On 26 December 2025, Israel officially became the first country to recognise Somaliland as an independent sovereign state. This decision appears to be connected to the broader geopolitical shifts following the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October 2023. The ensuing conflict saw the Houthis, who control parts of Yemen, launch missiles targeting Israel and disrupt international shipping in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden in solidarity with Hamas. This escalation of disturbances in the Red Sea not only poses a significant risk to international oil and merchant shipping but also highlights the increasing integration of the Horn of Africa into the security systems of the Indo-Pacific, the Mediterranean, and the wider Gulf region and Middle East. This integration is driven by intensifying competition for influence over the Red Sea's trade and transit routes. But it is also about competing political visions for the future direction of the Muslim world, between different versions of Islamism and their detractors.
While Villa Somalia and its assorted Arab allies have found success in rallying international opposition to Israel's unilateral recognition of Somaliland last month, it is finding the matter rather more complex at home. In the wake of Israel's bombshell declaration and as Somalilanders took to the streets of Hargeisa to celebrate, protests similarly erupted in Mogadishu, Baidoa, and Dhusamareb in the days after 26 December, with demonstrators waving Palestinian and Somali flags. And yet, while most Somalis are sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, the question of Somaliland recognition-- at least on the political front-- has not rallied the country to the federal government's side.
"Alea iacta est — The die is cast." So spoke Emperor Julius Caesar, before leading his army across the Rubicon to seize power over ancient Rome. Israeli PM Binyamin Netanyahu might have uttered the same words on 26 December 2025, as Israel declared its bombshell recognition of Somaliland, sending a shockwave throughout the region. Framed by Netanyahu as part of the Abraham Accords, Israel's monumental announcement marks the first sovereign state to recognise Somaliland since it declared independence from Somalia in 1991. For a democratic polity that has long battled for a modicum of credit on the global stage, it was little wonder that rapturous celebrations erupted in Hargeisa. But with immediate geopolitical headwinds-- not least motivated by Israel's pariah status for egregious violations of international law in Gaza-- much of the nature of recognition and what comes next has been overshadowed. The work begins now for Somaliland's broader recognition.
To borrow a quote from the Roman author, naturalist, and army commander, Pliny the Elder, "Uncertainty is the only certainty there is", or from the famous unattributed idiom of "in politics, tomorrow is a foreign country." On the eve of 2026, after one of the most torrid years in recent political memory in Somalia, looking ahead to what might come next can be a fool's errand. Nevertheless, it is worth flagging a few of the issues and dates that are likely—or sure—to dominate the coming months for Somalia.
And just like that, 2025 is gradually coming to an end. For Somalia, it has hardly been an uneventful year, but then again, it can rarely be described as 'quiet.' Still, with political jockeying ramping up ahead of the 2026 polls, it is easy to be swept into the maelstrom of news and lose sight of broader trends that have dominated these past months. Principal among them, the centralising, nationalist regime in Mogadishu has pushed Somalia's political settlement ever further towards breaking point, empowering an ascendant Al-Shabaab and setting the stage for a pivotal 2026.
On Tuesday, during a Cabinet meeting, US President Donald Trump launched yet another broadside against Somalia and ethnic Somalis. Referring to Somali immigrants as "garbage," he accused them of "contributing nothing" and "doing nothing but b*tch", saying they should "go back where they came from and fix it." Even for a president infamous for his brashness, these comments are particularly eyewatering.
Tomorrow, 4 December, marks the 31st anniversary of the UN Security Council (UNSC) adopting Resolution 954, which set 31 March 1995 as the deadline for the final withdrawal of UN forces under the United Nations Operation in Somalia II (UNOSOM II). It was a sobering end to the calamitous military intervention in Somalia, with nearly every element of the sprawling, unenforceable mandate left unfulfilled. Flash forward three decades, and the future of today's regional military intervention in Somalia is now in severe doubt, with funding for the African Union Support and Stabilisation Mission in Somalia (AUSSOM) still unsourced and Al-Shabaab ascendant on the eve of 2026.
On social media, videos and images of jubilant Jubaland Daraawiish forces celebrating have circulated of late, alongside claims that they were recorded in Jamaame town in Lower Juba. Somali news outlets have similarly declared that Jubaland troops-- backed by Danab special forces-- are now closing in on the town, one of the principal headquarters of Al-Shabaab in southern Somalia. With the broader security auspices across south-central Somalia remaining so grim, it has been gratefully seized upon as some progress against an ascendant Al-Shabaab. Yet much of this is just noise, obscuring the nature of the Kismaayo-directed security operations and airstrikes that have been ongoing since early September in Lower Juba.
In late September, Somaliland's coast guard intercepted a dhow ferrying contraband off the coast of Berbera, arresting two Somali nationals and three Yemenis in the process. But rather than the usual trafficking of arms or migrants through the Gulf of Aden, their cargo was instead 11 cheetah cubs seemingly destined for the Middle East. The animals had been packed into potato sacks, with two of the endangered species dying within 24 hours of being rescued. Tragically, the rescue of these cheetahs-- now in the care of the Cheetah Conservation Fund (CCF)-- was no anomaly, but rather part of a much broader wildlife trafficking crisis.
Today, Sudan's war represents the crux of a destructive schism in the Middle East that is playing out in the Horn of Africa, a geopolitical wrestle between principally the Emirates on one side and Saudi Arabia and Egypt on the other. But it is far from the first-- nor likely to be the last-- division within the Gulf that refracts across the Red Sea.
In July 1990, in the twilight months of Siyaad Barre's faltering junta, ugly scenes descended on a football match at Mogadishu Stadium. Crowds, furious at the state of the nation and the patent lies being told that day-- including that one of the teams hailed from devastated Bur'o in northwest Somalia— began to hurl stones towards the president, before his forces opened fire indiscriminately on the crowd, killing dozens. Last Thursday, discontent again bubbled over in the rebuilt stadium during government celebrations at a Teachers' Day event attended by President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud and a coterie of senior government individuals.
Ports matter on the Somali peninsula. More than any other single revenue source, they serve as the lifeblood of the administrations in Hargeisa, Garowe, Mogadishu, and Kismaayo. In the unravelling of the state in the early 1990s, administrations coalesced—and fighting raged—over control of the four ports of Berbera, Bosaaso, Mogadishu, and Kismaayo, establishing the radically uncentralised nature that persists in Somalia's political economy today. But three decades on, who accesses and operates these aortic ports reflects and refracts another of today's defining issues for the Horn of Africa: the rapacious geostrategic tussle among Middle Eastern countries along both sides of the Red Sea.
The great Roman lawyer and statesman Cicero, in his work De Officiis (The Duties), reflected that a "pirate is the enemy of all." Beyond a pithy line, the concept established a legal precedent in Roman law that would later influence modern international statutes, providing the basis for pursuing pirates across the high seas as an early form of universal jurisdiction. Cicero's argument held that pirates were outside the territory of a sovereign power and no formal adversaries of a particular state, and so instead deemed them 'hostis humani generis' — or rather, the "enemies of all mankind."
Briefing the Upper House on 5 November, the hawkish Defence Minister Ahmed Moallim Fiqi called for the construction of a 100,000-troop national army that could both defeat Al-Shabaab and, tellingly, defend Somalia's national sovereignty. It was vintage Fiqi, a knowing nationalist wink that referenced the perceived threat of Somalia's neighbours, combined with a call for greater external support for his own military, and, above all, a proclamation verging into fantasy. The notion that a 100,000-strong Somali National Army (SNA) could somehow be constituted in the coming years remains beyond the realm of not only political reality but financial plausibility as well. With Somalia's contorted security architecture already numbering tens of thousands more than envisaged in the 2017 National Security Architecture (NSArch), the SNA does not just have a numbers issue-- it has a political problem.
Somalia has endured somewhat of a tortured history of political parties. By the end of the 1960s, and the country's short-lived decade of democracy, national politics had descended into a morass of dozens of clan-based parties vying for parliamentary seats. For many Somalis, the military coup of Siyaad Barre in 1969 initially appeared as a welcome relief, putting an end at least to the internecine and corrupt squabbling of clan-centred politics.
At the end of November, the residents of Mogadishu will be able to supposedly participate in their first direct elections since the late 1960s. Though having repeatedly postponed the polls, the handpicked Independent National Electoral and Boundaries Commission (INEBC) has set the date of the district council elections for 30 November, asserting that close to a million people have registered in the capital for the grand event. And yet, as ever, with the Hawiye-dominated politics of Mogadishu still so frayed and the polls considered a flimsy attempt to foreground a term extension for President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, the exercise in direct democracy is hardly laudable.
Relations between Mogadishu and Hargeisa continue to plumb fresh depths. Already grimly strained by the formalisation of Villa Somalia's proxy as North Eastern State (NES) in Laas Aanood, the continuing dispute over airspace and e-visa requirements has ratcheted up again in recent days. With both pronounced expressions of Somaliland's de facto sovereignty, these issues have repeatedly been the site of Mogadishu's political vandalism across successive administrations.
On 3 October, the World Food Programme (WFP) announced a drastic 68 percent cut to emergency food assistance in Somalia — reducing coverage from 1.1 million beneficiaries to 350,000, making essential food aid available to fewer than one in ten Somalis. The decision, driven by a USD 98.3 million funding gap through March 2026, comes at a moment when Somalia’s food security crisis is accelerating at an alarming speed. Between July and December 2025, the number of people facing emergency-level hunger (IPC Phase 4) rose by 50 percent, from 624,000 to 921,000, while projections indicate that 4.4 million Somalis will face acute food insecurity by the end of the year. As the lean season approaches (November to March), WFP warns it requires at least USD 98 million to sustain reduced rations for 800,000 people until March 2026.
Armed conflict exacts a heavy and often invisible toll on both combatant and civilian minds as well as on bodies. Those affected by humanitarian emergencies often experience psychological distress, with the World Health Organisation (WHO) reporting that an estimated one in five individuals develop mental health conditions such as depression, anxiety, or post-traumatic stress disorder.
President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud (HSM) stands at a defining crossroads, for his leadership, his legacy, and Somalia’s fragile democratic future. Alarming signs point to a deliberate strategy to extend his mandate beyond constitutional limits. Villa Somalia has reportedly circulated the so-called “Zero Paper” among Somali political circles and international partners to test the waters and gauge reaction. The proposal, titled “Somalia’s Exceptional Reform Window: A Mandate to Complete the Constitution and Reset Governance,” calls for a two-year extension under the pretext of completing the constitution and finalizing reforms.