Issue No. 887

The Watches and the Time

Obscurity and discord appear to be the name of the game this week in Villa Somalia. Hostility between South West President Abdiaziz Laftagareen and a slice of the splinter national 'opposition', Sharif Hassan Sheikh Aden and Mohammed Mursal, two former speakers of parliament, bubbled over publicly, with the former barring these latest Villa Somalia allies from travelling to Baidoa. In Hirshabelle, meanwhile, President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud appears to be gearing up to oust his fellow Justice and Solidarity Party (JSP) member in Jowhar, Ali 'Guudlawe'. And preparations for the district-level Banaadir direct elections continue apace, with the date now scheduled for 30 November and nearly 1 million people dubiously registered. But make no mistake; the political churn is a tool for Villa Somalia to muddy its principal obligation to hold federal presidential elections in May 2026.

Forcing through state-level elections or manipulating pliant allies into power in Jowhar or Baidoa are not prerequisites for the federal presidential polls, but it appears that Villa Somalia reckons with a different cast of characters that it may be able to pull off the desired two-year term extension for President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud. And so behind the scenes, government power brokers are quietly jockeying for a term extension, perhaps to be justified by the need to 'complete' the democratic project underway with the upcoming Banaadir polls. To this end, rather ironically, outreach has been purportedly made to secure the support of former President Mohamed Abdullahi Farmaajo, who attempted similar stratagems to prolong his term in office — and subsequently faced a mass Hawiye uprising in Mogadishu known as Badbaado Qaran in 2021 that forced him to the negotiating table. Today, it is hardly preferable that there has been no genuine political alternation of power in Baidoa, Jowhar, or Dhusaamareeb since 2022, but these are not preconditions to a federal election. And even with a splintered constitutional track, the federal president's mandate will necessarily expire in May 2026 alongside the dissolution of the national parliament.

Though Hassan Sheikh can theoretically claim three FMS presidents within his centralised JSP, the ground beneath the alliance is increasingly shaky. With plans for 'new Jubaland' seemingly on hold after Addis and Nairobi obstructed the plot due to national security concerns, the federal president has turned his attention to South West and Hirshabelle, alongside reports that he may seek to rekindle the aborted talks with Ahmed Madoobe in Kismaayo. As such, the political temperature has risen rapidly in Baidoa and Jowhar, with Villa Somalia actively stoking opposition elements against Laftagareen and Guudlawe. 

While the mutual distrust between Laftagareen and Hassan Sheikh is well-known, it appears that the federal president has increasingly soured on Guudlawe and is now intent on manoeuvring to replace him, partially motivated by the regional leader's affiliation with opposition leader ex-President Sheikh Sherif Sheikh Ahmed, both of whom hail from the Harti sub-clan of the Abgaal. The second 'justification' relates to the enduring ruptures between the Abgaal and Hawaadle in the Federal Member State (FMS), and Guudlawe's inability to quell the 'Hiiraan State' inclinations of the Hawaadle. Since his dubious election in 2020, relations between the Hawaadle-dominated Beledweyne and Guudlawe's Jowhar administration have been patchy at best, further reflected in Guudlawe's removal of the latest Hiiraan governor in recent days over an airport revenue-sharing dispute. 

For several months, Jowhar has been abuzz with political carpetbaggers and plotting, with the dynamics of Hirshabelle's administrative capital inevitably connected to that of the riven Hawiye-dominated capital. While Guudlawe is in by far the weakest position of any FMS leader, it appears that even the Hirshabelle president's patience for his JSP superiors is wearing thin, as evidenced by his recent ban on any unauthorised military flights. With Villa Somalia agitating to replace him, it may well be that Guudlawe, too, splits from the neutered National Consultative Council (NCC) and the government's electoral machinations —even if he carries less political heft than the sole non-Hawiye leader remaining in Laftagareen. In pole position to replace Guudlawe is former Defence Minister Abdullahi Mohamed Nur, who hails from the Agoonyar/Abgaal, and who—despite not being Hawaadle—enjoys a better relationship with key interlocutors of the sub-clan.

To the south, the perennial political dance Laftagareen and Villa Somalia has ratcheted up a notch this week as well, with Mogadishu flirting with supporting elements of the splinter 'opposition' faction-- who broke from the National Salvation Forum in August-- against Baidoa. Now known as the 'Somali Democratic Alliance,' Sherif Hassan and Mursal, among others,  intended to depart for Baidoa to campaign for the supposedly imminent elections, with the blessing of the federal president. And yet, with the South West president exercising near-absolute control over entry to Baidoa's airport under the protection of the Ethiopian military, Laftagareen simply denied them entry-- once again constricting any genuine challenge to his position. According to federal parliamentarian Abdirashid Jire this week, Hassan Sheikh had implored Laftagareen to allow them entry, to which the South West president responded by referencing Villa Somalia's own restrictions on public protest and opposition within Mogadishu.

Hassan Sheikh may have better luck in Hirshabelle in ousting his JSP ally, such is the level of dependence on the FMS to Mogadishu, but replacing Guudlawe—or, indeed, Laftagareen—will not shift the date of the polls in May 2026. Instead, it risks further splintering not only his fragile coalition but triggering open conflict in both Jowhar and Baidoa—as well as compromising the integrity of these FMS, as Villa Somalia has similarly sought to do in Jubaland and Puntland. And beyond all this, with the government continuing to insist that direct polls are near at hand and that multi-party democracy will soon be upon Somalia, is a mendacious oversimplification: that simply casting a ballot is more important than a contested, potentially violent transition or extension. And this viewpoint has been even embraced by elements of the international community as well, with the nuances of much of the 2000s and 2010s towards the need for a broad-based political settlement being replaced by a collective shrug over thorny issues with no easy 'wins.'

But despite all this, there are discrepancies at work in these discussions as well. There was an idiom, often attributed to the Taliban during the decades-long Afghanistan war, that "you may have the watches, but we have the time." It spoke to the group's confidence that, despite the might of the American military, it could not outlast their resolve and endurance in ultimately defeating the US-backed government in Kabul. And, eventually, they were proved right, overthrowing the Ashraf Ghani government in August 2021 in calamitous scenes. Though Somalia is not Afghanistan, and Al-Shabaab is not the Taliban, it is hard not to draw parallels between the diminishing foreign interest in Mogadishu's skewed, illiberal state-building project as well as the feckless army. Al-Shabaab may not have seized the capital amidst its sweeping advance across central Somalia earlier this year, but it would be foolhardy to think that the threat to Mogadishu has eased in any significant way. Indeed, Villa Somalia's concerted political meddling ahead of the May 2026 polls is both accelerating the risk of the government's disintegration and preventing a coherent front against Al-Shabaab. 

And so, in this light, there are arguably two timelines and two wholly different realities at play in Somalia today. The country has veered from one crisis and administration to another, working through the past decade-and-a-half of four-year term cycles, with cyclical politics amplifying to near-breaking point before the elections, with the federation stretched further than ever today. The rigidly theocratic Al-Shabaab, on the other hand, has pursued a methodical, resolute trajectory, steadily building up its capabilities while constricting the national capital. So while Villa Somalia and the diplomatic corps have their watches trained on May 2026 and the imminent threats to the stability of Mogadishu - and this week, to Baidoa and Jowhar from the federal government, it is Al-Shabaab that has the time-- and they seem happy to wait.

The Somali Wire Team