By Wilo Abdulle Osman
This is not a collection of soundbites. It is not a series of disconnected grievances gathered from the margins of Somali political life. What follows is a complete and unbroken composite testimony, a single coherent and devastating statement woven from the voices of ordinary citizens, political insiders, intellectuals, diaspora returnees, civil society leaders, and opposition figures. It was gathered over weeks of interviews and discussions conducted across the Southwest State, the contested region of Gedo, the corridors of power in Puntland, the diaspora communities of North America and Europe, and the fragile communities of Somalia’s interior. The testimony is presented here in full, exactly as it was spoken and refined through dialogue, so that the Somali people and the international community may hear it in its own voice. It is a warning. It is a diagnosis. It is a plea.
The testimony opens not with a political demand but with a principle of ancient Somali wisdom. It is a caution against the reckless use of power and language, and it sets the tone for everything that follows.
Khilaafyadan yeyna u gudbin dagaalo aan la xakamayn karin. Soomaalidu waxay tiraahdaa, hadal intuu uurkaaga ku jiro ayuu ammaano kuu yahay. Hadal ninweyna waa maligiis.
Loosely translated into English: “These conflicts should not be allowed to escalate into wars that cannot be controlled. Somalis say: Your words are under your control only while they are unspoken. But a great man’s word is his honor.”
This opening salvo belongs to an elder in Luuq Ganaane, a town in the heart of Gedo region. The elder’s addition of the second half of the proverb is critical. It is a direct address to power. It asserts that the words and actions of those who lead Somalia are not private musings. They are emissaries dispatched into the world with intent and consequence. Once sent, they cannot be recalled. The elder from Luuq Ganaane is warning that the Federal Government has already dispatched its messengers in the form of political maneuvers, troop deployments, and divisive rhetoric, and those messengers are now traveling toward a destination that no one may be able to control. The phrase dagaalo aan la xakamayn karin, wars that cannot be controlled, is the central theme of this entire testimony. It is the fear that haunts every subsequent voice.
From the riverine wisdom of Gedo, the testimony shifts to the administrative corridors of Puntland. Here a sitting minister, speaking on condition of anonymity to protect both his position and his candor, offers a fundamental critique of the Federal Government’s approach to governance under President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud.
Talada dalka waa la wada leeyahay. In ummaddu ismaamulkeeda qayb ka ahaatana waa xuquuq muwaadin kasta leeyahay oo aan la iska xayuubsan karin. Sida madaxweyne Xasan Sheekh dalka u maamulanayo waa luminta aaminaada shacabka. Dadka aan ujeedno ee masiirka soomaaliya horboodka u ah maaha dad u fakaraya si miisaaman mana aha dad aayatiinka dalka Soomaaliya ka talinaya.
“The counsel of the nation is shared. That the people of Somalia should have a say or participate in their own governance is an inalienable right of every citizen, a right that cannot be seized away. The way President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud is managing the country is the squandering of public trust. The people we are referring to, those who are at the forefront of Somalia’s destiny, are not people who think in a balanced manner, nor are they people who are presiding over the fate of the Somali nation.”
This is a foundational indictment from within the federal system itself. The minister is not a separatist. He is a stakeholder in the federal project who has concluded that the project is being dismantled by its own chief architect. His first assertion is a restatement of the federal compact: power is shared, counsel is collective. His second assertion elevates the principle to a constitutional and moral right, a citizen’s right that cannot simply be confiscated by the center. The minister’s third point is the most politically damaging. He accuses President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud of the active squandering, the loss, the dissipation of public trust. In a nation where the state has historically been an instrument of predation, trust is the scarcest and most precious political commodity, and the minister is stating that it is being spent recklessly. Finally, the minister delivers a verdict on the competence and temperament of the leadership. They are not balanced thinkers. They are not truly in command of the nation’s destiny. This is not a call for their removal. It is a declaration that they are not fit for the task they have undertaken.
The minister was then asked a question that probes beyond the immediate crisis and into the long term trajectory of the Somali state. The exchange is reproduced here verbatim.
Drawing on your assessment of the situation in which Somalia finds itself today, how do you envision Somalia will look after 15 May, 2026?
“When I consider the history we have endured and the current position in which Somalia stands or finds itself mired, I harbor a profound fear that Somalia’s strategic position will become the source of its undoing, and that the country will become a prize pulled apart and contested between old colonial powers and new ones.”
The minister concluded his remarks with that statement, a grim forecast that casts the current political infighting as a prelude to a much larger and more dangerous geopolitical contestation over Somali territory and sovereignty.
From the internal perspective of a federal member state minister, the testimony moves outward to the global Somali diaspora. The next voice belongs to a Somali intellectual living in exile in Europe, waxqarad/aqoonyahan whose distance allows for a broader, more structural analysis of the crisis.
Xaqiiqooyinka soo ifbaxaya ee ku saabsan heshiiyada lagala galiyo dalal shisheeye in ay maamushaan kheyraadka dalka, isku-shubeynta, kala daadinta ismaamulka dawlad gobolleedyada, ismagacaabida qabyaalada qaawan, isqowleysiga, iskooxeysiga iyo isbarbaryaaca ka socda dalka waa arimo dalka dib udhac u horseedaya. Intani maaha wax ka qarsoon ummadda wax garadka ah. Maaha in ummadda soomaaliyeed waxgaradkeedu awood la’aan yihiin. Balse in arrimaha ama xaaladaha la isla xeeriyo ayey ka doorbidayaan in la isku dhaco oo hub la isku qaato, xal maaha.
“The emerging realities concerning the agreements being entered into with foreign nations for the management of the country’s resources, the systematic rigging of political processes, the deliberate fragmentation of the autonomy of regional administrations, the naked self identification with clanism, the formation of self interested coalitions, the relentless factionalism, and the general state of discord that now pervades the country, these are matters that will set the nation back considerably. None of this is hidden from the knowledgeable people of this nation. It is not that the Somali intelligentsia lack the capacity or the power to alter this course. Rather, they prefer, over the difficult work of regulating these matters and establishing rules together, to clash with one another and to resort to the gun. This is not a solution.”
The intellectual’s catalogue of grievances is as specific as it is damning. He points to the controversial agreements with foreign governments that a broad swath of Somali society regards as a quiet surrender of sovereignty in exchange for fleeting political advantage. He invokes the term isu-shubeyn, a colloquialism that has come to signify the entrenched practice of manipulating and predetermining electoral and political outcomes to serve narrow interests. He describes what he sees as an active campaign by Mogadishu to weaken and divide the federal member states, thereby consolidating power at the center. He notes the brazen deployment of clan identity not as a mechanism for consociational balance but as a blunt political weapon, and he surveys a political landscape choked by the weeds of shifting transactional alliances and a prevailing atmosphere of chaotic disarray.
Yet the intellectual’s most incisive observation lies not in his inventory of the country’s afflictions but in his diagnosis of the elite’s response to them. He rejects outright the familiar excuse of powerlessness. The Somali intelligentsia, he insists, are not without agency or capacity. The crisis is not one of ability but of volition. The preference, he argues, is for the clash of arms over the painstaking labor of legislation, for the gun over the gavel. And this, he concludes with a finality that leaves no room for ambiguity, is no solution at all.
The next voice grounds the testimony in the brutal, tangible reality of life on the ground in the Southwest State. A female civil society leader, someone whose daily work involves feeding the displaced, mediating clan disputes, and advocating for the most vulnerable, offers a plea that cuts through the political jargon with the clarity of someone who sees the human cost of elite failure every single day.
The Word is a People’s Messenger: Unified Voices Warn of Looming Conflict in Somalia
Wilo Abdulle Osman
Email: Wilo.abdulle@gmail.com
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Wilo is a Nairobi-based regional analyst specializing in Horn of Africa political dynamics, social and humanitarian affairs. With an extensive background in human rights, gender equality, and social inclusion, she provides an intersectional lens on the region’s complex challenges. Her research focuses on the intersection of conflict, governance, and the rights to protection of vulnerable populations.