Somaliland's regional diplomatic blitz continues. Having travelled to Djibouti and Kenya at the end of May, Somaliland President Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi 'Irro' is anticipated to depart for Ethiopia in the immediate future. Barring some minor stumbles in Kenya, Somaliland successfully conducted two diplomatic visits, with Irro meeting both Djiboutian President Ismail Omar Guelleh and his Kenyan counterpart, William Ruto, and securing a range of agreements. Stabilising Somaliland's relationship with neighbouring Djibouti against the backdrop of Mahmoud Youssouf having assumed the African Union Commission Chair was particularly significant. But for Somaliland, with Ethiopia remaining its preeminent trading and diplomatic partner, the stakes of such a visit are far higher, coming in the wake of a complicated few months for the long-standing Addis-Hargeisa ties.
On 28 May, Kenyan author and academic titan Professor Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o passed away in the United States at the age of 87. A fierce critic of colonialism and post-independence authoritarianism, Ngũgĩ redefined the role of literature in the fight for liberation and the broader intellectual struggle for decolonisation. Regarded as one of the greats of 20th-century African literature, his death has been mourned widely and comes at a moment when the topics he grappled with, including police brutality, corruption and state overreach, are prominent in the public eye once again.
Puntland's kinetic anti-Islamic State-Somalia (ISS) operations in the Al-Miskaad Mountains are nearing their conclusion. Launched in February, 'Operation Hilaac' (Lightning) has sought to degrade the key Daesh node led by Abdulkadir Mumin-- designated by the US as a global leader within the extremist group. Puntland-driven and backed by US and UAE airstrikes, the operations have proven highly successful, seizing significant ISS bases and inflicting considerable casualties on the jihadists, including the Head of Immigration and Foreign Fighters, Ahmed Musa Said, last month. With operations expected to soon begin winding down, Puntland officials have signalled a transition to stabilising the liberated territories, as well as looking ahead to the aptly-named 'Operation Onkod' (Thunder) offensive against Al-Shabaab in the Almadow Mountains.
Last week, it was reported that landlocked Ethiopia-- with Russian assistance-- was nearing completion of a glittering new complex to house the country's naval headquarters. Constructed in Addis over three hectares at seemingly vast expense, the building personifies a kind of 'Potemkin Village,' the fake construct designed to mislead outsiders into believing in something more impressive than its reality. It appears set to play a central role in the ongoing ambition of the federal government to restore vaguely-worded Ethiopian 'access' to the sea, which may yet involve the invasion of Eritrea, as well as the supposed beautification of the capital.
Somalia's latest plunging crisis has divided not only the usual domestic political actors but the 'international community' as well - if such a thing even exists anymore. Though nominally on the same page in regard to fighting Al-Shabaab, foreign perspectives on the diagnosis of Somalia's ills – and the appropriate remedies -- have proven radically different. And since Al-Shabaab's dramatic territorial advances beginning late February, many of the international responses to the country's escalating political and security emergencies have been working at cross purposes with one another. Meanwhile, Villa Somalia's interactions with foreign partners have continued to vacillate between blatant rent-seeking and hypernationalism.
For decades, much of Northern Kenya has wrestled with cyclical violence rooted in pastoralist competition over livestock and grazing land. But what was once culturally regulated pastoralist raiding has gradually devolved into a militarised, profit-driven enterprise. Intersecting with both food security and climate change, banditry and cattle rustling are intensifying, with an August 2024 report by the National Crime Research Centre documenting a sharp rise in the past year, resulting in over 300 fatalities and many thousands more displaced or impoverished. The government's attempts to stifle the violence have further struggled in the face of Kenya's cost-of-living crisis, as well as the participation of corrupt, vested political interests in Nairobi.
Over the weekend, Mahad Salad was returned to head up Somalia's National Intelligence and Security Agency (NISA). After a 14-month break, the Egyptian-trained former spy chief has returned to the position he held between August 2022 and April 2024. The restoration of Salad, who belongs to the Hawiye/ Habar Gidir/ Ayr sub-clan, comes amid twin threats to Villa Somalia-- the serpentine encroachment of Al-Shabaab on Mogadishu and the massing of political opposition in the capital. Historically lenient towards the jihadist group, Salad is unlikely to afford the same generosity to the government's opposition as the head of NISA, as his predecessor did. Simultaneously, the removal of Abdullahi Mohamed Ali 'Sanbaloolshe,' could seriously undermine the ongoing ma'awiisley operations by his Hawaadle sub-clan against Al-Shabaab in Hiiraan, one of the few forces leading the frontline resistance.
UNMISS Renewed As Kiir's Offensive Continues On 8 May, the UN Security Council voted to extend the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) for another yea...
Across the Borderlands: Migration Along the Eastern Route Migrants transiting out of the Horn of Africa have historically moved through three distinc...
The Age of Drones Last week, for the first time, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) conducted several drone strikes in Port Sudan on the Red Sea, penetra...
The NCC That Never Was: HSM Through the Looking Glass Today should have been the second day of Somalia's National Consultative Council (NCC) in Mogadishu-- now postponed until next week, with little hope of achieving either a quorum or meaningful results. In today's editorial, Sahan explores an alternate reality-- one in which a successful NCC meeting offers a way out of Somalia's worsening crisis. With Al-Shabaab edging closer to Mogadishu and the risk of Somalia emulating an Afghanistan-style jihadist takeover ever more plausible, Somali political leaders convened yesterday in Kampala for the first full-fledged National Consultative Council (NCC) meeting to take place in well over two years. At the invitation of Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, the leaders of Somalia's federal institutions, Federal Member State (FMS) presidents, and an array of former heads of state and government set aside their differences in a last-ditch effort to salvage Somalia's creaking political settlement and forestall an Al-Shabaab triumph.
Sudan's Islamist Resurgence Shapes a Fractured War Since last September, when the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) launched its campaign to oust the Rapid...
The NCC That Never Was: HSM Through the Looking Glass Today should have been the second day of Somalia's National Consultative Council (NCC) in Mogadishu-- now postponed until next week, with little hope of achieving either a quorum or meaningful results. In today's editorial, Sahan explores an alternate reality-- one in which a successful NCC meeting offers a way out of Somalia's worsening crisis. With Al-Shabaab edging closer to Mogadishu and the risk of Somalia emulating an Afghanistan-style jihadist takeover ever more plausible, Somali political leaders convened yesterday in Kampala for the first full-fledged National Consultative Council (NCC) meeting to take place in well over two years. At the invitation of Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, the leaders of Somalia's federal institutions, Federal Member State (FMS) presidents, and an array of former heads of state and government set aside their differences in a last-ditch effort to salvage Somalia's creaking political settlement and forestall an Al-Shabaab triumph.
Silent Killers: Counterfeit Drugs in Somalia While the global trade in counterfeit, falsified, and adulterated pharmaceuticals has proven difficult to trace, it has been estimated to be worth as much as USD 200 billion annually. Produced en masse and smuggled through complex transnational criminal networks, the majority of the world's counterfeit drugs are believed to originate in China and India before dispersing across the globe. The issue is especially acute in Africa, where falsified and substandard medicines have been estimated by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime to contribute to up to 500,000 deaths in the sub-Saharan region every year. And Somalia, in particular, faces a grim confluence of problems stemming from the lack of regulation in its pharmaceutical industry, a partial legacy of the collapse of the state in the 1990s. But with the sector intimately connected to transnational smuggling, attempts to tackle the booming trade have toiled in the face of entrenched corruption, porous borders, and weak regulatory oversight.
Beyond the Terror Frame: Understanding the OLA In early February, Kenyan police launched 'Operation Ondoa Jangili' against the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA) insurgents in Marsabit and Isiolo counties in northern Kenya, in conjunction with Ethiopian forces. Having signed a security cooperation agreement in August 2024 to combat cross-border threats, both Nairobi and Addis have sought to tie the OLA insurgency to Al-Shabaab, and consequently paint the Oromo nationalist forces as 'terrorists.' But to frame Oromo nationalism and struggle simply through the lens of counter-terrorism obscures a much more complex reality, and does an injustice to the Oromo people.
Kampala Redux as TCCs Assert Control Over the weekend, a video recorded in 2021 began circulating. In it, then-an opposition leader, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud (HSM), warns incumbent President Mohamed Abdullahi Farmaajo that if he failed to negotiate destabilising domestic tensions within the Afisioni Tent, he would end up in Kampala and with foreigners deciding Somalia's future. And that is precisely what happened- Farmaajo was diplomatically frog-marched to Kampala, forced to relinquish control over the political transition and appoint a new PM to oversee the process that returned HSM to Villa Somalia. Fast forward to today, and it is essentially Somalia redux. Having failed to heed his own advice from 2021, HSM travelled to Uganda last week, where African Union peacekeeping troop-contributing countries (TCCs) announced they would assume a leading role in Somalia's political and military affairs. Spearheaded by Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, the TCC's proposed political mechanism is intended to oversee Somalia's national security portfolio and, between the lines, to advance the domestic reconciliation that Villa Somalia has shunned.
For a government whose slogan was "not one inch" just a few months ago, it might have been more apt to have adopted "not that inch." On 22 April, last year's secret bilateral Somalia-Türkiye oil and gas deal emerged after its submission to the Turkish parliament, revealing that Mogadishu had ceded immense potential profits and sovereignty for pennies. Signed during the geopolitical fallout of the Somaliland-Ethiopia Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) and harried through Somalia's parliament, the agreement points to further political and economic vandalism by the current federal administration and its desire to monopolise Somalia's sovereign rents and national resources. While insisting that Addis would have "not one inch" of Somali coastal territory, Mogadishu has offered every centimetre of the country to foreign powers.
Kenya’s Haiti Mission Stalls Amid Deepening Crisis On Monday, Kenya's National Security Advisor Monica Juma addressed the UN Security Cou...
Murder in Laas Aanood: SSC-Khaatumo admits Al-Shabaab presence Al-Shabaab has reared its head once again in the town of Laas Aanood in the Sool region. On 20 April, Farah Aidid Jama 'Bariis'– an Ethiopian security expert with the Garowe consulate in Puntland– was abducted, tortured, and murdered before his body was dumped the following day in the Gooja'ade valley near Laas Aanood. For the first time, SSC-Khaatumo officials have acknowledged the presence of Al-Shabaab units within the town, having strenuously denied it for over two years. And while details over Bariis's murder remain murky, it comes at an awkward moment for the riven administration, coming so shortly after the much-heralded visit of Somali PM Hamza Abdi Barre to Laas Aanood.
Ethiopia’s Cycle of Violence Spins On In October 2023, in its final report, the UN's International Commission of Human Rights Experts on Ethiopia (ICHREE) urged the international community to redouble its efforts to protect civilians and hold perpetrators "accountable" for the "staggering" human rights abuses that had been carried out in Ethiopia. Eighteen months later, these calls have gone entirely unheeded, while the Commission's warning that there is "no deterrence for future atrocity crimes" has borne fruit in a number of conflict-riddled regions of the country. It was a severe error to bow to pressure for the ICHREE to close prematurely-- leaving it unable to form a determination on the question of genocide in Tigray-- and one that has let down past and future victims of breaches of International Humanitarian Law (IHL) in Ethiopia