Hassan Sheikh Mohamud returned to Villa Somalia as president for the second time on May 15th, 2022, after five years in the political wilderness. Mohamud came back with big fanfare.
Mohamud framed his second term as an experienced hand with deep knowledge of pressing issues and ready to correct a ship spinning out of control. After 100 days of enormous miscalculations, Mohamud influence became limited to Mogadishu. He is effectively nothing more than the mayor of the capital city.
It was predictable. Mohamud established a political brand in his first term. This political brand revolved around collecting money for personal enrichment and deep loyalty to a small group of friends. Bribery was rampant. Public land was auctioned off to the highest bitter, and no penny ever reached public accounts. Members of the security apparatus and civil servants went unpaid for months and their salaries stollen. A small network of friends developed through diploma mills of for-profit colleges, which burgeoned Somalia after the state implosion dominated his first kitchen cabinet.
Despite these, Mohamud second term was overhyped. Mohamud did not live up to the hype. He flapped in the first 100 days.
Mohamud embarked on a series of overseas trips. Almost all the trips triggered conflicts. We review two with the most immediate impact.
Mohamud visited Egypt. Accordingly, Mohamud endorsed Cairo’s position on the Nile River water flow dispute with Addis Ababa. Mohamud initially denied but later confirmed the discussion through a spokesman.
Mohamud’s visit to Egypt triggered a major diplomatic rift with Ethiopia. Ethiopia invited leaders of Federal Members States(FMS) to Addis Ababa. The Puntland leader went first followed by the Southwest leader. As of this writing, arrangements are being made for Galmudug & Jubbaland leaders to do the same.
FMSs are a relic of Tigray People Liberation Front(TPLF) politics when the group ruled Ethiopia and divided Somalia into six states with more sub-states planned. Plans for sub-states were abandoned after TPLF lost power in Ethiopia.
Ethiopia prides itself on importing the flawed governing idea into Somalia and wants to utilize FMS to put pressure on Mohamud for supporting Egypt’s position over the water dispute on the Nile River. It was no surprise that FMS leaders started traveling to Ethiopia.
Mohamud is on record stating an FMS leader making political arrangements with a foreign country can be only caused by Villa Somalia. He’s in Villa Somalia now, and FMS exodus is in progress. Hence, he has failed by his own standards.
Ethiopia locked horns with Mohamud immediately over the appointments of the director of intelligence and as well as his choice for national security advisor. Both men have established links to TPLF and Al-Shabaab, two groups working to overthrow the Addis Ababa regime.
Again, Mohamud’s political judgment was shrouded by group loyalty. He failed to evaluate critical appointments in a broader regional context.
While all these percolated over in the background, Al-Shabaab made an incursion Into the Somali region of Ethiopia. The event startled Ethiopia’s political and security establishments.
The most shocking was Mohamud’s appointment of Mukhtar Robow, former Al-Shabaab deputy leader to a religious affairs minister in Mohamud’s cabinet. The gloves came off.
Ethiopia’s ground troops started flowing into Somalia, and the air force started bombing villages inside Somalia. There is still no comment, not even a single tweet addressing the crisis from Villa Somalia.
Ethiopia security officers have returned to border communities that have been stable in the past five years under the tripartite agreement between Somalia, Ethiopia, and Eritrea. Ethiopia officers are organizing, and mobilizing communities in Bakool, Hudur, Galgaduud, Hiiran, Mudug, and Togdheer without the consent of Somalia.
Somalia has no fighter jets to dispatch to intercept Ethiopian jets for violating national airspace. But at least registering discontent for sovereignty breaches is expected. Villa Somalia had been a silent bystander.
FMSs have become a political ace in the hole for regimes hostile to Somalia regardless of who lives in Villa Somalia. Kenya used them to effectively dislodge Mohamud’s predecessor by directly administering the selection of members for parliament.
Mohamud visited Kenya with delight and eagerness. He’s on record stating he feels more distressed of the Al-Shabaab attacks in Nairobi than in Mogadishu.
The trip to Kenya set off controversies as well. Kenya got all of what it desired while Somalia got a token promise of the possibility to export fish.
Somalia has no machinery to mass produce and export fish. Even if it did, Kenya has plenty of fish often produced with government subsidies making it less expensive and more desirable than any imported version.
But the most controversial item of Mohamud’s visit to Kenya involved the resumption of daily Khat shipment to Somalia. Mohamud’s predecessor prohibited the importation of this product as a part of a broader political-economic pressure on Kenya over internal political inference.
Kenya had overstock supplies of the Khat and shipped nearly $200 million worth in the first week. Street vendors dumped overstock supplies on Mogadishu streets for free by the truckload.
Somalis took to the streets and to social media to protest the social ills of Khat on society. More importantly, they were discontent with the trade value of what Somalia expected to export to Kenya.
FMSs are limiting Mohamed’s ability to lead Somalia. Moreover, Mohamud fails to intellectually comprehend the political consequences of a country divided into clan fiefdoms under this governing model. In a commentary column on news aggregator website Hiiraan online a few days before the May 15th, 2022, tent event that brought him back to Villa Somalia, he opined how FMSs were the vanguards of resurrecting Somalia from the political ashes. Today, the same entities are forcing him to become a mayor of Mogadishu instead of a national leader.
Some may argue with considerable validity that he even failed to be a mayor of Mogadishu. He has yet to respond to one of the longest sieges by a militant group. Members of the militant group Al Shabaab controlled the Hayad Hotel in one of the districts that the government fully controls. The group left at will after over 30 hours killing scores and wounding scores more.
Author is a Technology Entrepreneur and long time civic leader. He tweets @fuguni. Follow him for more in-depth analysis.
Author is a Technology Entrepreneur and long time civic leader. He tweets @fuguni. Follow him for more in-depth analysis.
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