OP-ED: Somalia at a Crossroads: Building a Durable Solution Beyond Humanitarian Response

Interlocking Crises Reinforcing Fragility
 
After decades of conflict, prolonged insecurity, and recurrent climate shocks, Somalia stands once again at a defining juncture. Despite meaningful progress, most notably completing the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) debt relief process in December 2023, the country’s deep structural vulnerabilities persist. On the economic front, Somalia remains under Extended Credit Facility (ECF) program with the IMF and during the third and fourth review discussions held in Nairobi in July and late September 2025, IMF officials warned slow economic growth projecting 3% growth in 2025 down from 4% in 2024, with risks from political friction, climate shocks, and reform fatigue poses real risk to macroeconomic stability.

Also, underscored that Somalia’s long-term viability will depend on political stability, institutional discipline, and workable federal cooperation. Unless Somalia’s political elite, civic actors, and international partners confront the governance and security failures at the core of these challenges, the nation risks remaining trapped in a cycle of instability and missed opportunity.

Redefining Somalia’s future through locally led security, accountable governance, and political renewal
 
Somalia’s crises are interconnected: insecurity fuels poverty, poverty drives extremism, and weak governance undermines state-building, federalism, and economic stability.

Al-Shabaab continues to pose an existential threat to Somalia’s national stability, maintaining control or contesting authority over vast areas of southern and central Somalia. According to the UN Security Council’s Somalia Report (June 2025), attacks by the group surged by 15% compared to 2023, resulting in the displacement of more than half a million people.

Somalia’s federal security institutions, once seen as pillars of recovery, have been hollowed by politicisation, corruption, and dysfunction. Integrity within the FGS key security agencies has eroded, replaced by patronage networks and factional loyalties. The systematic politicization and erosion of merit-based recruitment have undermined professionalism, transparency, and cohesion across the security sector.

 Under former President Farmaajo and his former intelligence chief Fahad Yasin, and later continued under President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud (HSM), numerous defectors from Al-Shabaab were absorbed into federal security agencies. Instead of being carefully vetted and engaged as intelligence assets, many were elevated to positions of authority, a decision that deeply fractured institutional trust and demoralised seasoned officers who had risked their lives fighting the same individuals.

The consequences are stark, with high staff turnover, widespread disillusionment, and perceptions of unfairness have drained morale across the ranks. Years of investment in human capital in skills, training, and institutional memory are being steadily lost as experienced officers disengage or depart. The result is a security system increasingly defined by short-termism and opportunism rather than strategy and service. Today, the key FGS security agencies not only overlap in their mandates but also compete for donor funding, political favor, and operational relevance.

Coordination mechanisms are weak, rivalries are entrenched, and the pursuit of personal or factional gain frequently supersedes the national interest. Security has devolved into a “project economy,” a marketplace for contracts and political rent-seeking ventures rather than a coherent, accountable national enterprise. Without urgent structural reform, restoration of integrity, and credible oversight, Somalia’s security institutions risk perpetuating the very insecurity they were created to resolve, transforming from protectors of the state into participants in its fragility.

Furthermore, Somalia’s security problem extends far beyond Al-Shabaab. The insurgency operates within a permissive ecosystem of corruption, organized crime, and political patronage. Smuggling, extortion, and illicit taxation intersect with business and political networks, forming the economic oxygen that sustains the insurgency. The UN Panel of Experts on Somalia (2024) estimated that up to 40% of Al-Shabaab’s revenue streams overlap with state-linked commercial activity.

Compounding these challenges, the Federal Government’s own security policies have deepened institutional fragmentation. The Somalia Security Development Plan (SSDP) was originally designed to guide the implementation of the 2017 National Security Architecture (NSArch) and meant to establish a clear cooperative framework between the FGS and FMSs' security institutions. Under President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, however, the Office of the President limited the SSDP scope, plan, and priority to the FGS security institutions and removed critical components from the FMSs' security governance and capacity development. This effectively undermined the spirit of the NSArch, shifting the balance of power toward Mogadishu.

 This shift has had a political intention to centralise security command, marginalising FMSs and reasserting unilateral control over the instrument of coercive power. The consequence of the centralisation drive has weakened horizontal cooperation, alienated FMSs, and exacerbated political tensions, which resulted in operational disunity and growing resentment, conditions that Al-Shabaab has exploited to expand influence in regions like Galmudug, Hirshabelle, and Lower Shabelle. The security vacuum created by mistrust between the center and periphery has directly translated into operational failures on the ground.

The Concept of Operations (CONOPS) for the African Union Transition Mission in Somalia (AMTMIS), developed in 2022, underscored that locally led and locally owned counterterrorism (CT) operations are the most effective and sustainable approach to achieving long-term stability. This framework, later inherited by the president HSM administration, articulated a three-phase strategic model, Clear, Hold, and Build, designed to guide the stabilization process across recovered areas.

While the strategic logic of the CONOPS was sound, it also identified a critical gap in the “Hold” phase, where the absence of adequately empowered local holding forces risked undermining operational gains. To address this, the CONOPS recommended that Federal Member States (FMSs) be strengthened, with particular emphasis on the Darwish forces, who were identified as the ideal and sustainable actors to maintain control of cleared areas. This approach would have ensured local ownership, legitimacy, and long-term resilience, avoiding the need for unnecessary expansion of the Somali National Army (SNA). However, these recommendations were not implemented, and the structural weakness in maintaining the “Hold” phase continues to persist.

In contrast, Puntland provides a compelling counterexample that demonstrates what locally led, cooperative, and strategically disciplined security governance can achieve. Puntland's success in defeating entrenched ISIS cells in the Cal-Miskad mountains through an integrated and locally grounded strategy. This holistic community anchored model exemplifies how localized ownership, inter-institutional cooperation, and strategic discipline can deliver durable security outcomes, which are lessons that remain crucial for broader stabilisation efforts across Somalia.

At the same time, the lifting of the decades-long UN arms embargo in December 2023, while intended to restore Somalia’s sovereignty, has created a new layer of complexity. In the absence of strong oversight, the sudden influx of assorted weapons and ammunition has flowed into poorly regulated state and non-state hands.

The UN Security Council Monitoring Group and Small Arms Survey (2024) report warns that newly imported arms are already being diverted into clan militias, private buyers, and illicit markets, fueling local conflicts and black- market proliferation. The Federal Government’s fragmented command structure and weak arms management systems mean that accountability and tracking remain minimal. Instead of strengthening the state monopoly on force, the lifting of the embargo has expanded the marketplace of violence, reinforcing the political economy of insecurity.

Somalia’s challenge now is not merely fighting Al-Shabaab but managing the consequences of uncontrolled armament in a deeply divided political environment. Without a robust national disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) framework, the country risks returning to the security fragmentation of the 1990s, this time under the veneer of state legitimacy. Security in Somalia cannot be built from Mogadishu downward. It must be bottom-up, locally led, and locally owned, anchored in legitimacy rather than coercion.

This integrated model, FMS-led, FGS and community-supported, and internationally assisted, illustrates that security owned by local populations can deliver lasting results. It is a template Somalia could replicate nationwide: one that builds legitimacy from below rather than imposing fragility from above.

Challenges of Governance and Political Stagnation
 
Somalia’s governance crisis is largely self-inflicted. Over the past fourteen years, repeated cycles of political confrontation and excessive centralisation have paralyzed progress toward genuine federal unity. Both President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud (HSM) and his predecessor, Mohamed Abdullahi “Farmaajo,” despite their political differences, have pursued similar policies of consolidating power in Mogadishu at the expense of the federal spirit enshrined in the Provisional Constitution. These centralising tendencies have repeatedly triggered constitutional disputes and electoral crises in 2016–2017, 2020–2021, and now again in 2025–2026, stalling essential reforms and eroding the trust necessary for national cohesion.

As the Heritage Institute for Policy Studies (2024) observed, “the pursuit of centralised control has consistently undermined trust between the center and periphery, eroded institutional legitimacy, and hindered service delivery.” This pattern continues today under President HSM, whose administration faces mounting political fatigue and institutional fragility.

With less than eight months remaining in his mandate, President Hassan Sheikh should abandon his push for the so-called “one person, one vote” electoral model. While conceptually democratic, it is neither realistic nor feasible within the remaining timeframe. Had this process been initiated early in his tenure, progress toward establishing the necessary infrastructure, unified electoral framework, and standardised policies might have been achieved. However, none of these foundational elements currently exist. At this late stage, insisting on a nationwide direct election risks deepening political polarisation, distracting from urgent security and governance priorities, and jeopardising a peaceful and consensus-based political transition.

 The Aid Paradox
 
Somalia’s institutional fragility has been reinforced by international aid structures. While UN agencies and donor programs were designed to build state capacity, many have unintentionally created parallel systems with independent procurement and payroll frameworks that bypass Somali institutions.

 Though intended for accountability, these mechanisms have undermined local ownership and limited the growth of sustainable governance. The government institutions often serve as symbolic counterparts while real decision-making remains externalised. This reality calls for a fundamental shift in international engagement from substituting Somalia’s governance to enabling Somalia’s institutions. Growing fiscal prudence among key donors such as the United States offers an opportunity to channel resources through Somali systems, paired with strict transparency standards, to finally align aid with sovereignty

A Call for Political Realignment and Accountability
 
Ahead of the 2026 elections, Somalia’s political elite must commit to a national covenant defining rules of engagement and red lines that no faction can cross. National interest and security must supersede clan or personal loyalty.

The security sector must equally redefine its mission. It cannot focus narrowly on Al-Shabaab while ignoring the

criminal networks, political patronage, and arms proliferation that enable insecurity. The lifting of the arms embargo was a moment of sovereignty, but without robust oversight, it risks becoming a license for chaos.

 Rebuilding security from the ground up, modeled on the Puntland experience, can provide Somalia with a framework that blends legitimacy, discipline, and inclusivity. A decentralised, accountable system rooted in local ownership offers the best hope for dismantling both insurgency and the political economy of conflict.

If Somalia’s leaders and partners act with courage and foresight, the next decade could finally mark Somalia’s transition from fragile survival to durable sovereignty.

 References

·        African Union (2025). Communiqué on the Transition from ATMIS to AUSSOM. Addis Ababa.

·        Heritage Institute for Policy Studies (2024). State of the Somali Federation Report 2024. Mogadishu.

·        IMF (2024). Somalia: Article IV Consultation and Fifth Review under the ECF Arrangement. Washington, DC.

·        OCHA (2025). Somalia Humanitarian Needs Overview. Geneva.

·        UNDP (2024). Human Development Report. New York.

·        UNICEF (2024). Somalia Education Statistical Snapshot. Mogadishu.

·        UN Security Council (2025). Report of the Secretary-General on the Situation in Somalia. New York.

·        UN Panel of Experts on Somalia (2024). Report on Security Financing, Arms Diversion, and Organized Crime. New York.

·        World Bank (2025). Somalia Economic Update: Navigating Fiscal Reform and Climate Risk. Nairobi.

·        World Bank (2024). Migration and Development Brief 39. Washington, DC.

·        World Food Programme (2025). Operational Update: Somalia Country Office. Rome.

·        UNESCO (2024). Global Education Monitoring Report: Sub-Saharan Africa. Paris.

·        Small Arms Survey (2024). Arms Flows and State Fragility in Somalia. Geneva.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Garowe Online's editorial stance.