Issue No. 559

Hiiraan in Turmoil - Implications
 

On 18 June Hirshabelle President Ali Gudlaawe fired popular Hiiraan Governor Ali Jeyte Osman, triggering a political crisis that continues to simmer. Jeyte has since refused to step down, insisting the dismissal was ‘unlawful.’ The region’s main airport in the town of Beledweyne - Ugaas Khalif – remains closed. Jeyte has threatened that any aircraft flying to the airport without his approval would be shot down. This week, the regional leader also rebuffed calls for talks from the federal government in Mogadishu.
 
Jeyte came to prominence in late August 2022 when he mobilised local clans to fight against Al-Shabaab. The governor became the public face of the Ma’awiisley campaign. He was lionised and embraced as a hero. The picture of Jeyte in combat uniform, an AK-47 slung over his shoulder became a popular image on Somali social media.
 
The speed with which a man so recently hailed as a hero has come to be seen as a villain is not unfamiliar in Somalia’s tempestuous, treacherous and dynamic politics. Nonetheless, it is disappointing that a region previously at the epicentre of an unprecedented clan revolt against Al-Shabaab is now engulfed in political infighting and instability.
 
Jeyte was embraced by Villa Somalia at the start of the Ma’awiisley campaign. The governor comes from the Hawaadle clan– considered maternal uncles of President Hassan Sheikh Mohamoud. Jeyte frequently flew to Mogadishu; he had direct access to Villa Somalia, and benefited from federal largesse. During the Ma’awiisley campaign, he was pictured distributing sums of cash to combatants. But his charisma and courage also gave momentum to the popular offensive. Mogadishu was content to maintain its relationship with Jeyte as long as villages and towns were recovered from Al-Shabaab and the militants were kept on the back foot. National and regional leaders, however, appear to have been made jealous by Jeyte’s rising profile; they were biding their time. The stalling of another Ma’awiisley campaign-- this time in Hiiraan-- from February 2023 gave Jeyte’s adversaries a chance to move against him.
 
The mercurial Jeyte is not easy to get along with. He can be abrasive, intransigent and combative. He relishes the stage and courts publicity, the foil to Hirshabelle President Gudlaawe, who shuns the spotlight, relying on back room deal making in his politics.
 
Tensions between Gudlaawe and Jeyte have been rising for months. Jeyte wanted greater latitude to manage the offensive, as well as the politics of districts recovered from Al-Shabaab. The two leaders clashed over taxation, resource distribution and checkpoints. Gudlaawe appeared to want to clip Jeyte’s wings before the next regional elections.
 
The former governor has now threatened to carve out a new ‘Hiiraan State.’ The idea is not new. Hirshabelle is a merger of two distinct regions – Hiiraan and Shabelle. Periodically disaffection with this arrangement will surface. The Hawaadle, Galje’el and other clans in Hiiraan resent the dominance of Harti Abgaal in Hirshabelle.
 
Jeyte is therefore tapping into a reservoir of clan discontent when he raises the idea of a new state. But he is almost certain to fail in creating one. The provisional Somali Constitution has an ‘opt in’ clause (“two or more regions can create a state”) but no ‘opt out’ clause. Jeyte’s attempt to rally clans against the decision to create a seceded Hiiraan state has not succeeded.
 
Nevertheless, to dwell on the Jeyte-Gudlaawe feud is to miss the bigger picture. The crisis in Hiiraan is symptomatic of wider malaise – the inability of regional and federal actors to steer the ship of state in the same direction. The elite in Mogadishu have shown no aptitude in managing the politics of the periphery. Their instinct appears to be to impose or depose. This is the current dynamic playing out in Hiiraan. Villa Somalia may prefer a leader it can manage rather than an effective leader. Gudlaawe fits the mould.
 
Al-Shabaab dislikes Jeyte and has reportedly used some of its revenue to campaign against him. A reliable source from the region has said that millions of dollars may have been used to seek his ouster. This highlights an important issue rarely discussed; Al-Shabaab fears localised clan rebellions more than it fears the federal offensive. And so Al-Shabaab has been conducting intense outreach among the Hawaadle to drive a wedge between Jeyte and their clan elders.
 
All politics is local, and counterinsurgency is quintessentially local. Al-Shabaab therefore invests in local systems of governance. It uses coercion and persuasion to extract clan allegiance. In return it provides its own brand of ‘law and order,’ along with modest basic services. Mogadishu elite have neither the aptitude nor the experience to manage local politics. Their vision and their model of crisis management are top-down.
 
The great lesson of the 2022 Ma’awiisley campaign is not that clan rebellions are by nature fickle. It’s that Mogadishu is ill-suited to harnessing and profiting from clan discontent with Somalia’s jihadists.
 
For Somalia to succeed against Al-Shabaab, it must mimic the insurgency by investing  in winning the loyalty of local clans. Think nationally, win locally - this must become the new mindset.