By Abdisaid M. Ali
The chairperson of Lomé Peace and Security Forum and the Former Minister of Foreign Affairs of FGS

Somali politics has always been governed by the present tense. Power is measured not by whether institutions endure but by what leaders can deliver in the moment. Offices and revenues are treated as spoils, coalitions form and dissolve overnight, and the state itself is grasped as a prize to be seized. The result is a political order caught in short horizons, unable to embed authority in institutions that outlast temporary bargains.

This pattern is not new. Independence in 1960 lifted the Somali Youth League on a surge of national hope, but that moment was earned the hard way. For more than a decade the SYL organized across towns and grazing corridors, built branches, and pulled students, traders, and clan elders into a single national platform while pushing back against trusteeship controls. The SYL leadership pressed its case before the United Nations, rallied the call for one republic, and drove through the union of the northern protectorate with the southern trust territory. They operated under constant surveillance, faced arrests and censorship, yet held their coalition together. When the flag was finally raised, it closed the chapter of colonial struggle and opened the harder battle of building a state.

The military regime that followed promised a clean break, but it came by abruptly upending Somalia’s first democratic experiment. In October 1969 the army tore up the constitution, shut down parliament and the courts, and dismantled the fragile scaffolding of self-rule before it had a chance to stand. The nine years after independence were unruly and uneven, but they gave Somalis their first encounter with electoral contest, parliamentary deal-making, and courts that claimed independence. That path was cut short overnight. The generals replaced it with rule by decree under the Supreme Revolutionary Council, cloaked in the rhetoric of discipline and scientific socialism but built on centralised command and coercion.

Siad Barre’s project of “scientific socialism” aimed to discipline clan loyalties and centralize reform. Literacy campaigns and new slogans briefly suggested a turn toward institutional depth. But the regime’s roots were shallow. Barre’s regime rested on foreign patrons, first Moscow and then Washington, while tightening control through patronage and coercion. In the Ogaden, Somali forces were forced to pull back in 1978 as Ethiopia, armed and reinforced by massive Soviet and Cuban support, pushed them out. Once that external backing faded, the regime could no longer hold on. Its shallow base gave way and by 1991 the Somali state had broken apart into militias and clan fiefdoms.

Since then, Somalia has not recovered the possibility of institutional consolidation. Federalism, introduced as a corrective to authoritarian centralism, has instead formalized fragmentation. States such as Somaliland, Puntland, and Jubaland operate as semi-autonomous patronage systems, competing with Mogadishu for revenues, offices, and external recognition. The provisional constitution remains unratified. Electoral rules shift each cycle. Every framework is temporary, every bargain provisional.

External involvement has deepened this short horizon. Donors reward visible outputs: a reopened port, a checkpoint secured, a battalion on stipend. AMISOM, and later post-ATMIS, bought tactical stability but allowed elites to postpone the work of building a national army. Gulf rivalries turned ports into bargaining chips. The security sector became a marketplace of sponsors. Turkey, the United States, the European Union, the United Arab Emirates, and the United Kingdom ran parallel training pipelines that minted units tied to rival paymasters and schooled in incompatible doctrine. Instead of a single national force, Somalia ended up with a field army with many masters. Command fractured, logistics split, and discipline followed sponsor and clan rather than the state.

Relief policy mirrored this pattern. Essential in famine and drought, humanitarian aid still kept politics in survival mode. Money and attention gravitated to short cycle deliveries and headline metrics, while the real risk reducers were pushed aside: water storage, irrigation, dryland agriculture, early warning systems, and community safety nets. The result was quick fixes over staying power, crisis management over resilience.

Somali leaders have adapted to these incentives. They know that short-term stability secures external flows more reliably than long-term reforms. Militia commanders are put on payrolls, contracts are distributed through kinship networks, and donor projects are absorbed into political calculations. The building of durable authority is always deferred.

The consequences are predictable. Courts remain distrusted because judgments can be overturned by political pressure. The army is fragmented, its soldiers more loyal to clan commanders than to the state. Revenue collection is shallow, confined largely to Mogadishu’s ports and airports. Citizens view taxation as arbitrary extraction rather than a reciprocal bond. Institutions remain stuck in infancy because each administration reconfigures them as spoils.

This is what latecomer statehood looks like when dominated by temporary interests. Unlike European states that consolidated through centuries of war and taxation, Somalia entered the international system with a skeletal colonial inheritance and without the time to accumulate infrastructural depth. Other African states have confronted the same challenge. Rwanda and Ethiopia extended their time horizons by disciplining elites, however coercively, into long-term projects. South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo, by contrast, resemble Somalia in cycling through agreements that collapse as soon as benefits shift. Somalia stands out as the extreme case: a polity where temporality has become institutionalized.

The way out requires bending politics toward durability. Federalism must evolve from perpetual bargaining to predictable competition. A sequenced but credible framework for universal suffrage would channel rivalry into stable arenas. Revenue collection must broaden so the state survives on citizens rather than patrons, creating accountability through taxation. Security forces must be unified under a single chain of command and paid reliably. Courts must decide without fear or favor, harmonizing with customary and sharia frameworks but embedding a national legal order.

Equally vital is cultural reorientation. Somalia’s intellectuals, elders, religious leaders, and diaspora must recast expectations. Sovereignty cannot mean the division of spoils; it must mean the patient work of building institutions. The diaspora sends more than two billion dollars home each year and holds real leverage for accountable governance and leadership. Turn that leverage into hard demands for performance: working services, published accounts, and clear targets from those in office. In parallel, religious leaders can root public life in justice and fairness, setting a moral floor that politics must respect. Elders can discipline clan rivalry into structured competition.

Mindset, Discipline, and the Work of Sovereignty

Every durable state begins not with resources in hand but with a vision carried in the minds of its leaders. Sovereignty is first imagined before it is secured. Armies, revenues, and institutions take shape only when a leadership class commits itself to a mindset that privileges permanence over expedience. Without that discipline, politics shrinks into short bargains, and institutions are consumed as spoils.

Somalia’s history shows what happens when that long horizon is missing. Independence created the promise of a unified republic, yet elites quickly reduced parliament, ministries, and revenues to instruments of immediate advantage. The military regime spoke the language of order and reform but severed the early path of democratic practice. Federalism, international sponsorship, and humanitarian relief have since deepened this politics of immediacy rather than breaking it.

State-building requires a different mindset. Leaders must treat institutions as the frame that holds sovereignty together, not as chips to trade. Discipline means holding the line on rules even when they cut against narrow gain, and committing to the slow, exacting work of courts, revenue systems, and a unified chain of command, not the quick rewards of patronage. Comparative history reinforces this truth. Europe’s rulers learned it over centuries of war and taxation. Rwanda and Ethiopia, despite their flaws, have shown that even latecomer states can enforce longer horizons through discipline. Somalia reveals the opposite: without a mindset oriented toward durability, sovereignty dissolves into perpetual renegotiation.

The shift, therefore, must be mental as well as institutional. Somalia’s intellectuals, elders, and diaspora must help reset expectations: sovereignty cannot mean dividing spoils, it must mean building institutions that last. Religious leaders can insist on justice and fairness as the moral baseline of politics. The diaspora, which sends home billions every year, must turn remittances into leverage for accountable governance and leadership. Only when vision is joined with discipline will Somalia move from promise to permanence.

Conclusion

Somalia’s history shows what happens when politics privileges the immediate bargain over the long horizon of institutions. The state has not remained weak because Somalis lack vision or skill, but because authority has never been embedded deeply enough to survive beyond the moment. Unless politics begins to privilege institutional depth over tactical wins, Somalia will remain trapped in the rhythm of promise and collapse.

Yet the path is not foreclosed. Change becomes possible when rules outlast leaders, when citizens pay taxes and expect services in return, when courts decide predictably, and when soldiers obey a single chain of command. These are the foundations of sovereignty in a latecomer state. Somalia’s choice is stark: remain governed by the short horizon of temporary interests or embrace the mindset and discipline required for the long, patient work of building a state that lasts.

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.