Issue No. 906

And just like that, 2025 is gradually coming to an end. For Somalia, it has hardly been an uneventful year, but then again, it can rarely be described as 'quiet.' Still, with political jockeying ramping up ahead of the 2026 polls, it is easy to be swept into the maelstrom of news and lose sight of broader trends that have dominated these past months. Principal among them, the centralising, nationalist regime in Mogadishu has pushed Somalia's political settlement ever further towards breaking point, empowering an ascendant Al-Shabaab and setting the stage for a pivotal 2026.

Unmoored by domestic or international guardrails, President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud has acted as a political centrifuge, spinning faster and faster the fragmented and uncentralised nature of the nation. Picking up where he left off at the end of 2024 — with federally-directed violence at Ras Kambooni against Jubaland forces — this year has been overshadowed by yet more pressure from the president on Somalia's mangled politics. The federal model of government has been all but discarded, with 2025 marking the nadir of its concerted subversion by Hassan Sheikh and his predecessor, Mohamed Abdullahi Farmaajo, aimed at forcibly consolidating power in Villa Somalia. In particular, cleaving single-clan enclaves in Sool and Gedo has proven extraordinarily destructive, with Garowe and Kismaayo having understandably sought to disengage from Mogadishu and plough their own path in turn.

And as Darood-majority Puntland and Jubaland have drawn ever-further from the federation, Kismaayo has just announced it will drop the 'federal member' from its title and leave only 'state', the federal government has sought to tighten its grip on the capital and its proxies. The creeping Islamist state capture and centralising inclinations of the Damul Jadiid-core government have ranged from the ousting of the Somali National University rector in September to the handpicking of human rights commissioners for a new oversight committee. One new commissioner was purportedly PM Hamza Abdi Barre's personal assistant. 'Clarifications' on the age of consent by government clerics and officials in October, after the ratification of the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, should be of enormous concern as well. And yet empowered by growing linkages with Ankara, Beijing and Doha, Villa Somalia has brushed aside the feeble protests from the divided and disinterested traditional donor community-- even while continually insisting on the need for more support.

But while the veneer of a liberal state-building agenda has cracked, and with the country lacking a broad-based political settlement, the government has nevertheless pressed ahead with its plans for 'democratic' direct council polls in Banaadir. Now set for 25 December, these repeatedly delayed elections, too, have accentuated the schisms within the Hawiye-dominated politics of the capital, with senior opposition figures, including ex-President Sheikh Sherif Sheikh Ahmed, rejecting the poorly-disguised power grab. Numerous protests have broken out, including in September, when a bodyguard of former PM Hassan Ali Khaire was killed by security forces in disturbing scenes. Such 'direct' elections —under the auspices of the Interior Ministry —are widely regarded as a rigged ploy to justify the president's private lobbying for at least a two-year term extension.

The feeble institutions of the state have also faded further in 2025, not least the federal parliament, with its leadership now widely deemed as wholly co-opted. With sessions routinely lacking quorum or observing any parliamentary procedure, Speaker Aden Madoobe's oversight of parliament has devolved into pantomime, emblefied by the repeated delaying of its opening to stave off plans to impeach Barre. Further, the National Consultative Council (NCC) met only a handful of times this year, with each meeting similarly delayed as Villa Somalia corralled or cajoled the remaining members —presidents from Galmudug, Hirshabelle, and South West —to attend.

One notably galling NCC meeting occurred in May, when Hassan Sheikh only convened a much-reduced forum after intense pressure from international partners amid Al-Shabaab's offensive. And after brief discussions that rubberstamped the president's authoritarian electoral scheme, the new Justice and Solidarity Party (JSP) was announced, the latest vehicle for the government's centralised agenda. More broadly, the meagre negotiations held by Villa Somalia and its political opposition have gone nowhere, with the president carving off a few minor politicians from the National Salvation Forum (NSF) in August to spurious claims of victory and consensus. But with elections just a few months away, it is now inevitable that there must be a 'return to the tent' to hold them on time-- and stave off probable violence on the streets of Mogadishu. Still, the coalescing opposition-- with the NSF joining forces with Puntland and Jubaland to form the Council for the Future of Somalia in October-- has so far struggled to convincingly lay out its own vision for what an enhanced model of indirect election might look like.

And so the 'mediated sovereignty' of Somalia's government, which requires it to operate through local proxies, has shrunk even further this year, with the federal government essentially reduced to a municipal authority. Its relationships with its 'allies' in Baidoa, Jowhar, and Dhusamareb remain fractious at best, with Villa Somalia continuing to empower various opposition factions as a means to keep them onside. Even so, there are now two duelling versions of the Provisional Constitution at work in Somalia: the unabridged 2012 model, still preferred by Puntland and Jubaland, and the 2024 version, which includes a raft of centralised amendments to Chapters 1-4, in practice in Mogadishu and its associated administrations. Rumours and promises from Villa Somalia that further chapters would be revised have come and gone.

The second central dynamic of the year has been Al-Shabaab. Unthreatened by the federal government and having watched and waited in 2024, the jihadists moved decisively in February during Ramadan-- and beyond, seizing swathes of territory in south-central Somalia. Somali National Army (SNA) forces collapsed under pressure, ceding town after town to the jihadists, revealing yet again what it politicised morass of competing interests and incompetencies it remains. In April, one of the few remaining jewels of the 2022 central Somalia offensive of Adan Yabaal fell, when more than 2,500 soldiers and the Chief of Defence Force, Yusuf Odowaa Yusuf Rageh, were routed by a few hundred militants. So significant were the desertions that Custodial Corps-- essentially prison guards-- were tossed into the frontlines. Only Hawaadle ma'awiisley seriously resisted Al-Shabaab, pleading repeatedly with the federal government for arms and ammunition to no avail.

But then Al-Shabaab stopped, pausing almost at the gates of the capital with several thousand fighters amassed on its periphery in mid-2025. Discerning why the militant group paused its offensive remains complex, with the 'black box' of Al-Shabaab's leadership remaining largely inscrutable. Nevertheless, the jihadists still installed the organs of future governance for Banaadir, such as shadow district commissioners, while simultaneously reassuring business leaders and clan elders that they would face no retribution as part of the group's broader reframing towards a nationalist movement. It may well be that Al-Shabaab is biding its time, hoping to induce the collapse of the embattled federal government, akin to Syria or Afghanistan. This year, dotted throughout its prolific propaganda have been increasing signals to the public on issues such as the government's unpopular land clearance schemes and growing podcasts on the histories of Islamist movements in Somalia, signalling a distinct shift away from the jihadists' previous Al-Qaeda-centred narratives.

In 2025, the threat of Daesh and Al-Shabaab has been amplified by another dimension as well, that of the Iranian-backed, Yemen-based Houthis. Their clandestine development of relations with Al-Shabaab began in the wake of the October 2023 Hamas attacks in Israel, but has rapidly accelerated in recent months. Despite theological incongruence, the Houthis and Al-Shabaab have now developed a close alliance spanning several issues, not least the former providing training in more sophisticated armaments, particularly Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) for their Somali counterparts. And in September, Al-Shabaab conducted its first kamikaze fixed-wing UAV attack on Kismaayo airport, an undoubtedly concerning sign of what may be to come in 2026. The Houthis, too, have sought to develop their own latent capabilities, particularly along the eastern Sanaag shoreline, arming and training hundreds of young disillusioned men in everything from maritime interdiction to IED assembly.

Still, it has not been all bad, and there have been some glimmers of progress, such as Puntland's anti-Daesh campaign in the Cal-Miskaad mountains. Backed by significant American drone strikes, the Islamic State-Somalia (ISS) faction has been substantially diminished, undercutting the role of its Al-Karrar Office, which had facilitated funding and operations for other wings of the global jihadist movement. Early shoots of growing political-security cooperation between Puntland and Somaliland, too, should be cause for celebration, driven in large part by the destabilising machinations of Villa Somalia through the unconstitutional attempts to elevate SSC-Khaatumo in Laas Aanood into a fully fledged Federal Member State. But relations between Mogadishu and Hargeisa have also plumbed new depths this year, despite the opportunity of a new administration in Somaliland to reset ties.

The more the government has floundered at home, the more it has sought to project its own paper-thin sovereignty and control overseas. Despite taking up a non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council for the 2025/2026 period, it has failed to bring to bear decades of experience with instability, instead intermittently projecting Qatari and Chinese talking points and expressing Mogadishu's own vague successes. Such exasperation with a government so rapaciously centralising and out of touch with the country is accentuating fatigue within the donor community as well. Spinning a yarn about dozens of kilometres of ring-fenced protection around Mogadishu does not exactly gel with the Godka Jilicow attack in October, when Al-Shabaab fighters in National Intelligence and Security Agency (NISA) garb simply drove through the capital before breaking into a high-security prison.

Against this backdrop, the humanitarian situation in Somalia has remained broadly bleak, with yet more drought pushing the pastoralist economy into further disarray. It has not been a good year for the politics or security of Somalia, more Sisyphean months of attempting to eke out progress with a government focused on self-enrichment and consolidating power. But there are still 20-odd days until the New Year, and there may be a Christmas miracle —perhaps time enough for a Damascene conversion for the federal president to wake up to the grim state of affairs that he has induced in Somalia today. If not, 2026 could well be the year that Somalia's political centre gives way-- again.