By Osman A. Hassan

“……the country is officially open for oil drilling and exploration, inviting U.S. energy companies to re-engage in Somalia’s hydrocarbon sector.”

Somalia’s political history is often narrated as a tale of linear decline moving from a hopeful post-independence state to authoritarian rule, followed by civil war, statelessness, and a fragile attempt at federal reconstruction. However, this chronological framing oversimplifies the layered, multidirectional forces shaping Somalia’s political realities. To understand Somalia today and more importantly, to imagine where it may go, we must abandon the flat timeline of cause and effect and adopt a more dynamic perspective. One that sees time, influence, and decision-making as intersecting and recursive.

The cone is how political time unfolds not as a straight line, but as an expanding field of possibilities where the past, present, and future are in constant conversation. In the Somali context, Cone Politics allows us to examine how speculative futures whether they involve pan-Somali unity, Islamic governance, resource sovereignty, or regional integration reshape how history is remembered and how current political choices are made. This framework helps illuminate how global and regional forces such as the Nile water tensions between Egypt and Ethiopia, or the West and Middle East’s exploitative interest in Somalia’s oil intersect with internal dynamics like clan federalism, diaspora influence, and ideological insurgencies.

By understanding Somalia not as a failed state stuck in the past, but as a site of overlapping futures struggling for dominance, we gain a more nuanced view of its political landscape. Understanding the key moments in Somali history from colonial fragmentation to socialist dreams, from stateless collapse to jihadist revivalism through the lens of Cone Politics, ultimately arguing for a futurist approach to national renewal rooted in Somalia’s political Cone agency and vision. Similarly, understanding time in Somali political discourse is often viewed as a straightforward, linear sequence from colonization, to independence, to collapse, and the long, winding road toward reconstruction. This timeline, while useful for organizing historical events, fails to capture the complexity of how Somali political identity, memory, and vision truly operate. Somalia’s politics does not unfold in a simple past-to-present trajectory. Rather, it is shaped by multiple temporalities, where the future informs interpretations of the past, and historical memory is constantly revised considering present-day aspirations.

Additionally, to rethink Somali political time is to recognize that Somalia’s political actors whether clan elders, diaspora youth, militant groups, or regional leaders do not operate solely based on what has happened, but also on what might happen. Aspirations for a Greater Somalia, Islamic governance, federal decentralization, or technological rebirth all shape the decisions made today and how the past is understood. In this sense, political time in Somalia is not static but cyclical, anticipatory, and contested by abandoning the rigid timelines imposed by colonial historiography and international policy frameworks, one can begin to understand Somali political time as an evolving, living process one, in which imagined futures continuously reshape both memory and meaning. In connection to this, understanding and bearing in mind that Somalia’s modern political crisis is not merely the outcome of recent civil wars, terrorism, or failed statehood it is deeply rooted in the unresolved consequences of its colonial fragmentation. Unlike many African nations that experienced a single colonial ruler, Somalia was carved into pieces by multiple powers: Britain in the north, Italy in the south, France in Djibouti, and Somali-inhabited regions incorporated into Ethiopia and Kenya. These divisions were not just territorial, they embedded structural and cultural fractures that would outlive colonial rule and shape the fragile nation that emerged in 1960.

The post-independence dream of a united “Greater Somalia” was built on reclaiming these artificially separated regions, but the project lacked the political and institutional foundation to hold together such an ambitious vision. Instead of unity, Somalia inherited the disunity of its colonial creators, leading to cycles of conflict, contested identities, and geopolitical tension. Rather than being a chapter closed at independence, colonialism became a living legacy rewritten, reinterpreted, and relived through every constitutional crisis, border conflict, and clan rivalry. And Somalia remains a trapped between the ghosts of its colonial past and the uncertainty of fractured futures. The colonial Somalia’s regional boundaries continue to define internal politics, in addition to the ambition for pan-Somali identity that still haunts regional dynamics and competing visions for the future from federalism to secessionism that posture a mirror refraction of unresolved questions of understanding past and present from future. Somalia’s struggle is not just about survival in the present, it is about healing a history that was never truly its own, and imagining a future no longer confined by it.

Here, is where Somalis and Somalia should understand the past that when Major General Mohamed Siad Barre seized power in Somalia through a military coup in 1969, he promised a bold new era of unity, modernity, and national rebirth. By declaring Scientific Socialism as the ideological foundation of the Somali state, Barre envisioned a future free from clan divisions, colonial dependency, and underdevelopment. His government pursued sweeping reforms introducing mass literacy campaigns, nationalizing industries, expanding education, and promoting gender equality. To many, Somalia in the 1970s appeared to be leaping forward, defying the odds of post-colonial fragility. Yet beneath the surface of this visionary socialist project was a deepening culture of authoritarianism, state surveillance, and brutal repression.

As Barre’s regime struggled to maintain control, particularly after the failed Ogaden War in 1977, the state’s utopian future gave way to a paranoid present. Here, the Clan identities, which had been publicly denounced, were weaponized behind the scenes to punish dissent and reward loyalty. Political opposition was crushed, civil liberties evaporated, and the promises of socialism became tools of domination rather than liberation. The contradictions at the heart of Siad Barre’s rule founded on idealistic futures created one of the most authoritarian presents in Somali history. Through the lens of his dead-end Cone Politics, Barre’s imagined future not only shaped policy but justified repression, and how the collapse of that future continues to cast a long shadow over Somalia’s political landscape today.

The collapse feature of that future continues to Somalia’s descent into state collapse in the early 1990s is often portrayed as the outcome of internal clan rivalries and authoritarian overreach. While domestic factors played a central role, this interpretation overlooks the critical impact of external entanglements regional power struggles, global resource interests, and shifting foreign allegiances that shaped Somalia’s trajectory long before the state fell apart. From the Nile water conflict between Egypt and Ethiopia in the 1970s to the geopolitical scramble over Somalia’s oil and mineral wealth, Somalia’s sovereignty has been repeatedly undermined by forces far beyond its borders. In 1977, while Somalia launched its military campaign to reclaim the Somali-inhabited Ogaden region from Ethiopia, a different but interconnected conflict was unfolding upstream the geopolitical dispute between Egypt and Ethiopia over control of the Nile River. Though seemingly unrelated, these two tensions intersected as global powers, including the Soviet Union and the United States, shifted their loyalties based on broader strategic interests. Somalia, once a Cold War darling of socialist modernization, found itself abandoned, manipulated, and punished for attempting to assert regional influence. This moment marked the beginning of what this essay terms the “Somalia political cone crush” a convergence of failed futures, betrayed alliances, and shattered national dreams.

In addition to this, the compounding the regional military fallout was the Western and Middle Eastern hypocrisy surrounding Somalia’s rich but largely untapped oil and mineral resources. While publicly promoting peace and democracy, foreign powers and corporations have covertly maneuvered to secure access to Somali natural wealth, often supporting rival factions and undermining national unity in the process. In this context, Somalia became less of a failed state and more of a strategically fractured one, caught in the crossfire of competing cones of influence. Hence, Somalia’s collapse was not simply a product of internal dysfunction but a result of layered external pressures that crushed its political core. Using Cone Politics, the external forces deliberately paved way to regional wars, foreign resource agendas, and international power plays converged to destabilize the Somali state, leaving behind a landscape of statelessness, contested sovereignties, and futures still up for grabs.

Undoubtedly, Somalia’s political history is often framed as a linear fall from hopeful independence to military dictatorship, and ultimately to state collapse. But beneath this familiar narrative lies a deeper, more complex dynamic that involves a collision of competing visions for Somalia’s future, each shaped by historical grievances, foreign interference, and internal divisions. These overlapping and often contradictory projections what we refer to here as “cones” of political influence and imagination that eventually collided with such force that the Somali state structure was not merely weakened but crushed. This “Somalia political cone crush” represents a moment when too many futures, shaped by too few shared foundations, imploded the present. The collapse of the Somali state in 1991 did not result in a complete void but rather gave rise to a fragmented political landscape where regional actors, clan authorities, militant groups, and foreign powers each sought to build new orders atop the rubble of the old. Over the decades that followed, efforts to restore national governance coalesced into a federal model, intended to reconcile local autonomy with centralized authority. Yet rather than healing old fractures, federalism has often institutionalized them. The Somali state today operates not as a cohesive unit but as a patchwork of semi-autonomous regions, each with its own political agenda, external alliances, and imagined future.

The collapse of the Somali state through the lens of Cone Politics accumulation and eventual clash of unresolved pasts and competing futures led to a prolonged period of statelessness that is considers how federalism, rather than resolving this fragmentation, has entrenched it further, making the present not a steppingstone toward unity but a battleground of disjointed ambitions layered  to a collapse and  federal aftermath as an  essential to imagining any meaningful path forward for Somalia’s future.

Above all, in the intricate landscape of Somali politics, influence is no longer confined within the borders of the nation-state. From Minneapolis to London, Toronto to Dubai, the Somali diaspora plays an increasingly pivotal role in shaping the political direction of Somalia financially, ideologically, and strategically. Whether through remittances that sustain households and political campaigns, media influence that shapes narratives, or returnee elites who contest leadership at home, the diaspora has become a critical actor in what can be described as transnational cone politics a network of overlapping influences where imagined futures are projected back onto the Somali state from abroad. At the same time, another powerful political actor Al-Shabaab, a militant Islamist group and a U.S.- and UN-designated terrorist organization has constructed its own vision of Somalia’s future.

Drawing on transnational Islamist ideologies, regional grievances, and disillusionment with both federal and foreign-backed governance, Al-Shabaab has positioned itself as both an alternative authority and a harbinger of a radical Islamic state. Its resilience and influence, even in the face of military campaigns and international condemnation, suggest that its vision of Somalia’s future cannot be ignored in any serious analysis of the country’s political trajectory. The globally dispersed Somali diaspora and the ideologically driven Al-Shabaab interact with and shape Somalia’s cone of political futures. It examines the paradox of diaspora empowerment that is often a force for development, democratization, and peace, the diaspora also fuels fragmentation, polarization, and ideological imports. Similarly, it interrogates how Al-Shabaab’s vision of an Islamist future, while oppressive and violent, appeals to certain segments of the population by promising stability and moral clarity in a fractured state. Understanding both actors within the framework of Cone Politics reveals how the future of Somalia is not only being written in Mogadishu, but in mosques, meeting rooms, and chat groups across the globe.

Despite of all cone politics, Somalia’s political journey defies the linear narratives often imposed upon it by conventional historical and geopolitical briefly, through the lens of Cone Politics, one comes to understand that Somalia’s past and present are not static stages on a timeline, but are continuously reshaped by visions, fears, and expectations of the future. Whether it is the dream of a Greater Somalia, the authoritarian promise of socialist unity, the lure of resource wealth, or the threat of Islamist governance, each projected future has left its imprint on the way Somalis interpret their history and navigate their present. This framework allows us to make sense of the overlapping pressures that have defined Somalia’s fate from colonial fragmentation to Cold War entanglements, from diaspora engagement to militant insurgency.

The collapse of the Somali state was not merely a breakdown of institutions, but a collision of incompatible futures. The federal system that followed has done little to unify the fractured present, instead hosting a marketplace of political cones competing for dominance. Yet, within this complexity lies possibility in recognizing that Somalia’s past is not fixed and that its present is not doomed to repeat the failures of yesterday, Somalis and their allies can begin to shape a future that is inclusive, sovereign, and grounded in the realities of Somali identity. Somalia’s Cone Politics reminds us that the future is not something to be waited for, it is something already in motion, pressing into the now, capable of reimagining both what has been and what can be. Somalia’s path forward will depend on the ability to reconcile these layered temporalities to learn from the past without being bound by it, to stabilize the present without surrendering to it, and most importantly, to boldly shape the future with clarity, unity, and purpose.

By Osman A Hassan
Email: Abayounis1968@gmail.com