Issue No. 934

Over the weekend, a flurry of viral posts on X (formerly Twitter) highly critical of Türkiye by the Ugandan army chief risked tipping the three-way relations between Somalia, Türkiye, and Uganda into a new tailspin. General Muhoozi - the son of Ugandan President Yoweri K. Museveni and the Chief of the Ugandan People's Defence Forces (UPDF) - accused Türkiye of disrespect, threatened to pull troops out of Somalia, and further demanded USD 1 billion in compensation from Ankara. Although the posts were deleted on Sunday, the storm the comments generated has not died down.

The 19th-century Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote in his novel, The Brothers Karamazov: “Above all, do not lie to yourself. A man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point where he does not discern any truth either in himself or anywhere around him.” In Somalia today, we are suffering because our head of state has lied to himself so much so, that Dostoevsky had alluded to, he has reached a point where he does not discern any truth either in himself or anywhere around him. However, before we delve into the nature or purpose of the lie and its grave national, regional, and international consequences, a bit of history is warranted on Somalia as a nation-state.

On Monday, a politician widely regarded as Ankara’s primary proxy in Somalia was inaugurated as a Member of Parliament (MP) under circumstances that Somali citizens and political observers are denouncing as a brazen institutional theft. This unprecedented case of electoral misconduct occurs in the twilight of the current parliament’s mandate, signaling a deep-seated crisis in legislative integrity.

In the 17th century, the Ottoman polymath Kâtip Çelebi penned 'The Gift to the Great on Naval Campaigns', a great tome that analysed the history of Ottoman naval warfare at a moment when Constantinople sought to reclaim maritime supremacy over European powers.

Villa Somalia has prevailed in Baidoa. After weeks of ratcheting tensions, South West State President Abdiaziz Laftagareen proved a paper tiger this morning, unable to resist the massed forces backed by Mogadishu. After several hours of fighting, Somali National Army (SNA) forces and allied Rahanweyne militias now control most of Baidoa and, thus, the future of South West. In turn, Laftagareen is believed to have retreated to the protection of the Ethiopian military at Baidoa's airport, with the bilateral forces having avoided the conflict today.

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.

In early 1987, the commander of the Sudanese People's Liberation Army/Movement (SPLA/M), John Garang, is reported to have issued a radio order, instructing his field officers to gather children to be dispatched to Ethiopia for military training. Garang's command conveyed the rebels' institutionalisation of a well-established practice of child soldiering; a dynamic that has been reproduced by virtually every major armed actor in Sudan-- and later South Sudan-- since independence. Today, as war has continued to ravage and metastasise across Sudan, few communities and children have been left untouched by the ruinous violence.

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.

War has been averted in Tigray-- for now. In early February, tens of thousands of Ethiopian federal soldiers and heavy artillery streamed northwards, readying themselves on the edges of the northernmost region for seemingly imminent conflict.