Issue No. 814

Just not that inch

For a government whose slogan was "not one inch" just a few months ago, it might have been more apt to have adopted "not that inch." On 22 April, last year's secret bilateral Somalia-Türkiye oil and gas deal emerged after its submission to the Turkish parliament, revealing that Mogadishu had ceded immense potential profits and sovereignty for pennies. Signed during the geopolitical fallout of the Somaliland-Ethiopia Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) and harried through Somalia's parliament, the agreement points to further political and economic vandalism by the current federal administration and its desire to monopolise Somalia's sovereign rents and national resources. While insisting that Addis would have "not one inch" of Somali coastal territory, Mogadishu has offered every centimetre of the country to foreign powers.

Many of the clauses from the agreement are staggering, revealing that in March 2024, Mogadishu essentially forfeited Somalia's potentially most profitable resource to Ankara. The scale of Turkish influence in Villa Somalia and amongst the Mogadishu elite today is hard to overstate, with the level of Turkophilia having climbed fresh heights last year. However, with some discontent brewing around Türkiye's outsized clout, the details of this deal are certain to further alarm those concerned about Villa Somalia's 'fusion' with Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's Neo-Ottoman aspirations. 

Entitled 'Agreement Between the Government of the Republic of Türkiye and the Federal Government of the Federal Republic of Somalia in the Field of Hydrocarbons,' the deal was signed last March in Istanbul by Turkish Energy Minister Alparslan Bayraktar and former Somali Petroleum Minister Abdirizak Omar Mohamed. A former close ally of Hassan Sheikh, Abdirizak was reported to have fallen out with the president over the deal's kickbacks and was subsequently dismissed from his position in December 2024. According to the agreement, Türkiye is permitted to recover as much as 90% of all oil and gas extraction each year to cover operational costs before profits are shared, while all exports and revenue are to be controlled by Ankara and with no Somali oversight necessary. Somalia's share of production profits is further steeply limited, with a royalty cap of just 5%, far below similar deals in other petroleum-rich African nations. And there are a host of different ways that Mogadishu has offered up its sovereignty, not least that Turkish forces are authorised to deploy to protect its investments– with costs again recoverable in Somalia's oil. 

Most Somalis have understandably been long frustrated by the lengthy sagas and failure to exploit the country's 'black gold.' Some hoped that such a deal with Türkiye would allow for the exploitation of the estimated 6bn cubic metres of proven natural gas reserves and perhaps as much as 30bn barrels of offshore hydrocarbons. Instead, the agreement is another example of Villa Somalia's endeavours to dominate resources without input from parliament or devolved regional administrations. This has included establishing livestock export monopolies for a single Arab businessman, limiting khat import licenses to a handful of affiliates, and claiming overflight fees from Somaliland by wielding its juridical sovereignty. Offshore, as a result of the corruption of the federal government and others, Somali fishing licenses are some of the cheapest in the world despite the country's territorial waters holding a bountiful supply of tuna and other high-value fish. In one such deal, a Chinese fishing trawler reportedly obtained a four-month tuna season license for just USD 1 million, while Somalia's territorial waters remain a magnet for grey, mafia-style fishing by dubious firms that deploy damaging techniques to maximise harvest. 

The deal was further evidence of how Villa Somalia has sought to trade the country's most lucrative resources for geopolitical support, as well as simultaneously undermine the peripheral Somali administrations that it claims jurisdiction over. One more egregious recent example was the attempt to offer the ports of Berbera in Somaliland and Bosaaso in Puntland to the Trump administration. More concerning is the purported intention of the federal government to auction off the Dharoor/Nugaal Valley oil and gas basin to American companies. Symptomatic of a sudden glut of outlandish resource-based deal-making with Washington, it is also another gambit by Villa Somalia to cash in on resources it does not control. However, extraction in the area could reignite conflict between Somaliland and Puntland or stoke local insurrection against both administrations if not handled carefully.

A federal parliamentary committee has finally raised concerns about the deal, ironically only after it was tabled in its Turkish counterpart, as have the Somali hyper-nationalists who were clamouring last year that Ankara and Cairo would 'protect' Somalia from Ethiopian interference. Instead, the bilateral deal was waved through parliament without scrutiny by lawmakers who did not have access to the clauses that would have revealed to them a wholesale surrendering of decision-making regarding oil and gas exploration in Somalia. Overshadowed by the furore surrounding the MoU, the deal's rushed passage signalled a broader erosion of the country's checks and balances.

Last March, part of the deal's rationale lay in Ankara pledging to establish a naval force for Somalia to counter potential Ethiopian 'threats' emerging on the Red Sea. It was never a serious prospect, though, and all discussion of establishing a navy has since evaporated following the detente with Addis and as the on-shore threat of Al-Shabaab has marauded across Middle and Lower Shabelle in recent weeks. Just yesterday, in another dawn raid, jihadists overran the Somali National Army (SNA) at Wargaadi before releasing photos through its Al-Kataib Media Office of several slain soldiers and ma'awiisley fighters. And while Villa Somalia has clamoured over perceived violations of its de jure sovereignty, its own allies have increasingly highlighted the fragility of the federal government. This week, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni damningly proposed that supervision of the country's security and stabilisation portfolio be transferred to a coalition of troop-contributing countries in the African Union peacekeeping mission.

It was an acknowledgement that while the federal government may be nominally recognised as Somalia's sovereign authority, its position has been compromised by its own myopic policies. Museveni's proposal essentially signalled a rollback to the process of the 2000s, a return to the 'building blocks' approach to Somalia's governance and security. Naturally, Villa Somalia rejected the suggestion but was forced to do so as gently as possible, considering that Uganda is providing 4,000 soldiers for the AU peacekeeping mission. This week, regional defence ministers have also been meeting in Mogadishu to discuss the security deterioration, as well as the continued lack of funding for the multilateral mission. 

In the 2000s, the Somalia expert and political scientist Ken Menkhaus famously used the term 'Governance without Government' to describe the situation in the country at the time, and how administrations functioned in the absence of a central government. Today, almost the reverse argument could be made that Somalia has had successive federal governments with little interest in governing but instead profiting from Mogadishu's juridical sovereignty and undermining rival Somali polities. But there are still Somali administrations actively pursuing their own domestic and foreign policy, wielding their 'sovereignty' as a positive tool. Puntland, for instance, has been deploying significant resources under 'Operation Hilaac' to fight Islamic State-Somalia in the Al-Miskaad Mountains, while simultaneously pursuing independent relations with Ethiopia, the UAE, and the US. Somaliland, too, continues to demonstrate its democratic maturity, having conducted yet another successful set of one-person, one-vote (OPOV) elections in November 2024 and facilitated another peaceful transition of power.

Such is the damage that Villa Somalia has wrought in three short years, one of the challenges of the next government-- if Mogadishu holds until then-- will be clawing back the country's sovereignty from deals such as the one with Türkiye. This may be further complicated by the fact that, even though it contravenes elements of the Provisional Constitution and overrules the best practices of the transitional political arrangement, it was nevertheless passed by parliament. And Türkiye has little reason to cede its potentially immensely profitable hold on billions of barrels of hydrocarbons. In essence, Villa Somalia has attempted to transform the country into a kind of geopolitical Airbnb where any state can pursue their economic, political, and ideological interests-- as long as they don't mind the riven domestic politics or Al-Shabaab's growing footprint.

The Somali Wire Team