Issue No. 831

The International Tug-of-War Playing Out in Somalia

Somalia's latest plunging crisis has divided not only the usual domestic political actors but the 'international community' as well - if such a thing even exists anymore. Though nominally on the same page in regard to fighting Al-Shabaab, foreign perspectives on the diagnosis of Somalia's ills – and the appropriate remedies -- have proven radically different. And since Al-Shabaab's dramatic territorial advances beginning late February, many of the international responses to the country's escalating political and security emergencies have been working at cross purposes with one another. Meanwhile, Villa Somalia's interactions with foreign partners have continued to vacillate between blatant rent-seeking and hypernationalism.

With so much international geopolitical churn in Europe and the Middle East, Somalia has fallen off the map for some, but foreign engagement can still be roughly split into two broad blocs-- those propping up the country's centralist government in Mogadishu and those working with the federalist 'periphery'. The first is best encapsulated by Türkiye, which is far more straightforwardly transactional in its interactions with Mogadishu. It has shown little regard for Somalia's transitional domestic political processes, preferring to secure its own economic and security interests through direct dealings with the federal government. The consequences of such interactions can be seen in its unfettered military assistance and the 2024 extraordinarily one-sided hydrocarbon extraction deal. It has mattered little to Ankara that these resource extraction and defence pacts have bypassed many of the tenets of Somalia's transitional political settlement, triggering fury amongst the Federal Member States and the national opposition. Just last week, Türkiye pledged to deploy an additional 500 special forces soldiers to Somalia, as well as three T129 ATAK helicopters. Such unstinting military support from Ankara, as well as from Qatar, has emboldened Somalia's federal government to continue pursuing its own monopolistic political and security agenda, which, ironically, has provided Al-Shabaab with ever-expanding access to Turkish arms and ammunition seized from the hapless Somali National Army.

On the other hand, there are foreign partners that are currently urging President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud (HSM) to come to the table and seriously negotiate with the mounting political opposition. This camp includes the UN and most traditional Western donors, but here, too, major divides continue to frustrate a single, coherent response towards Villa Somalia's dilatory political antics. At the strategic level, the return of Trump to the White House has upended the post-World War II transatlantic alliance, straining the European-American axis that has been broadly aligned in Somalia for years. Amongst other issues, the shuttering of USAID and the withdrawal of American support for Ukraine have forced European nations to rapidly reassess their relationship with the US, alongside their priorities and spending in Somalia, which primarily involves developmental assistance and budgetary support. The nature of this assistance has long restricted its political influence in relation to Ankara and others, with the promise of ATAK helicopters holding far more draw for Villa Somalia than spending on internally displaced persons in Mogadishu. These partners are further limited in their influence by their understandable unwillingness to directly pay off ministers in Mogadishu to advance their own interests. 

Perhaps more than ever, the Western diplomatic corps in Mogadishu is also deeply polarised between Villa Somalia's critics and collaborators. The majority are alarmed by President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud's blinkered pursuit of re-election through a rigged and exclusionary electoral process – ludicrously advertised as a 'one-person, one-vote' (OPOV) poll in order to deflect criticism – and his disregard for the political opposition, including key Federal Member States. On the other side of the equation sits a small minority of donors, led by the EU Ambassador to Somalia, Karin Johansson, whose unquestioning support for Villa Somalia verges on the sycophantic, and the IMF and World Bank, which continue to extoll the marvels of the government's fiscal and monetary reforms against all evidence to the contrary. 

Johansson has cleaved to a hard pro-government stance in defiance of her own member states (with the notable exception of Italy), as well as growing antagonism from Somalia's various opposition camps. In a recent C6+ partners group meeting, Johansson was reportedly the sole voice that prevented the US, UK, UN and others from agreeing to ramp up pressure on Villa Somalia regarding the political dialogue process. And over the weekend, reports emerged that over 100 Somali lawmakers are preparing to lodge a formal complaint against Johansson for stymying progress towards inclusive consultations. Just how far apart the US-- which has now banned Somalis from entering the country-- and the EU are from each other can be summed up by the pinned tweet on the EU Delegation to Somalia X page. Straight from the 'Mogadishu Rising' playbook, the short film depicts Somalia having definitively turned the corner after years of state collapse and internecine conflict. The final line reads, 'This is Somalia rooted yet rising.'

The international disarray has left Somalia's neighbours and Troop Contributing Countries (TCCs) watching with alarm as Al-Shabaab advances on the battlefield – and arguably a certain level of indifference – about future funding for the African Union Support and Stabilisation Mission in Somalia (AUSSOM). Some partners are now quietly drawing up contingency plans for its collapse. Plans for a donor conference in Qatar at the end of May came and went, tentatively rescheduled for September. Yet, with Al-Shabaab continuing to tighten its encirclement of the capital with recent gains in Middle and Lower Shabelle, September may prove too late. 

The conflicting interests of Somalia's other international partners only amplify this political cacophony. The UAE, for example, serves as a counterweight to Villa Somalia's anti-federalist inclinations, having developed close military ties with Somaliland, Puntland, and Jubaland. China, on the other hand, has not only expanded its relations with Somalia's federal government but also undermined Somaliland (and, inadvertently, Puntland) in its eagerness to isolate Hargeisa's sole Asian ally, Taiwan.

Historically, responsibility for shepherding all of these divergent actors into some kind of coherent political framework would have fallen, by default, to the United Nations. But the UN lost much of its political clout last year, having been essentially de-fanged when the UN Assistance Mission in Somalia (UNSOM) was downgraded into the UN Transitional Assistance Mission in Somalia (UNTMIS). Many elements of UNSOM's explicitly political mandate were removed, undercutting the mission's convening power and its ability to hold the federal government to account. Considering Somalia's spiralling political and military disarray, that decision appears ever more premature.

Somalia's multifarious divisions and deepening polarisation have brought the country once again to the edge of ruin. Sadly, cleavages amongst its international partners now threaten to nudge it over the precipice. Even if the riven 'international community' cannot agree on which side to back or which road to take, it is abundantly clear that they should at least unite around the need for genuine, inclusive political dialogue to forge a unified front against Al-Shabaab and agree on a 2026 electoral model that certainly falls short of genuine OPOV, but represents some degree of progress over the last round of indirect voting. Failing that, no combination of foreign arms, adulation, or condemnation is likely to succeed in pulling the country back from the brink.

The Somali Wire Team