Issue No. 913

In the early 2000s, political scientist Ken Menkhaus proposed the concept of the 'mediated state' in northern Kenya and Somalia, exploring how the central state lacks the capacity to project force or authority uniformly across the territory. Governance is instead 'mediated' or negotiated through a range of local authorities, be it clan elders or militias, while the state retains juridical sovereignty. It has remained a particularly durable concept to this day, with Somalia's federal government continuing to struggle to impose its authority even in the federal member states under its apparent control in south-central Somalia, thus lacking 'empirical sovereignty.' Yet the intensifying external dimensions of Somalia's political economy-- particularly through tussling Middle Eastern powers--could expand Menkhaus's concept into a new angle; that of 'mediated sovereignty.'

'Mediated sovereignty' describes a political order in which the Somali state retains formal, juridical sovereignty, but the exercise of sovereign authority is negotiated through both domestic and external intermediaries rather than monopolised by the centre. Power is expressed through patronage networks and security bargains that fragment and reconfigure sovereignty across multiple actors and scales. Thus, in such a system, sovereignty becomes a negotiated service rather than a unitary authority. In turn, Somalia's national authorities cannot control Gulf engagement but rather are brokers of it in the same way that their own subnational forces are. Mogadishu may have some advantages, but it is nevertheless competing with Somaliland, Puntland and Jubaland for access to foreign wealth and weaponry.

This concept feels particularly apt when attempting to make sense of the dizzying few weeks of late 2025 and early January 2026, when the politics of the Middle East have come publicly crashing into the Somali peninsula. In particular, Israel's unilateral recognition of Somaliland, followed by the accentuated Saudi-Emirati divide, represents the externalisation of Somalia's fragmentation. But beyond the immediate drama, recent days have exposed the deeper reality of how sovereignty functions—or rather, fails to function—in contemporary Somalia. While Mogadishu may wield juridical sovereignty and has used it to Somaliland's detriment since 2012, it does not exercise effective control over territory, ports, revenue, or security. And into this morass of wrestling administrations and polities, the bilateral and clandestine dealings of the Gulf have stepped in.

This is an international order whose veneer has been blown to smithereens, epitomised by a US president directing the kidnapping of the Venezuelan leader, Nicolas Maduro, on 3 January. But for some time, the multilateral order of post-World War II has been adrift, trampled on by the trappings of hard power and populism. And in the Horn of Africa, this has reflected a scramble by ascendant and bullish powers seeking to reshape a new order—in their own perceived geopolitical 'backyards'—outside the established order. Straddling the geostrategic Gulf of Aden and western Indian Ocean, Somaliland and Somalia are part of this broader and murky strategic theatre.

The rival wings of the Gulf schism are refracting, too, against the federalist-inclined peripheries and centralising polities within the Somali state. Turkiye, Egypt, Qatar, and now seemingly Saudi Arabia have empowered Mogadishu, while the UAE has furthered the centripetal elements of Somalia's politics. The UAE, in particular, has revealed itself to be more than apt —and indeed appears to prefer —navigating a political order in which sovereignty is not monopolised by the state but rather distributed and negotiated. Across a swathe of subnational forces, including Libya, Sudan, Somalia and Yemen, the Emirates has forged distinct partnerships, consistently backing actors who challenge centralised authority. But even the manner in which Ankara and Riyadh seek to engage the centre does not represent an emboldening of juridical or empirical sovereignty, but rather a coterie of elite patron-client networks in which juridical power is nominally situated in Villa Somalia. Ankara and Doha, for instance, may appear as 'status quo' powers externally, but that belies a far more complex reality of power and patronage distribution.

Abu Dhabi regards Somalia as one of the 'gateways' to the African continent through which it can diversify its hydrocarbon-dependent economy into natural resources and strategic infrastructure. And while relations with the central state have floundered under Mohamed Abdullahi Farmaajo and his successor Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, the UAE has built distinct ties with Puntland, Somaliland, and, to a lesser extent, Jubaland. The operation of the ports of Bosaaso and Berbera has helped to underpin these bilateral dealings. Arguably, for some time, there has been a degree of 'modular recognition' at play in Somalia and Somaliland, with the UAE granting functional recognition without bestowing diplomatic status. Mogadishu, through gritted teeth, was just about able to tolerate such a dynamic, with it still bestowed juridical sovereignty. But Israel's recognition of Somaliland appears to have definitively changed this, perceiving the Emirates as having quietly facilitated the bombshell move. 

Israel, too, has pursued sovereignty as a weapon—disregarding Palestinians' call for a 'two-state solution' and now reaching across the Levant and Gulf to recognise Somaliland. Hargeisa has long aspired to integrate into the international order, wielding the instruments of juridical sovereignty and ascending to the United Nations. And it had done all the 'right' things for many years, holding successive democratic elections and peaceful transfers of power underpinned by a constitutional order. Yet it had struggled to make any headway, with the principles of the Organisation of African Unity and African Union holding firm. But the Westphalian understanding of sovereignty that underpinned these notions — respect for colonial borders and territorial integrity — seems increasingly distant from the political reality in the Horn of Africa today, a cutthroat era reminiscent of the 17th and 18th-century war of conquest.

Though relations between Mogadishu and Abu Dhabi have been strained for some time, this week, the federal government announced that it would terminate all agreements with the UAE, "covering port operations, government institutions, and security and defence cooperation." Somaliland recognition may well have been the last straw, but in an interview with Al Jazeera, the State Foreign Minister Ali Omar Bal'ad asserted that the apparent smuggling of the Southern Transitional Council (STC) leader from Yemen in a cargo flight via Mogadishu to Abu Dhabi tipped the government's hand. An infuriated Riyadh —one of the principal patrons of the burgeoning anti-UAE axis along the Red Sea — that had sought the STC leader's presence in the Saudi capital for talks is believed to have pressured Mogadishu to respond forcefully.

Beyond that, however, Bal'ad went further, asserting that the "external elements" were responsible for domestic political schisms in Somalia and then insisting that Mogadishu would continue to pursue the government's direct electoral plan. It is these precise centralising tendencies, however, that have driven the disengagement of Kismaayo and Garowe from the federation, while the patronage or security assistance from Abu Dhabi has furnished the scaffolding to do so. Hirshabelle, Galmudug, and South West remain within Mogadishu's camp, not from any great love for Hassan Sheikh's supposedly democratic pivot, but the cold reality that they lack independent revenue to secure their independence, either from ports or the Gulf.

While Emirati aircraft and military equipment have been documented departing Mogadishu in recent days, Jubaland, Puntland, and Somaliland have explicitly rejected Mogadishu's intervention, with Hargeisa dismissing the order as "irrelevant." It has awkwardly revealed that all these states can independently pursue bilateral foreign relations, not just with the UAE but increasingly with Western partners and particularly the US, and that Villa Somalia is powerless to prevent it. The Emirati expulsion does, however, appease Ankara, Riyadh, and Doha and further muddy the geopolitical waters. 

Villa Somalia will seek to frame this unfolding story as a reclaiming of 'sovereignty' against a Gulf power. But this, too, represents an exercise in mediated sovereignty, an attempt to leverage one set of external patrons against another and to reclaim the lifelines of Bosaaso, Berbera, and Kismaayo that have allowed these administrations to operate beyond federal control. The irony is that in asserting sovereignty against the UAE, Mogadishu reveals how thoroughly sovereignty has been externalised and that it cannot act independently but only by aligning with a different constellation of Gulf powers. And this is the intersection of the mediated state and mediated sovereignty; a political order where authority in Somalia is neither monopolised at the centre nor reclaimed from external powers, but instead is in constant flux across domestic and foreign intermedaries. Through this lens, sovereignty is not about governing capacity, but a transactional currency.

The Somali Wire Team