Issue No. 795

Laftagareen Breaks From Villa Somalia

The final domino for Villa Somalia's ill-conceived one-person, one-vote (OPOV) elections may be about to topple. After multiple false starts, it now appears that over two years since his term expired, South West State President Abdiaziz Laftagareen plans to conduct his own indirect regional elections absent from the federal government. With Darood-majority Puntland and Jubaland having withdrawn from the federation, only South West remained as the only non-Hawiye majority Federal Member State (FMS) tied to the OPOV plans, offering Villa Somalia a fig leaf of legitimacy. But with pressure still mounting on President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud and the country badly adrift, Laftagareen appears to be poised to secure his position for the foreseeable future-- with Ethiopian support.

In December 2018, Laftagareen was inserted into Baidoa in violent scenes orchestrated by former President Mohamed Abdullahi Farmaajo, and backed by an Ethiopian military presence that sought to quell dissent in major towns. Farmaajo's imposition of Laftagareen upon South West State and the concurrent illegal arrest of his popular primary challenger, the reformed Al-Shabaab commander Mukhtar Robow-- who hails from the Leysan sub-clan of the Rahanweyne-- immediately alienated the regional leader from swathes of the FMS. Since then, Laftagareen has repeatedly sought to quash the limited opposition and democratic space in Baidoa. Any election that the South West leader conducts is unlikely to be genuinely competitive, considering his firm grip on Baidoa's airport--preventing the opposition from coalescing-- and the regional parliament.

An initially rocky start between Laftagareen and President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud gave way to a closer alliance in early 2023. However, their ties have never been as firm as those between Laftagareen and Farmaajo. For two years, though, Villa Somalia has been able to tentatively retain Laftagareen within its diminishing camp through financial inducements and offering term extensions. His presence at the reduced National Consultative Council (NCC) has proven critical for presenting a front of 'national consensus' with the participation of the Digil-Mirifle. Unlike his counterparts in Puntland and Jubaland, who benefit from the ports of Bosasso and Kismaayo, Laftagareen has remained financially dependent on Mogadishu, reliant on Villa Somalia for his political budget and patronage. Nevertheless, Mogadishu has been unable to compel Laftagareen to fully come behind its various agendas, beginning with his disinclination towards conducting significant anti-Al-Shabaab military operations in 2023. 

Last September, after months of fraying to the political settlement, tensions came to a head between Laftagareen and Villa Somalia over its unilateral insistence that Ethiopian troops withdraw from the country. Senior federal officials accused anyone that supported the Ethiopian security umbrella across Hiiraan, Bay, Bakool, and Gedo of "treason," while the hyper-nationalist Foreign Minister Ahmed Fiqi referred to South West parliamentarians as "Quislings"-- the infamous Norwegian politician who aided the Nazis. While dispatching PM Hamza Abdi Barre to negotiate with Laftagareen and offering fresh financial incentives to return to the NCC, Villa Somalia also entertained the possibility of holding rival parallel presidential elections in Baraawe after meeting with regional opposition. Eventually, however, the enmity cooled, and Laftagareen attended the last NCC meeting, which his Jubaland counterpart Ahmed Madoobe walked out of, precipitating his re-election in November and the subsequent federal-state violence in Ras Kamboni.

In recent weeks, Laftagareen shuttled between Mogadishu and Addis, consulting with his respective financial and security patrons about conducting non-OPOV presidential elections. Villa Somalia refused, hardly able to give its blessing considering its outsized and destabilising response to Madoobe's traditional polls last year. Then, in a sign of growing discontent at the end of February, South West State parliament speaker Ali Fiqi called on President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud to pursue a consensus-orientated electoral strategy. 

But Laftagareen's attendance at the 129th anniversary of the Battle of Adwa celebrations in Baidoa– held with immense pomp and military ceremony– and his visit to an Ethiopian military training camp for South West forces appear to be definitive. The South West president would not risk incurring the wrath of Mogadishu without likely concrete assurances of support from the Ethiopians for the elections. During a speech at the camp on Tuesday, Laftagareen emphasised the importance of Ethiopian and South West military collaboration, saying that "with [Ethiopia] we share a brotherly relationship." 

During the recent post-Ankara Declaration bilateral negotiations this year, Addis pledged not to meddle in Somalia's internal politics, though insisted it would retain its security relationships with the FMSs. The promise not to interfere politically appears to have been short-lived. The very public display of force behind Laftagareen, with hundreds of Ethiopian soldiers and military vehicles assembled, is likely no coincidence. And though Villa Somalia and its supporters have sought to frame the Ankara Declaration as a major walk-back for Addis, Ethiopia has kept the Memorandum of Understanding with Somaliland on the table and retained all its forces in Somalia. 

The detente between President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud and PM Abiy Ahmed has certainly generated much bonhomie, with proclamations of renewed friendship and reciprocal bilateral visits. But Laftagareen's move to organise his own re-election with Ethiopian backing will inevitably place immediate strain on this rapprochement. Still, Mogadishu is likely unwilling to burn its rebuilt bridges with Addis immediately after agreeing to its presence in the latest iteration of the African Union peacekeeping mission.

Instead, this week, Villa Somalia has already organised a meeting of disgruntled South West parliamentarians in Mogadishu to protest Laftagareen's anti-democratic credentials. The federal government is clearly alarmed about what Laftagareen's withdrawal might portend for its OPOV agenda. Though officials insist that the plans remain on track, if polling stations cannot even be erected in Baidoa and other South West towns, it strikes another serious blow to the compromised legitimacy of the polls. It further constricts the locations where they can be held to nearly entirely Hawiye-majority areas in Galmudug, Hirshabelle, and Mogadishu. Whether Laftagareen can be compelled to return to the NCC remains to be seen, but if the South West president is committed to holding elections, it will be a very tall ask indeed.

Increasingly, the only route out of this dangerous national crisis is a return to a form of negotiated settlement. To avoid looming violence and a total breakdown of the federation, Villa Somalia will have to immediately abandon or delay its destabilising constitutional and electoral agenda. This could be followed by a reconstituting of the NCC as a genuine forum for negotiation and discussion, likely without the hardline PM Hamza Barre Abdi and including senior opposition leaders such as former President Sheikh Sherif Sheikh Ahmed and Abdirahman Abdishakur. There has already been fighting in Berdaale and Ras Kamboni directed by the federal government, and Mogadishu faces a similar fate if Villa Somalia continues down its path.

Laftagareen's apparent break from Villa Somalia should be the death knell for these plans, but it is more than evident that Mogadishu will not come to the table of its own volition. With the UN in Somalia largely politically de-fanged and with a new US administration, others that still hold clout within Villa Somalia will have to step up. To start with, international partners committed to liberal democracy should not entertain this OPOV charade by funding it. Most Somalis are understandably fed up with the 4.5 system and the lack of transparent political alternation, but the government's alternative-- essentially rigged polls without legitimacy in most of the country under the guise of democracy-- is much worse.

The Somali Wire Team