By Abdisaid M. Ali

In southern Somalia, including Mogadishu, financial routine rules the day. Young men stand in line and part with their cash. Receipts are issued, rates are known, enforcement is certain. The collector is Al Shabaab. It is an unsettling fact, and it clarifies the problem. Where the state is sporadic, the insurgent is predictable. The issue is not the presence of rivals. It is the absence of discipline.

Somalia’s failures are often told in fragments. Colonial borders, civil war, neighbors’ interference, Gulf ambition, Western policy. Each carries truth, yet together they hide the central deficiency. The republic has not converted recognition into routine. Flags and anthems announce a state, but permanence requires habits that bind rulers and citizens to rules that constrain them.

At independence, Somalia gained instant standing in international society. What it lacked were the slow circuits that make authority resilient. Taxation collected on schedule. Armies that obey commands. Courts that decide without favor. Ministries that treat rules as restraints rather than suggestions. Late-forming states in Africa inherited borders and expectations without the fiscal and coercive depth that others built through long cycles of conflict and administration. Somalia entered the race with speed but without traction.

Early enthusiasm was real. The flag promised unity, leaders spoke of democracy and development, public spirit ran high. Drift followed. Parliament turned into a marketplace for clan blocs. Ministries became dispensaries of favor. Revenue seeped into private networks. After the Ogaden War collapsed Somalia’s illusions, the army that once symbolized unity stood exposed: undertrained troops, thin logistics, fickle allies, precarious institutions. Defeat drove the regime to securitize power at home. It narrowed its coalition, routed funds and favors through kinship networks, and turned the security services into instruments of surveillance and punishment. Detention without review, politicized courts, and collective sanctions became ordinary tools of rule. The government convened commissions without subpoena power, budget, or independent membership. It announced amnesties that excluded key commanders and offered no legal guarantees, refused restitution for seized property, and stalled on power sharing that could have broadened representation. These choices narrowed the coalition.

Resources and appointments flowed to a few lineages, security units enforced loyalty rather than law, and opposition had no lawful path back into public life. Consent shrank, defection rose, and the state lost the cross clan commitments that make authority durable. Instead, grievances hardened, society fractured, and shared language and faith could not mask the absence of trust or rules. Authoritarianism fused with patronage and reconciliation never followed. The result was fragmentation, militias, and collapse. Somalia did not fall for lack of sympathy or resources. It fell because revenue, coercion, and law lacked discipline.

The pattern fits a broader latecomer story. Where rulers cannot measure and enforce taxation, they cannot sustain professional forces. Where forces lack discipline, law loses credibility. Where law loses credibility, citizens retreat to private protection. Europe and parts of Asia learned this sequence over centuries. African independence compressed time and inverted order. Recognition arrived first. Capacity was expected later. In Somalia it never consolidated.

Reconstruction since 2000 kept the state nominally alive but left foundations shallow. Federal bargains tried to balance autonomy and coherence. Donors financed budgets and trained units. The African Union held ground at high cost. Yet the decisive test remains unmet. Revenues still leak. Offices are treated as inheritances. Security forces reflect factional arithmetic, not professional standards. Citizens bypass courts because outcomes can be purchased. The state appears visible yet remains thin where it must be firm.

External actors read this weakness as invitation. Port concessions, training missions, counterterror operations, commercial footprints, and mineral offtakes arrive with their own priorities. Somalia becomes a theatre where other capitals convert money into leverage. These relationships can supply resources, but without internal discipline they define the rules. Somalis end up negotiating over terms they do not enforce. The signing of treaties, security agreements, and investment deals must be guided by long term national objectives and by the strengthening of state building institutions. External engagement must not substitute for domestic governance. It should reinforce fiscal consolidation, professional security institutions, and the rule of law. Every signature abroad must translate into capability at home.

States that last do not rely on identity rhetoric. They rely on systems that compel compliance at scale and at cost. Where rulers protected treasuries, professionalized coercion, and made law habitual, authority consolidated. Where they traded long term capacity for short term convenience, collapse followed.

Somalia’s path forward is a disciplined sequence that compounds capacity.

First, revenue reliability

Create one treasury account operated through a real time financial management system. Enforce commitment controls before payment, and publish monthly statements of collections and transfers. Breaches trigger automatic spending freezes on the offending line ministry. Move customs and excise to e invoicing and track and trace for high yield goods. Establish a large taxpayer unit with audit authority, digital risk scoring, and prosecution follow through. Success is measured by the share of revenue collected through the single account, the audit hit rate, and monthly publication on schedule.

Second, professional force

Build a national roster tied to biometrics and link it to payroll so salaries flow only to verified accounts. Maintain a single chain of command with written orders and recorded compliance checks. Enforce training standards through pass or fail certification by an external board. Mix units by region and language and rotate them to prevent local capture. Centralize procurement with open contracts and end use verification. Success is measured by biometric match rates, on time pay, certification pass rates, and the share of contracts published and verified.

Third, credible law

Adopt standardized case management with fixed procedural timelines and transparent sentencing guidelines. Empower a judicial discipline body to remove corrupt judges and publish decisions. Allow customary forums to complement statutory courts when settlements are registered and enforceable. Success is measured by time to disposition, enforcement rates, and disciplinary outcomes published each quarter.

Fourth, rule based federalism

Make intergovernmental transfers formula driven and public. Share national taxes using automatic distribution keys reconciled by an independent body. Fund joint security tasks with joint budgets and reciprocal oversight. Success is measured by on schedule transfers, variance from formula, and audited joint operations.

Fifth, civic compliance. The lawful path must be the easiest path. Create a single digital portal with a published fee schedule, fixed timelines, and automatic receipts.

The lawful path must be the path of least resistance. Build a single digital portal where all licenses and permits are processed with a posted fee schedule, fixed timelines, and automatic receipts. Each application carries a public tracking number. If the deadline is missed, the license is granted automatically and the responsible office is fined. Every payment is digital and traceable.

Inspections are randomized, risk-based, and recorded. No official negotiates a file. Any officer who solicits a bribe is suspended the same day, entered into a public misconduct registry, and investigated within fourteen days. Proven cases lead to dismissal, forfeiture of pension, a five-year ban from public service and contracts, and criminal referral within forty-eight hours.

The applicant’s license proceeds immediately. Fees are refunded within seventy-two hours. Whistleblowers are guaranteed legal anonymity, protection from dismissal, and compensation for any verified retaliation. The integrity office opens an inquiry within twenty four hours, provides counsel at state expense, and issues a binding decision within fourteen days. A leak of identity triggers immediate suspension of the responsible official, followed by dismissal and criminal charges. When retaliation is proven, the whistleblower returns to duty with back pay and damages, and the offender is barred from public service and public contracts for five years. All outcomes are recorded in a public registry. Managers who retaliate are dismissed, recorded in a public registry, and barred from public service and public contracts for five years.

Publish one weekly dashboard on a single public portal. It shows median approval times by permit type, the share of applications decided within deadline, grievances resolved within seven days, and sanctions issued to officials and applicants. All entries link to case numbers so the public can verify outcomes. All grievances are filed through one portal, assigned a tracking number, and answered in writing within the week.

Each year, review all regulations. Remove any rule that raises cost without protecting safety, health, or fair competition, and publish the evidence behind every change.

When rules are public, deadlines are honored, and sanctions are certain, the lawful path becomes faster and safer than evasion. Compliance then rests on trust in the state’s word. Legitimacy follows when performance, not power, commands obedience.

This is not paperwork. This is the constitutional language of sovereignty. When these routines are in place, leaders lose the option to swap rules for expedience. When they are absent, citizens rationally defect.

The Horn is volatile. Ethiopia is unsettled. Sudan is at war. Eritrea remains on permanent mobilization. Somalia will act. We will secure the treasury, professionalize the security services, build courts the public trusts, and align external agreements with the nation’s long term interests. That path anchors equilibrium along the Red Sea. Any other path prolongs instability for all.

Somalia’s trajectory will not be set by communiqués. It will be decided in cash offices, payroll lists, training grounds, courtrooms, and classrooms. Sovereignty is a discipline we exercise every day and at cost. Discipline is not rhetoric. It is the framework of the state, the protection against external capture, and the passage from fragility to permanence. We will engage the world only in ways that strengthen our institutions. By that standard Somalia sets its own course. The choice is clear.

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.