “former” NSA. On Sunday evening, the Office of the Prime Minister put out a short statement to say Mukhtar Mohammed Hassan has been appointed acting National Security Adviser. Mukhtar is not well-known and the assumption of many is that he will be a placeholder until a suitable replacement is found. Both Hussein and Villa Somalia remain reticent in explaining what exactly happened and why the changes are being made.
In December 2023, the final elements of the UN Security Council sanctions regime were lifted on the Somali federal government. Mogadishu's celebrations were rapturous, with President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud declaring that Mogadishu could now "purchase any weapons needed" and that "friendly nations and allies" could hand over the "necessary weapons without any limitations or restrictions." After years of lobbying, the final albatross around the neck of the federal government was to be lifted, and the Somali National Army (SNA) handed the heavy firepower required to conquer Al-Shabaab once and for all. Of course, over 18 months on, quite the reverse has happened, with Al-Shabaab having swept across much of central Somalia since February-- despite the glut of Egyptian and Turkish weapons donated to Villa Somalia in the past year. And Puntland's seizure of the MV Sea World, a Comorian-flagged vessel carrying Turkish arms and armoured vehicles last week, has thrown the question of the lifting of the arms embargo back into the open.
Of any region in the world, the Horn of Africa is home to some of the oldest, richest, and varied religious traditions, featuring sites such as the Masjid al-Qiblatayn in Zeila and artefacts from the ancient Axumite kingdom in Tigray. For centuries, faith has and continues to play an integral part in the daily lives of most within the region, with Islam and Christianity the two dominant religions today. And in turn, spiritual life has naturally shaped the politics of the Horn, with elites having long grappled with how best to accommodate, co-opt, or suppress religious movements and identities. Over the centuries, this has encompassed Muslim leaders couching their fight in the rhetoric of jihad as well as the 'civilising' expansion of the Orthodox Christian Ethiopian Emperors into neighbouring regions in the 19th century.
In just a handful of days, Sabiid in Lower Shabelle has fallen back to Al-Shabaab, Turkish arms linked to government-aligned arms traffickers were seized off Puntland's coast, and armed clashes erupted in Beledhawo in Gedo between Jubaland and federal troops. With the immediate threat of Mogadishu falling to Al-Shabaab having passed for the time being, Villa Somalia has returned to its favoured agenda, wielding its security apparatus not against the jihadists but against political opposition. Subsequent violence in Gedo, Sanaag, and the collapse of the Lower Shabelle operations are all emblematic of Villa Somalia reverting to its coercive tactics to attempt to forcibly impose its will on the peripheries. But it is losing-- and badly, having entirely failed to learn the lessons of Ras Kamboni in December 2024 when federal troops were routed by Jubaland.
In a triumphant parliamentary address at the beginning of July, Ethiopian PM Abiy Ahmed announced that the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) was finally complete. After well over a decade and USD 4.2 billion spent, GERD is the largest hydroelectric dam on the continent– stretching over a mile wide and 140 metres high in Ethiopia's western Benishangul-Gumuz region on the Blue Nile tributary. And with preparations underway for a likely lavish official inauguration in September, Abiy also took the opportunity to invite the leaders of downstream Egypt and Sudan. Striking a conciliatory tone, Abiy pledged that "the Renaissance Dam is not a threat, but a shared opportunity" and asserted "Egypt's Aswan Dam has never lost a single litre of water due to the GERD."
Never, in the history of Somalia's contemporary governance, has so much political goodwill, both domestic and international, been squandered by anyone as President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud has done in the past 12 months. In the early morning hours of 16 May 2022, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud (HSM) was elected as the 10th President of Somalia, marking his second term, following his first from 2012 to 2017. Optimism was high, partly due to his previous experience as president and partly because of the deep unpopularity of his predecessor, Mohamed Abdullahi Farmaajo, with many relieved that the incumbent had been defeated. However, just over three years later, the outlook in Somalia remains unrelentingly bleak due to HSM's destabilising political agenda.
Somalia remains heavily-dependent on external aid to fund humanitarian and development projects and plug a huge budget deficit to keep the federal state functioning. In 2025, 67% of Somalia's USD 1.32 billion federal budget was funded by external donors. In 2022, Somalia received over USD 2.2 billion in humanitarian assistance, according to figures released by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) – a record high by sub-Saharan standards, but still far below the requirements with climate change distress and armed conflicts continuing to aggravate living conditions for millions of Somalis.
As Sudan experiences its third lean season since the start of the civil war, the humanitarian crisis continues to rapidly deteriorate. First officially declared in August 2024, famine continues to sweep across the country as fighting intensifies in Darfur and Kordofan. The latest UN Integrated Food Security Phase Classification update warns that Phase 5 (Famine) could spread to 17 additional areas, with 8.5 million people in Phase 4 (Emergency) and over 756,000 in Phase 5 (Famine). The scale of hunger is unprecedented in Sudan’s history, with nearly half of Sudan’s 50 million people now acutely food insecure and 637,000 facing “catastrophic” hunger – the highest figure globally, according to WFP. This is not just a by-product of war, but a deliberate tactic used to weaken and manipulate vulnerable populations. Both the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have weaponised starvation through systematic obstruction, looting, and destruction of food systems.
The loss of Moqokori and Tardo – both ma'awiisley strongholds – in the past week has been a symbolic defeat for the Federal Government of Somalia (FGS). After being won from the insurgents nearly three years earlier by the ma'awiisley – local clan militias raised by communities in Hiiraan and adjacent Middle Shabelle - the loss of these towns is not simply another military setback; it starkly reveals a major political and strategic failure by the FGS. The grassroots Hawaadle clan fighters who held the frontline have been effectively abandoned as Mogadishu quietly shifted focus away from empowering these local forces, sacrificing their local capacity in favour of the Somali National Army (SNA), which is neither capable nor professional, ceding the initiative back to Al-Shabaab.
Healthcare workers across Ethiopia launched unprecedented strikes in 2025, bringing an already fragile system to its knees. Beginning mid-May, over 15 ,000 doctors, nurses and other health workers across the country conducted a strike to protest chronic low wages and deteriorating working conditions. By late May, the strikes had spread nationwide, paralysing whatever was left of the public hospitals and clinics.
Hospitals and health clinics are generally not targeted deliberately in armed conflict because a belligerent could lose international credibility immediately and be liable for prosecution under the International Humanitarian Law. In recent years, as armed conflicts have surged and the fog of war rendered any reporting hard to verify, hospitals are increasingly becoming targets in themselves.
Another week, and the federal government's destabilising antics have threatened to tip yet more of the country into open conflict. Never mind Al-Shabaab seizing Mokoqori in Hiiraan and routing the Hawaadle ma'awiisley, Villa Somalia's attention remains trained on pressing ahead with its unilateral one-person, one-vote (OPOV) agenda. In recent months, an increasingly central plank of this has become SSC-Khaatumo, the Dhulbahante-dominated administration in the contested Sool region, with its interim president Abdikhadir Ahmed Aw-Ali 'Firdhiye' a prominent member of the new Justice and Solidarity Party (JSP). In exchange, an unconstitutional federal member state-formation process has been accelerated, attempting to 'merge' Sool-based SSC-Khaatumo with a fringe group from the Warsangeli-majority Sanaag region, similarly claimed by both Puntland and Somaliland
Facing its bleakest nadir in decades, every country in the Horn of Africa is currently grappling with some form of constitutional or succession crisis. Over several years, the region has gradually slid into a state of near-permanent emergency, with armed conflict, major humanitarian disasters, and political instability all rife. In turn, the legitimacy and presence of the 'state' is contracting across the board, driving nearly every debt-saddled regional government to the Gulf for discreet patronage to prop up their fragile ruling coalitions. This combination of state capture and broad insecurity is both compounding and undermining attempts at a coherent regional response to issues such as the war in Sudan.