By Isha Qarsoon
On January 1, 2026, a group described in Somali media as “Somaliland politicians in Mogadishu” issued a joint statement urging the Federal Government of Somalia to avoid punitive measures following Israel’s recognition of Somaliland. Those associated with the statement reportedly include the Deputy Prime Minister, the Minister of Finance, and the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Their warning was explicit. In a joint statement, the group said: “The Federal Government of Somalia must refrain from taking measures that affect the economy, movement, and security of the Somali people in Somaliland, as forceful actions will never bring about unity.” They also called for an end to hateful rhetoric that could further divide the Somali people and urged both sides to seek peaceful negotiation rather than force or economic pressure. The statement emphasized that existing differences should be resolved through dialogue and appealed to Somaliland to return to the negotiation table to work toward peace, stability, and national unity.
Not to be outdone, parliamentarians associated with Somaliland reinforced the same posture. In a separate joint statement, members of both houses of parliament from Somaliland reiterated the call for restraint, urged the Federal Government to avoid economic or security measures affecting Somaliland, and framed dialogue as the only legitimate response to the recognition of secession. Like the earlier appeal, the statement affirmed belief in unity while placing practical limits on the federal government’s authority to act as a sovereign state. The substance was not new. Its significance lay in confirming that the same position was being advanced by Somaliland-affiliated officials across all three branches of the federal government.
What makes this arrangement especially corrosive is the normalization of conflicted loyalty at the highest levels of government. In a dispute defined by mutually exclusive claims—unionism on one side and secession on the other—dual alignment cannot be treated as neutrality. It amounts to duplicity. Officials present themselves as defenders of Somali unity while sustaining political, economic, and social alignment with separatist outcomes. Unionist commitments are affirmed rhetorically while separatist positions are accommodated, shifting the costs and consequences of separation onto the state as a whole.
The significance of the recent interventions lies in their breadth. When the same posture is advanced by officials across the executive, legislative, and judicial branches, conflicted loyalty can no longer be dismissed as individual judgment or isolated conduct. It begins to function as a structural feature of participation in the federal government without a settled choice on union or secession. This is not reconciliation. It is an effort to retain the benefits of federal office while keeping open allegiance to a competing political project, at the expense of constitutional clarity and public trust.
The language of the appeal may sound conciliatory, but its institutional meaning is corrosive: it openly calls into question the federal government’s legitimacy to act as a sovereign authority. Officials operating within the recognized Somali state publicly cautioned that state against exercising sovereign authority in response to a secessionist challenge. In doing so, they recast a constitutional dispute as one in which restraint by the federal center is treated as the only legitimate posture, while provocation is normalized as the price of stability.
Left unaddressed, this posture transforms a foundational question of sovereignty into a practice of duplicity that borders on constitutional betrayal. Senior officials who continue to occupy positions within the Federal Government while declining to affirm Somalia’s territorial integrity, or to oppose external recognition of a secessionist project, are not engaging in ordinary political disagreement. They are withholding allegiance from the constitutional order they are sworn to uphold. The Provisional Constitution assumes such allegiance but provides only limited mechanisms to enforce it, particularly with respect to members of Parliament. [1] The President and the Prime Minister therefore bear a constitutional responsibility to confront and clarify this contradiction by refusing its normalization and by activating the accountability measures available within the constitutional framework, even where those measures stop short of removal. Parliament bears a parallel responsibility to discipline its own leadership and to reject conduct that undermines the unity and territorial integrity of the state. Although this conduct does not meet the narrow constitutional definition of criminal treason, it approaches treason in its effect by allowing public authority to be exercised without fidelity to the state it purports to serve.
A state that cannot demand coherent alignment from those who hold its offices cannot credibly claim to defend unity, territorial integrity, or constitutional order. It produces a government that speaks the language of sovereignty while tolerating conduct that steadily hollows sovereignty out from within.
What makes this episode especially troubling is the weight of the offices entrusted to these officials. Key state institutions—the finance ministry, the central bank, the development bank, one house of parliament, and even the judiciary—are increasingly occupied by individuals who cannot, or will not, choose between the union they formally serve and the separatist project with which they remain politically or socially aligned. Because the territory they are presumed to represent has withdrawn from the union, they lack a defined constituency, an electorate, and any meaningful place-based accountability. Their authority is therefore purely positional: it flows downward from appointment, not upward from consent.
This condition is not incidental. It reflects the terminal logic of the 4.5 power-sharing formula once it is severed from the constitutional order it was meant to serve. A mechanism introduced as a temporary stabilizer has hardened into a system in which office is allocated on the basis of clan affiliation rather than representative constituency, divorcing authority from accountability and leaving institutions formally intact but politically hollow.
The judiciary illustrates the damage most clearly. Courts derive legitimacy from institutional distance—from politics, faction, and bargaining power—not from clan balance or elite accommodation. In a federal system, the judiciary’s central role is to resolve disputes between the federal government and the member states, as well as disputes among the states themselves. That role depends on impartiality across jurisdictions.
When judicial officials engage in political signaling, that distance collapses and independence is compromised. Conflicting loyalty magnifies the problem. A judge with an affinity to a particular state cannot credibly arbitrate disputes involving that state and the federal government, or between that state and other member states, without a persistent appearance of bias. Law may remain formally operative, but its authority erodes. A Chief Justice operating under conflicted loyalty cannot command acceptance of unionist rulings in a divided polity, and rule of law gives way to rule by law.
What links these cases is self-preservation. Officials with conflicted loyalty organize their conduct to avoid alienating either side. They retain office within the federal government while preserving standing, access, and future opportunity in a separatist political environment. Power is maintained by never choosing. This posture allows individuals to draw authority and resources from the Somali state while keeping open a parallel political platform elsewhere. It is a calculated refusal to commit, driven by personal position rather than constitutional obligation. By tolerating this behavior, the federal government converts conflicted loyalty into an accepted operating norm.
That tolerance amounts to a fraud on the public. Citizens are asked to accept governance as legitimate while officials withhold allegiance to the constitutional order they serve. The forms of government remain, but commitment does not. Over time, public office is reduced to an instrument for preserving status rather than fulfilling public duty.
Isha Qarsoon
Email: Ishaqarsoon1@gmail.com
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Footnotes
[1] The imbalance begins with the absence of any express constitutional mechanism for expelling members of Parliament who refuse to uphold the Constitution, including its core commitments to unity and territorial integrity. Loss of parliamentary membership is confined to narrow grounds such as resignation, death, incompatibility of office, or circumstances “provided by law,” many of which remain unimplemented. In contrast, the Constitution provides extensive procedural protection for legislators against accountability. Article 70 grants members of Parliament immunity from arrest, detention, and criminal prosecution without the consent of their respective House, except in cases of flagrante delicto involving serious crimes. The combined effect is a self-serving architecture in which those who drafted and occupy Parliament insulated themselves from both political removal and criminal enforcement while retaining supervisory authority over the executive and judiciary. This asymmetry, rooted in the post-conflict drafting context dominated by factional power brokers, entrenches legislative impunity and weakens constitutional loyalty by design.