Issue No. 762

Somalia's Jubaland crisis is about more than just Jubaland

The rupturing of the Jubaland-federal relations was a long time coming, part of the broader political and constitutional crises that have pushed Somalia's settlement to a near-breaking point in recent months. It is the culmination of a federal administration disinterested in political and clan consensus-building that has ripped up many of the fragile, unspoken pillars that have narrowly sustained the country for years. With Jubaland and Puntland having severed ties with Mogadishu, now should be the inflexion point for all those concerned with pulling Somalia back from the brink of a permanent splintering and broader armed conflict. Yet in the wake of Jubaland President Ahmed Madoobe's re-election last Monday, Villa Somalia has accelerated a number of reckless, destabilising initiatives to unseat its former ally. 

The morning of Madoobe's re-election on 25 November and subsequent days saw the deployment of several hundred predominantly Gorgor forces to the small town of Ras Kamboni in Lower Juba near the Kenyan border. While a blatant attempt at intimidation, these forces are confined to a handful of minuscule settlements in Lower Juba-- a region infested with Al-Shabaab and where several thousand Jubaland Daraawiish troops are stationed. Any grand military push from Ras Kamboni to Kismaayo to unseat Madoobe, who has loyal, predominantly Ogaadeen fighters drawn from his former Islamist militia of Ras Kamboni at his disposal, remains a pipe dream. Still, there are enough security personnel and officials across Jubaland with an axe to grind with Madoobe for the federal government to undermine his administration, either due to their personal grievances or a dislike of the leader's monopolisation of Jubaland's political space. The Gorgor deployment has been facilitated by those including the Daraawiish commander Mohamed Abdi Fanah, from the Abdala sub-clan of the Ogaadeen, while Colonel Hassan Iraqi is leading the operation, who was previously removed from his position as a Danaab commander in Kismaayo.

Meanwhile, broader disaffection among non-Ogaadeen clans and offers of cash have drawn a trickle of Jubaland defections, with several dozen soldiers having been airlifted to Mogadishu for 'integration' into the Somali National Army (SNA). But the widely-shared videos of four boatloads of Jubaland Daraawiish defecting to federal troops appear to be fabricated, with Kismaayo insisting these were not their soldiers. Jubaland has also deployed troops to nearby areas, and while there are risks of further armed clashes, the deployment of federal forces is just one part of a broader scheme of Villa Somalia to unsettle Madoobe.

Some of the gambits have been more ludicrous than concrete, particularly the issuing of retaliatory arrest warrants by courts in Banaadir for Madoobe and Kismaayo for Hassan Sheikh Mohamud. Of course, neither has the jurisdiction to issue such arrest warrants for federal crimes, and these are wholly symbolic of how poor relations have quickly become. But, again, the directing of the arrest of a Federal Member State (FMS) leader was another marked escalation from the Somali president's predecessors. More concerning is how Villa Somalia is seeking to stoke rival power centres within Jubaland. It facilitated the return of Gedo Governor Abdullahi Abdi Jama Shimbir to Garbaharrey from Mogadishu last week, who has now vocally supported the controversial federal plans for one-person, one-vote elections in 2025 and resisted Madoobe's re-election. With SNA troops now deployed to Gedo, Villa Somalia has also forcefully insisted that district commissioners in the region pledge their support to the federal government. Alliegenace, however, has been far from uniform, with officials in Dollow on the Ethiopian border understandably resistant to Mogadishu's pressure, having fallen within the Ethiopian National Defence Force (ENDF) security umbrella. 

Though many Mareehaan elite are disgruntled at Madoobe's sudden re-election and the continued Ogaadeen dominance, this does not mean all will suddenly fall in line behind Villa Somalia. There is no clear single Mareehaan candidate that could unify the sub-clan and the non-Ogaadeen communities to lead Jubaland, and there are also worries that Hassan Sheikh could install another Ogaadeen leader like PM Hamza Abdi Barre into Kismaayo. Others remain committed to former Somali President Mohamed Abdullahi Farmaajo, who installed a raft of loyalists in similar scenes after Madoobe's August 2019 choreographed re-election.

Al-Shabaab is the only entity that stands to gain from the Jubaland-Mogadishu crisis. The redeployment of forces that should be positioned against the jihadist group is of concern, but more broadly, there has been an undermining of the critical political consensus since mid-2023 needed to bring clans and communities and their political leaders to mobilise against Al-Shabaab. With Mogadishu's attention diverted towards constitutional wrangling and gerrymandering since 2023, the 'all-out war' has been abandoned, and the extremists are better armed today than in years and have been able to reclaim the territory they were dislodged from in the Ma'awiisley uprising in Hirshabelle and Galmudug. Mogadishu's undermining both the Darood-majority FMSs Puntland and Jubaland– among its strongest domestic allies in fighting Al-Shabaab– has seen efforts are centred on fighting one another, not the jihadists. Drawing Daraawiish fighters away from Jubaland, engaging with those like Abdirashid Hassan 'Janan,' the former FMS security minister, and actively seeking to supplant one of the steadiest bulwarks against Al-Shabaab in Madoobe's administration is a formula for further consolidation by the extremist group.

As his first act as the new East African Community chair, Kenyan President William Ruto has offered to negotiate between Addis and Mogadishu alongside his Ugandan counterpart Yoweri Museveni. Hopes were briefly raised about a more pragmatic response from Mogadishu, but the federal government has stuck to its position that Ethiopia must withdraw from the Memorandum of Understanding with Somaliland as a precursor for any talks. A political settlement with Ethiopia remains as remote as ever.

In 2013, fighting erupted in the streets of Kismaayo after Hassan Sheikh Mohamud similarly sought to dislodge Madoobe from his post. It precipitated another major political crisis and forced the president to come to the table with state-level leaders to hammer out a consensus-driven government. But 11 years later, Somalia and the Horn of Africa more broadly sit in a more fractured global order that allows Mogadishu to look beyond the traditional international community and its neighbours for monetary and military support, particularly from the Gulf and Turkey.

By the Somali Wire Team