Issue No. 966

A New Spring in His Step: How HSM Engineered His Rebound 

Today marks exactly two months since Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud (HSM) unveiled his unilateral one-year term extension. While it is too early to draw definitive conclusions, HSM has evidently survived, rebounded, and consolidated power in ways that defy earlier predictions. A leader whom many had been wont to dismiss as too tarnished to retain executive power beyond May 2026 remains firmly in the saddle, holding the political initiative and dictating terms. His opponents, meanwhile, are in deep disarray. Their cohesion is fracturing, they lack a coherent, unified strategy, and they are locked in a dialogue of attrition designed to wear down their will and force their capitulation.

The reality of a resurgent - not diminished - presidency has been on full display over the past few weeks. The Week of Somali Unity (June 26 to July 1), which commemorates the independence and unification of Somaliland and Somalia, was action-packed, offering HSM an ideal platform to maximise his visibility and political impact. One event in particular seemed perfectly choreographed for television: set against the backdrop of nightfall and overcast clouds, a floodlit Mogadishu Stadium saw a casually dressed HSM appearing without his usually hyper-vigilant bodyguards. As crowds wildly waved blue Somali flags and chanted "Birmade" (The Deliverer) and "Dalxooreye" (The Liberator), the president smiled broadly, responding to the chants with one arm over his heart, blowing kisses, and shaking hands with the surging crowds. HSM soaked in and thoroughly enjoyed every minute of this raucous display of grassroots patriotic fervour. For a fleeting moment, he was an elevated leader, lent an undeniable aura of popular legitimacy and power. 

Who, witnessing that highly charged atmosphere, could take that away from him? 

External validation

If Unity Week served to project domestic legitimacy, the preceding week was designed to demonstrate HSM’s external validation. The president embarked on a tour of Kenya, Djibouti, and Ethiopia, billed as "working visits" - which, in diplomatic parlance, denotes a trip initiated by one party to transact urgent business with minimal protocol. His reception across these capitals was cordial, and even upgraded to a semi-state visit in Ethiopia. In Kenya, HSM travelled by helicopter from Nairobi to President William Ruto’s rural ranch in Kilgoris, Narok County. There, Ruto personally drove him around in a stylish utility terrain vehicle - a rare honour reserved exclusively for special friends of Kenya.

These recent foreign trips, intentionally targeting Somalia’s immediate periphery, were strategically orchestrated by Villa Somalia to consolidate HSM’s external legitimacy and mobilise regional backing for his political transition. That support appears secure, at least, for now. Regional states are rarely driven by normative principles of democracy or good governance. Instead, their overriding interests lie in stability and maintaining the status quo. The prevailing calculation among neighbouring capitals is that HSM has prevailed, holds the upper hand, and offers the distinct advantage of foreign policy continuity.

Strong will

The backstory to this political moment is complex, but the critical milestones and how we got here are clear. In 2024, when HSM first unveiled his grand strategy to centralise the state through constitutional revisions - abolishing the premiership and the dual-executive architecture in favour of a full presidential system with direct elections - the opposition reacted with their characteristic casual dismissiveness. They viewed these manoeuvres merely as illegitimate pretexts for a term extension. 

By 2025 and 2026, a pliant legislature endorsed watered-down versions of the original blueprint. Yet, even in its diluted form, the changes constituted a robust and radical overhaul of the Somali state. Still, the opposition maintained a passive posture of utter disavowal rather than proactively crafting a viable counter-strategy. HSM possessed a radical plan and the iron will to ruthlessly enforce it; his adversaries lacked a coherent alternative. Worse still, they deeply underestimated him. The boycotts staged by Puntland and Jubaland failed to deter HSM. Instead, they merely emboldened him to unilaterally dismantle the old constitutional compacts and institutional settlements without facing meaningful domestic opposition. 

In doing so, Somalia’s opposition committed the cardinal sin of underestimating its adversary. Overconfident in their numerical strength and assuming moral high ground, they critically misjudged HSM’s political resilience, guile, and tactical dexterity. 

Crucially, they did not anticipate or factor into the equation the role Turkey was to play in HSM’s ‘term grab’ and consolidation.

Farmaajo 

The tenures of Farmaajo and HSM offer a rich analytical window to contrast and compare two complementary forms of Somali illiberal politics and governance. Both leaders are fundamentally populist nationalists who favour authoritarian centralism and remain deeply ambivalent toward, if not entirely opposed to, decentralisation. However, their execution styles diverge sharply. While Farmaajo’s approach was reclusive, delegatory, and hands-off, HSM is a consummate micromanager driven by a desire for absolute control. Farmaajo remained media-shy, whereas HSM is a highly skilled publicist. Most decisively, Farmaajo ultimately buckled under immense political pressure; HSM did not. 

State-centric nationalism 

Somalia's contemporary political elite - predominantly those now in their 60s and 70s - were forged by two diametrically opposed historical epochs. They came of age within a strong, functional state, witnessed its descent into harsh totalitarianism before its ultimate collapse, and subsequently endured the resulting horrors: decades of civil war, fractured warlordism, and the rise of Al-Shabaab's violent insurgency 

President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud (HSM) is a quintessential product of that generation. He was merely 13 years old when Siyaad Barre seized power in 1969, and 35 when the regime imploded in 1991. In total, HSM spent 21 formative years - nearly a third of his life - under the shadow of the Barre dictatorship. This intense, foundational experience deeply scarred HSM and his peers, indelibly shaping their lifelong outlook on state-building. Today’s resurgent state-centric nationalism - anchored by a dogmatic conviction that a hyper-centralised, muscular state is the sole mechanism capable of uniting a fragmented society and driving modernisation—is deeply rooted in this tumultuous chapter of the nation’s history. 

In political theory, this brand of state-centric nationalism is conventionally defined as an ideological framework driven by political elites that positions the centralised, sovereign bureaucratic apparatus as the supreme object of collective loyalty and the primary vehicle for societal survival. Generally, it offers significant utility in fragile, post-conflict contexts like Somalia, acting as a potent ideological lift-force to mobilise civic energy toward a common state-building enterprise. Indeed, many of Somalia’s early, foundational successes in resurrecting vital national ministries, formal bureaucracies, judicial frameworks, law enforcement, and military institutions are directly attributable to this state-centric agenda. 

Yet, despite these institutional revivals, Somalia’s broader state-building project remains among the world’s most complex, protracted, and lethargic. The bitter, ongoing disputes over HSM’s unilateral term extension, electoral design, and sweeping constitutional revisions are not isolated political spats; they are symptoms of a profound underlying structural crisis. This impasse exposes competing, parallel visions regarding the very nature of the Somali state and its core functions. At its centre, the current standoff reflects a widening fracture within the traditional state-centric model, signalling the total fraying of the delicate elite compacts and consensus-building mechanisms that once underpinned it. 

Where the current trajectory leads is hard to know. One hopes the promise of new leadership, and a gentler state-centric vision of state-building - one capable of fusing modern liberal tenets with egalitarian, consensus-driven political traditions – is not forever lost.