You may also be interested in
Last October, Al-Shabaab Inqimasin (suicide assault infantry) overran a National Intelligence and Security Agency (NISA) base in Mogadishu, freeing several high-ranking jihadist detainees and destroying substantial quantities of intel. A highly choreographed attack, the Inqimasin had disguised their vehicle in official NISA daub, weaving easily through the heavily guarded checkpoints dotting the capital to reach the Godka Jilicow compound before blowing open the gates with a suicide car bomb. In the months since, Al-Shabaab's prodigious media arm-- Al-Kataib Media Foundation-- has drip-fed images and videos drawn from the Godka Jilicow attack, revelling in their infiltration of Mogadishu as well as the dark history of the prison itself. And in a chilling propaganda video broadcast at Eid al-Fitr last week, it was revealed that among the Inqimasin's number was none other than the son of Al-Shabaab's spokesperson Ali Mohamed Rage, better known as Ali Dheere.
22:20 min read 27 Mar
The Rahanweyne Resistance Army (RRA) did not emerge from a shir (conference) in October 1995 to defend a government, nor to overthrow it. Rather, the militia —whose name was even explicit in its defence of a unified Digil-Mirifle identity —arose from the ruin of Bay and Bakool in the years prior, and decades of structural inequalities.
21 min read 25 Mar
The battle for South West—and Somalia's political future—continues apace. With the brittle alliance between South West State President Abdiaziz Laftagareen and President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud having broken down spectacularly, the federal government is pouring in arms and forces to oust the Digil-Mirifle leader. Staring down the barrel of the formal opposition holding three Federal Member States and, with it, greater territory, population, and clan, Villa Somalia is looking to exploit intra-Digil-Mirifle grievances—and convince Addis—to keep its monopolistic electoral agenda alive. But this morning, Laftagareen announced a 9-member electoral committee to hastily steer his re-election, bringing the formal bifurcation of the Somali state ever closer.
20:23 min read 23 Mar
The worm, it seems, has finally turned. After years serving as a prop for President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud's monocratic aspirations, Abdiaziz Laftagareen, the leader of South West State, has clapped back against Villa Somalia, accusing the federal government of – among other things - dividing the country, monopolising public resources, colluding with Al-Shabaab, and leading Somalia back into state failure.
18:32 min read 18 Mar
Last April, General Sheegow Ahmed Ali-- once the highest-ranking military officer hailing from the Somali Bantu-- died in ignominy in a Mogadishu hospital. A senior commander who had previously spearheaded operations in south-central Somalia, Sheegow had been summarily sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2023 for operating a militia in the capital. His death-- mourned widely and protested in Mogadishu and Beledweyne-- returned the spotlight to the pernicious issues of discrimination in the Somali National Army (SNA).
22:23 min read 16 Mar
The Horn of Africa's political fate has always been wired to external commercial interests, with its expansive eastern edge on the Red Sea serving as an aorta of trade for millennia. A Greek merchant's manual from the 1st century AD describes the port of Obone in modern-day Puntland as a hub of ivory, tortoiseshell, enslaved people and cinnamon destined for Egypt. Today, as so often quoted, between 12-15% of the world's seaborne trade passes along the arterial waterway, with the Suez Canal bridging Europe and Asia. But well before the globalised world or the vying Gulf and Middle Powers over the Red Sea's littoral administrations, the logic of 'gunboat diplomacy' underpinned the passage over these seas.
19:31 min read 13 Mar
Once on the US-designated terrorist sanctions list, it is unsurprisingly rather difficult to come off it. And with the US designating the 'Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood' as terrorists, elements of Khartoum's military government may now have the dubious honour of being on it twice. First time out in 1993, Khartoum was deemed a US State Sponsor of Terror in the wake of a raft of jihadist plots linked to the Islamist authorities in Sudan. Nearly three decades later, and only after Sudan's partial ascension to the Abraham Accords, the title and punishing sanctions were lifted for the civilian-military transitional government. Today, though the warring Sudan is no longer home to an Osama bin Laden or Carlos the Jackal, a US labelling of 'terrorist' has returned to Khartoum.
25:44 min read 12 Mar
At the collapse of the Somali state in the early 1990s, the bloated, corrupt, and clan-riven national army was nevertheless in possession of vast quantities of light weapons. Much of it sourced during Somalia's ill-fated alliance with the USSR and later Western and Arab patrons, government armouries were soon plundered by warring militias across Mogadishu, Kismaayo, Baidoa, and every garrison town as the country descended into chaos, providing the ammunition for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people.
22:24 min read 11 Mar
Almost exactly 130 years ago, a vast Ethiopian army led by Emperor Menelik II outmanoeuvred and overran the invading Italian army at Adwa in Tigray, bringing the first Italo-Ethiopian war to a decisive close. By midday on 1 March 1896, thousands of Italian soldiers and Eritrean 'askaris' had been killed, sparing Ethiopia from the carving up of the African continent by European colonisers.
0 min read 10 Mar