Fiddling While Middle Shabelle Burns On Tuesday in Mogadishu, hundreds of people, mostly students, were bussed into Shangani to line up and obtain voter ID cards in a highly choreographed affair. Among the first in line was the mayor of Mogadishu, participating in a stunt that Villa Somalia continues to frame as the next step to achieving the first national one-person, one-vote (OPOV) elections since 1967. But rather than realising the long-thwarted democratic aspirations of the Somali people, it is simply another damaging spectacle, just as PM Hamza Barre's trip to Laas Aanood was, that further diminishes the chance of any positive outcome from the upcoming 'national dialogue' process. With Al-Shabaab having seized Adan Yabaal in Middle Shabelle and a host of other strategic locations this morning, Villa Somalia is fiddling while Rome burns.
Reports of a government offensive in the Hiiraan region recall the heady days of the 2022 ma'awiisley offensive against Al-Shabaab that left the jihadists bloodied and on the back foot. At that time, community defence forces from the Hawaadle rose up against Al-Shabaab in protest against the group's pitiless 'taxtortion' during a time of brutal drought, and succeeded in dislodging the extremists from significant parts of Hiiraan, Middle Shabelle and Galmudug. Known as the 'ma'awiisley' for the typical 'ma'wiis' (sarongs) that Somali men wear, it was a clan and community-led offensive that the fresh Hassan Sheikh administration eagerly appropriated as a 'success story' for the federal government. Today, once again, scenes of young men with AK-47s battling Al-Shabaab along the Shabelle River valley are being touted as a token of Villa Somalia's counterterrorism zeal.