By Adam Sheikh Hassan “Al-Azhari” - Diplomat, writer and researcher specialising in Horn of Africa affairs. He currently serves as first consular at the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Somalia in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
“States do not collapse because they disagree, but when disagreement becomes a project that undermines their unity, erodes their identity and institutions, and jeopardises the future of their generations.”-Adam Sheikh Hassan “Al-Azhari”
Not all wars are fought with bullets, nor do all defeats begin with the fall of cities. Some nations first collapse in the collective consciousness before they fracture on the map. Once the idea of division takes root, the collapse of borders becomes only a matter of time.
The greatest danger facing states is not necessarily an enemy standing at their frontiers, but a project growing from within—one that redefines the homeland as a collection of competing regions rather than a state united by a single identity and a shared destiny.
Somalia has paid a heavy price over the past decades. It has been exhausted by civil wars, ravaged by terrorist groups, drained by clan conflicts and weakened by institutional collapse. It has also suffered from piracy, to the point that it became an example of a state that came perilously close to losing its very existence.
Yet, despite the severity of this ordeal, the Somali people have managed to set their country once again on the path to recovery, restoring part of its political presence and national institutions while holding on to the hope of reclaiming its place among the community of nations.
However, while many were anticipating the completion of this recovery, another danger began to emerge—one no less serious than terrorism and no less consequential than civil war. It is the danger of secession, which threatens to dismantle the Somali state from within and undermine the foundation upon which its national project rests.
Since Somaliland unilaterally declared its separation in 1991, it has sought to consolidate that reality politically and diplomatically.
At the same time, some federal member states have increasingly broadened their interpretation of the powers of self-government, to the point that federalism, in certain rhetoric and practices, is being presented as a stepping stone towards separation rather than a framework for regulating relations between the centre and the regions.
Here lies the real danger: federalism risks being transformed from an instrument for building the state into a means of dismantling it.
What is particularly striking is that this trend is taking shape at a defining moment when nations around the world are moving in precisely the opposite direction.
Today, countries are building economic blocs, strengthening regional unions, integrating markets and combining their capabilities, having recognised that the era of small, isolated entities has passed and that power in the twenty-first century is measured not by the size of a state or the number of political entities, but by the ability of peoples to unite and integrate.
From this perspective, Somalia’s territorial unity is not a political slogan raised on ceremonial occasions, nor an emotional appeal invoked during crises. It is an existential question and the cornerstone upon which the survival and continuity of the state depend.
Preserving Somalia’s standing among nations can therefore be achieved only by safeguarding and consolidating its national unity as the foundation of legitimacy, sovereignty and stability.
This requires coordinated official and popular efforts to strengthen the path towards unity by reinforcing the values of national belonging and reviving the principles of Somali nationalism, which continue to bear the consequences of historical partition and its enduring repercussions.
History has demonstrated that states that fail to protect their unity pay a heavy price in terms of security, stability and development, often descending into cycles of conflict and attrition. By contrast, states that place national unity above all other considerations have been able to build their institutions, safeguard their sovereignty and move confidently towards the future.
In my view, Somalia’s unity is neither a political option open to negotiation nor one alternative among many. It is an indispensable national necessity and a condition without which the Somali state-building project cannot succeed.
Any project that leads to the division of the country, regardless of the political justifications it adopts or the historical arguments upon which it relies, will only produce greater weakness and fragmentation while undermining the progress already achieved in rebuilding the state.
Somalia, more than most countries, understands the meaning of partition. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, colonial powers divided Somali territories into five parts, distributing one people among British and Italian administrations, French colonial rule, and Ethiopian and Kenyan control in one of the most complex territorial partitions on the African continent.
That division was not the result of social or civilisational differences among the Somali people. Rather, it reflected the balance of power among colonial powers at the time.
When two Somali territories gained independence and united in 1960, this was not merely an administrative merger between two newly independent states; it represented the fulfilment of a historic aspiration to restore as much as possible of the unity of the Somali people and their land.
Yet that aspiration remained incomplete because large areas of historically Somali-inhabited territory remained outside the framework of the national state. Somalia, therefore, is not, in its historical reality, a state searching for a unity that never existed. It is a homeland that was deliberately partitioned and subsequently succeeded in bringing substantial parts of itself together under the banner of the Somali Republic.
Any new project of fragmentation, therefore, cannot be regarded as a response to historical realities. Rather, it represents a return to a period that Somalis sought to overcome through their sacrifices and their struggle for a unified state.
This historical reality gives rise to a striking paradox: how can there be calls for a new division of a country that has already suffered from partition? How can separation become the proposed solution for a state whose people still carry the consequences of historical fragmentation in their collective consciousness?
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The logic of history suggests that division cannot be addressed by producing further divisions, but by developing fair arrangements that preserve the unity of the state while accommodating its diversity.
Secessionist demands, regardless of their political, economic or security justifications, carry risks that extend far beyond the borders of the region seeking separation. History teaches us that the fragmentation of a state does not necessarily stop with the first entity to break away.
Instead, it can open the door to similar demands in other regions, pushing the country into an endless cycle of fragmentation and repeated attempts to redraw its map.
When secession becomes a means of resolving political disputes, every crisis risks becoming a secessionist project and every disagreement an existential confrontation. The state then loses its ability to survive as the common framework that brings all of its citizens together.
The dangers of fragmentation are not confined to politics. They extend to security, the economy and foreign relations. A fragmented state becomes more vulnerable to regional and international intervention and less capable of protecting its borders and managing its natural resources. Its negotiating power in international affairs also diminishes, while national decision-making becomes increasingly vulnerable to external influence.
Somalia’s strength does not lie in the multiplication of its local administrations, but in its ability to bring them together within the framework of a single state.
Federalism, at its core, is not a project for dividing the homeland. It is a constitutional mechanism for distributing authority and ensuring political participation while preserving the unity and sovereignty of the state.
When federalism is transformed into a means of entrenching separate political identities, however, it loses its constitutional purpose and becomes an instrument for weakening the state rather than strengthening it.
In this context, preserving Somalia’s unity cannot be achieved simply by rejecting secession in political rhetoric. It requires addressing the underlying conditions that allow such demands to gain traction.
The more successful the state becomes in establishing the rule of law, combating corruption, promoting balanced development and guaranteeing fair political participation, the weaker the arguments underpinning projects of division will become. Unity will then emerge as a natural choice that does not require constant defence.
This responsibility does not rest with the state alone. It also extends to political, intellectual and media elites, which have a duty to strengthen a culture of national belonging and to distinguish between legitimate political disagreement and attempts to undermine the unity of the state.
Political opposition is a right, and differences of opinion are natural, but transforming political competition into a project to dismantle the homeland carries risks whose consequences could extend to future generations.
The experiences of nations have shown that states are not measured by the absence of disagreements, but by their ability to manage those disagreements within national institutions.
Established democracies were not built because they were free of disputes, but because they developed institutions capable of accommodating differences and preventing them from becoming struggles over the survival of the state itself.
This is the lesson Somalia must keep in mind as it continues its journey towards completing the process of state-building. Its success will not be measured solely by its security or political achievements, but also by its ability to consolidate national unity as the common framework for all Somalis and the fundamental guarantee of the state’s stability and continuity.
Ultimately, Somalia’s unity is not a temporary political issue, nor a slogan to be raised in times of crisis. It represents the foundation upon which the national state project rests.
The stronger state institutions become, the deeper citizenship takes root and the broader political participation grows, the fewer opportunities there will be for fragmentation.
Preserving the country’s unity will then become a choice dictated by the national interest above all other considerations.
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Adam Sheikh Hassan “Al-Azhari” is a diplomat, writer and researcher specialising in Horn of Africa affairs. He currently serves as first consular at the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Somalia in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
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The views expressed in this article are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect the views of Dawan Africa.