Issue No. 514

Last October, Al-Shabaab Inqimasin (suicide assault infantry) overran a National Intelligence and Security Agency (NISA) base in Mogadishu, freeing several high-ranking jihadist detainees and destroying substantial quantities of intel. A highly choreographed attack, the Inqimasin had disguised their vehicle in official NISA daub, weaving easily through the heavily guarded checkpoints dotting the capital to reach the Godka Jilicow compound before blowing open the gates with a suicide car bomb. In the months since, Al-Shabaab's prodigious media arm-- Al-Kataib Media Foundation-- has drip-fed images and videos drawn from the Godka Jilicow attack, revelling in their infiltration of Mogadishu as well as the dark history of the prison itself. And in a chilling propaganda video broadcast at Eid al-Fitr last week, it was revealed that among the Inqimasin's number was none other than the son of Al-Shabaab's spokesperson Ali Mohamed Rage, better known as Ali Dheere.

In early 1987, the commander of the Sudanese People's Liberation Army/Movement (SPLA/M), John Garang, is reported to have issued a radio order, instructing his field officers to gather children to be dispatched to Ethiopia for military training. Garang's command conveyed the rebels' institutionalisation of a well-established practice of child soldiering; a dynamic that has been reproduced by virtually every major armed actor in Sudan-- and later South Sudan-- since independence. Today, as war has continued to ravage and metastasise across Sudan, few communities and children have been left untouched by the ruinous violence.

The Rahanweyne Resistance Army (RRA) did not emerge from a shir (conference) in October 1995 to defend a government, nor to overthrow it. Rather, the militia —whose name was even explicit in its defence of a unified Digil-Mirifle identity —arose from the ruin of Bay and Bakool in the years prior, and decades of structural inequalities.

War has been averted in Tigray-- for now. In early February, tens of thousands of Ethiopian federal soldiers and heavy artillery streamed northwards, readying themselves on the edges of the northernmost region for seemingly imminent conflict.

The battle for South West—and Somalia's political future—continues apace. With the brittle alliance between South West State President Abdiaziz Laftagareen and President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud having broken down spectacularly, the federal government is pouring in arms and forces to oust the Digil-Mirifle leader. Staring down the barrel of the formal opposition holding three Federal Member States and, with it, greater territory, population, and clan, Villa Somalia is looking to exploit intra-Digil-Mirifle grievances—and convince Addis—to keep its monopolistic electoral agenda alive. But this morning, Laftagareen announced a 9-member electoral committee to hastily steer his re-election, bringing the formal bifurcation of the Somali state ever closer.

The history of the contemporary Horn of Africa is littered with abandoned and abrogated peace agreements-- as well as a handful of successes. A petri dish (or Pandora's box) of issues related to sovereignty, inter- and intra-state conflict, and the nature of the state itself, the region has also been a laboratory for numerous forms of peacemaking and dealmaking. Yet in such a fractured regional order, 'peace' and 'conflict' should not be considered binaries, but rather as part of a sliding scale, where civilians may be targeted during the active fighting in South Sudan or suffer as part of a 'negative peace' in Tigray. Today, with predatory peace in South Sudan, Sudan, and perhaps now Tigray, having given way to renewed violence on a broad scale, what is the nature and future of peacemaking in the Horn of Africa?

The worm, it seems, has finally turned. After years serving as a prop for President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud's monocratic aspirations, Abdiaziz Laftagareen, the leader of South West State, has clapped back against Villa Somalia, accusing the federal government of – among other things - dividing the country, monopolising public resources, colluding with Al-Shabaab, and leading Somalia back into state failure.

Six general elections in Ethiopia have been held since the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) implemented its ethnic-federal system in 1995. Each has delivered victory to the incumbent government of the day — including, most recently, the deeply discredited 2021 polls held in the shadow of the Tigray war. Once again, with Ethiopia's 7th elections — scheduled for 1 June 2026 — fast approaching, few anticipate anything other than a coronation in a country mired in raging insurgencies, state contraction, and the threat of broader inter-state conflict.

Last April, General Sheegow Ahmed Ali-- once the highest-ranking military officer hailing from the Somali Bantu-- died in ignominy in a Mogadishu hospital. A senior commander who had previously spearheaded operations in south-central Somalia, Sheegow had been summarily sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2023 for operating a militia in the capital. His death-- mourned widely and protested in Mogadishu and Beledweyne-- returned the spotlight to the pernicious issues of discrimination in the Somali National Army (SNA).