Issue No. 968

Somalia: Why Transition Call Makes Sense 

Somalia’s opposition - frustrated by months of stagnant dialogue - has for the first time proposed a transitional mechanism to break the country's protracted political deadlock.  In an open letter addressed to a crucial extraordinary summit of African Troop and Police Contributing Countries (TPCCs) which opened on Wednesday in Kampala, the Somali Future Council (SFC) said that a new transitional governance arrangement was vital and necessary and is hoping the initiative will gain traction among regional actors who have boots on the ground and share a vested interest in a durable political settlement.

In the three-page letter issued on Monday, 27 July, the SFC urged six African TPCCs - including Egypt - to actively back its strategy built around three core demands. First, the council calls for the immediate establishment of an inclusive Transitional Council tasked with breaking the political stalemate, overseeing stalled constitutional and electoral processes, and restoring institutional neutrality within critical state institutions like the Somali National Army. Second, the SFC argues that the incumbent administration led by Hassan Sheikh Mohamud (HSM) has lost legitimacy and providing external military assistance in the absence of a credible government severely compromises the country’s counterterrorism campaign. Third, the council insists that all future international military and diplomatic support to Somalia must be made strictly conditional on an inclusive and institutionalised political settlement.

The SFC’s new demands come against a backdrop of escalating tensions and the collapse of internationally-supported talks with the Federal Government of Somalia (FGS). It signals a more clear-eyed realisation that maintaining the charade of dialogue is no longer tenable. The opposition had effectively locked itself into an uneven contest. The balance of power was fundamentally mismatched: President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud (HSM) gained international credit and legitimacy simply by acting as an interlocutor, without conceding much. And more crucially, whilst at the same time continuing his electoral enforcement and reconfiguring power and politics far beyond Mogadishu. By mooting the idea of a transition, the opposition aims to re-seize the initiative, shifting the debate away from a mini-agreement on polls to the broader macro-environment – the political system and national governance.

Semantics

By introducing the "T-word," the SFC has inadvertently sparked a semantic furore. Pro-government supporters and nationalists quickly seized on the "transitional council" and “political settlement” concepts, spinning them as a call to reinvent the wheel, return Somalia to a system of international tutelage and external supervision that would undermine the country's autonomy, agency, and sovereignty. Because the term "transition" carries a chequered history in Somalia, the opposition opened itself up to these political attacks by proposing such a council without offering immediate, detailed clarification.

The SFC must quickly follow up the letter with a policy blueprint to clarify exactly what this transition entails. Perhaps, what is envisioned is not a lengthy, laborious process, but a short, sharp, technocratic transition that must be strictly time-bound, driven by clear benchmarks, and actively backed by both troop-contributing countries and the broader international community.

The challenge, as ever, is how the various constituencies will respond to the SFC proposal.

HSM pushback

The Somali government has not yet responded. President Hassan Sheikh will almost certainly rebuff the proposal, dismissing it as an unviable, time-consuming effort, and a mere distraction orchestrated by opponents who are unwilling to cut a deal.

Still, the SFC’s latest move puts real pressure on him. For the first time, he is being challenged in his area of greatest vulnerability: his legitimacy and credibility to steer the country toward a fair electoral contest. While he previously had room for manoeuvre on the contested “One-Person-One-Vote” model, he has far less leverage on the issue of a credible transition mechanism. If he resists, he will likely worsen the negative perception of his rule and governance style.

The opposition's call could have served as a safety valve - a favour providing HSM with a face-saving exit or political off-ramp. The problem is that by so overwhelmingly undermining Somalia’s fragile political rules of the road, he now has no immediate tools for a reset. The Prime Minister’s office remains largely ceremonial. Prime Minister Hamza Abdi Barre cannot step up as a "technocratic" fixer for any transition; his political standing is badly dented, and he commands little respect even among his own Darood constituents in Jubaland and Puntland.

The TPCCs

The Troop and Police Contributing Countries are reeling from the Trump administration's sudden decision to terminate financial and logistical support for the United Nations Support Office in Somalia (UNSOS). The move strikes a devastating blow to the African Union Support and Stabilisation Mission in Somalia (AUSSOM), an agency that relies on UNSOS to cover roughly USD 500 million annually in vital field logistics - including fuel, food, water, medical services, and troop transport. The announcement has triggered a wave of frenetic, back-channel meetings among African leaders scrambling to formulate a response. Yet, there remains no clarity on how this massive funding shortfall will be plugged, leaving the very viability of the 12,000-strong peacekeeping mission in doubt. While a regional or international actor might temporarily step in to keep operations afloat for a few months, the undeniable truth is that the heavy military approach of the AU mission has run its course, and an exit is now inevitable.

This cash crunch fundamentally risks crippling the SFC’s tentative proposal. By calling on the TCCs at a moment when they possess absolutely no fiscal or operational bandwidth, the opposition’s proposal lands on deaf ears. Regional capitals are entirely consumed by the immediate survival crisis of their own forces. Consequently, the risk is exceptionally high that neighbouring countries will have even less appetite to take on a more robust, long-term oversight role in stabilising Somalia.

Sensible

The SFC’s call is sensible and has genuine merit. A transitional mechanism offers the best means to break the current logjam in Mogadishu. As a first step, it requires the SFC to provide immediate clarity and craft a plan that is implementable. International actors will only buy into a new process if it is not time-consuming and does not entail extra resources. This is an impediment the SFC can overcome with a sound strategy that clearly details the exact costs of a transition: limited, indirect elections, for example, would certainly carry a more modest price tag than Villa Somalia’s ambitious – and patently unrealistic – ambitions.  HSM will resist, but if enough domestic and regional pressure is consistently applied, he might be persuaded to become amenable: after all, he won two previous indirect elections overseen by transitional mechanisms, so he has no obvious reason to challenge the integrity of the process.

The Kampala summit ought to give the SFC's call the weight and consideration it deserves despite the obvious challenges. In fact, this is a sound proposal that regional states can own and mould into a potent tool for closer oversight of Somalia’s political process. For decades, Somalia’s African neighbours shied away from the type of muscular political interventionism usually associated with the West. In this new era of reduced Western influence, they are compelled to offer the type of positive leadership that can finally shift Somalia in the direction of stability – or suffer the consequences – alone – of having failed to do so.