By Abdisaid Muse Ali

Authoritarian habits in Puntland rarely announce themselves through spectacular violence. They work through story, through the way those in office define who belongs, who speaks for the region, and who must be treated as a threat. Power does not only run through ministries and security forces; it also runs through definitions of loyalty, unity, and responsibility. Once that field of meaning is captured, ostracizing critics becomes an ordinary technique of rule rather than an exception.

The first move is conceptual. Criticism of the presidency is fused with opposition to Puntland itself. When elders, journalists, or business people question decisions on elections, revenues, youth unemployment or relations with predatory external actors, they are not treated as citizens debating a public agenda. They are reframed as saboteurs, blamed for weakening peace and inviting foreign hands into Puntland’s affairs. The leadership sidesteps their arguments and instead puts their identity on trial, probing their motives and lineage as if the source of the criticism were proof enough that it should be dismissed. It suggests that they speak for rival sub clans or hostile capitals, not for the wider public. Clan language, which ought to protect communities from predation, is redeployed to stigmatize dissent. To question a policy is made to look like betrayal of one’s own people.

Narrative control turns this framing into common sense. Media that rely on the state for access, funding, or protection recycle a single script in which the presidency appears as the last barrier against disorder, critics are portrayed as irresponsible or compromised, and Puntland itself is described as permanently vulnerable to collapse. Organisations that investigate contracts, unkept promises, or constitutional violations are quietly shut out of briefings, lose advertising and donor support, or become targets of orchestrated social media attacks. What emerges is not silence but a crowded information space in which one narrative is repeated so relentlessly that alternative accounts struggle to register at all. Public space is filled with accounts of danger and rescue that leave little room for alternative perspectives. In a context where the memory of civil war and inter clan violence is still vivid, many listeners internalize the message that visible criticism itself is risky.

The narrative is backed by administrative pressure. Those who persist in challenging the line encounter delayed permits, aggressive audits, stalled salaries, or sudden disputes over regulations. Each action is small enough to be denied, yet heavy enough to signal that resistance is costly. Instruments that should provide predictable order, such as licensing and taxation, are selectively deployed to discipline individuals and organisations that insist on accountability. Formal legality remains, but its direction is reversed. Instead of law protecting citizens from arbitrary power, law-like procedures are used to enforce political dependence.

Economic power reinforces this logic. In a political economy where government contracts, aid funded projects, and security employment still dominate opportunity, access is mediated by proximity to the President’s circle. His family and their networks are invited into tenders and partnerships. Those who back independent media, civic groups, or rival platforms find doors quietly closing. Whole families and communities learn that even silent association with critics can carry a price. Over time, the structure of incentives encourages both self censorship and mutual surveillance. People do not simply fear the state; they fear the social and economic consequences of being seen as outside the circle of loyalty.

Opposition is then fragmented rather than confronted as a whole. Influential elders, Isimo, religious figures, and professionals are brought into advisory councils or committees that seldom decide anything but project an image of consultation. Their presence is used as evidence that everyone is heard, even as substantive decisions remain in a narrow core. Those who refuse co-optation are easier to isolate. They are rebranded as figures driven by grudges, private ambition, foreign interests, or the interests of a single sub clan. A potential coalition for institutional reform is splintered into isolated individuals and small camps, each of them far easier to dismiss, discredit, or simply overlook.

Digital platforms extend this architecture. Supporters close to the President and his family organize campaigns on social media that target journalists, politicians, intellectuals, religious groups, and activists who question sensitive deals, electoral timelines, or security arrangements. Lineage and loyalty are invoked to dismiss arguments rather than answer them. Accusations travel faster than facts. People learn that a single post, photograph, or critical remark can trigger waves of abuse and reputational damage that reach their families. Under such conditions, many step back from public debate not because they have changed their minds, but because the cost of visibility is too high.

President Deni’s external orientation is part of the same pattern. His admiration for Khalifa Haftar in Libya grows out of deep insecurity rather than strategic confidence. Haftar offers a script that appeals to leaders who distrust plural politics: a strong commander surrounded by loyal security forces, presented as the only barrier between society and chaos. In that script, political order is restored by concentrating authority in one man’s hands, and dissent is treated as disorder. For a leader who fears negotiation and institutional constraints, this looks like certainty.

The reality in Libya is less reassuring. Haftar’s apparent order rests on a patchwork of militias, foreign money, and mercenary logistics. Governance is thin; coercion is thick. Political authority depends on balancing fear and dependency, not on building impersonal institutions. To take this as a model is to confuse control with capacity and temporary obedience with legitimacy.

The influence of that model is visible in Puntland. The build up of the presidential guard, the creation of UAE backed paramilitary units, the recentralization of key revenue streams in the presidency, and the reliance on security forces personally answerable to the Puntland President all signal a shift toward governing through a compact bloc of coercion and cash rather than through impersonal rules. These changes are presented as technical steps toward reform and stability, but their practical effect is to widen the president’s discretionary power and to narrow the space in which opponents, critics, and independent institutions can act. Calls for accountability are recast as efforts to split the camp, and appeals to constitutional limits are portrayed as giving comfort to Puntland’s enemies. Once routine disagreement is described in those terms, contestation no longer looks like part of normal politics but like a threat to survival, and that story is then used to defend moves that would otherwise be seen as overreach.

This insecurity also encourages dependence on external patrons who value pliant partners over autonomous institutions. Alignments with actors such as the United Arab Emirates and comfort with Haftar’s style of warlord governance rest on a common logic: that it is acceptable to trade institutional development and local sovereignty for short term financial and political support, as long as personal power is preserved. That trade weakens Puntland’s long run strategic position and shrinks the political horizon to the tenure and ambitions of a single leader.

Yet Puntland’s own history points in a different direction. Its relative success within Somalia did not emerge from a single strongman. It came from negotiated arrangements among clans, incremental building of administrative capacity, and a shared understanding that security structures must answer to society rather than dominate it. Political order rested on consent, not just on coercion. To imitate Haftar, or any similar model, is to work against the foundations that allowed Puntland to function when much of Somalia did not.

Institutional capture completes the current trajectory. Courts, electoral bodies, and regional councils are gradually staffed on the basis of loyalty rather than competence or independence. The distinction between government and state blurs. Rules remain on paper, but their application becomes uneven and contingent. Opposition candidates encounter technical obstacles and shifting procedures, while allies experience the same framework as flexible and accommodating. Exclusion is administered through formal channels, which makes it harder to contest and easier to deny.

As selective punishment accumulates, it does not only rearrange institutions; it reorders judgement. Journalists, civil servants, and ordinary citizens learn to anticipate the likely cost of a sentence or a meeting, drop conversations and relationships that might trigger scrutiny, and quietly scale back any expectation that politics can be a vehicle for real change rather than something to be endured. Few expect imprisonment; many expect isolation if they cross invisible lines. To question the President Deni’s narrative is to risk being defined as an enemy of the clan or of Puntland itself. That label can follow a person across institutions and opportunities. In this way, clan, which historically protected individuals against a predatory centre, becomes a vehicle for enforcing conformity on behalf of that centre.

Seen from this angle, admiration for figures like Haftar is less a sign of strength than a confession of anxiety. It reveals a leadership that does not trust institutions, shared rules, or its own performance to carry authority. It is the outlook of rulers who equate obedience with unity and silence with stability. Puntland, however, was created to move beyond that fear. Its durability depends on deepening a political order where power is constrained by law, balanced among actors, and renewed through credible procedures.

This is why the distinction between Puntland and any individual ruler is more than a slogan. Puntland is not Deni, and it is not any presidency. Puntland, at its best, is made in the daily work of its institutions, the bargains that bind its communities, and the habit of settling disputes through rules rather than through the personal wishes of the president. In that setting, questioning a president, a policy choice, or a foreign partnership is not a blow against Puntland but a way of taking responsibility for the political project that sustains it.

Real authority in Puntland will not come from copying foreign generals or silencing domestic critics. It will come from governing in ways that make coercion less necessary: predictable law, transparent management of resources, professional security forces that operate within clear mandates, and political competition that is channeled through rules everyone can recognize as legitimate. Every move toward narrative manipulation and personalized coercion may extend the tenure of a leader, but it narrows the future of the polity. The task for Puntland’s elites and citizens alike is to insist that the region’s identity rests in institutions and performance, not in the insecurities of those who temporarily hold office.

Abdisaid M. Ali
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Abdisaid is the chairperson of Lomé Peace and Security Forum, Former Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation and Former National Security Advisor, Somalia. X account @4rukun