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“Somalia has never survived on one man; it has survived on agreement among many, and that remains its greatest strength.” Abdifatah Ahmed Hersi
Somalia faces political fractures on several fronts, reviving fears of the divisions that have haunted the country since the 1990s. In South West State, fighting that followed the entry of federal troops into Baidoa in March 2026 still flares. Hirshabelle is growing tense, and many fear it will be the next front.
Puntland has denounced the federal government, Jubaland now officially calls itself the “Government of Jubaland” rather than a regional state, and the self-declared republic of Somaliland, recognised by Israel in December 2025, has never seemed further away. Fragmentation is everywhere.
At the centre of this map of fractures sits President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, whose original four-year mandate was due to end on 15 May 2026 but who remains in Villa Somalia under constitutional changes his government says extend the term to 2027.
Opposition leaders reject that interpretation. Critics suspect Hassan Sheikh Mohamud sees himself as the leader who can finally impose order, as Erdoğan did in Turkey, Museveni in Uganda or Guelleh in Djibouti. After three decades of collapse, some Somalis quietly wonder whether the country needs exactly that. The harder question is whether it would be worth the price.
A dictatorship is rule by one person who answers to no one, though society keeps a life of its own. Totalitarianism, as Hannah Arendt described it, goes further and seeks to control belief, culture and private life itself. Many states that won independence after the 1940s slid from the first to the second.
Somali political traditions do not easily fit either model; the anthropologist I. M. Lewis described a form of “pastoral democracy”. In many communities, a Suldaan or a Garaad may inherit his position, but the title has never guaranteed the right to command at will.
Major decisions may belong to the shir (the open assembly of clan elders) and be bound by xeer (unwritten customary law between clans). Authority is borrowed from consensus rather than owned, and a leader who ignores the shir risks losing his followers.
Somalia has already seen what happens when a ruler stands above this tradition. Siad Barre seized power in 1969 promising to end tribalism, and his early years brought real gains, including the adoption of a written Somali script.
But the regime drifted towards totalitarian ambition: one party, one ideology, a feared security service and an attempt to abolish the clan by decree. Clan loyalties went underground and returned armed. When Barre fell in 1991, the state fell with him.
This history also explains why foreign models admired in Mogadishu do not travel well. Erdoğan inherited an established state machine, with a unified army and a national tax base, and won elections before consolidating greater power.
Museveni came to power at the head of a disciplined rebel army that had won a war, and that army became the foundation of his rule. Guelleh governs a small, compact state that draws revenue from ports and foreign military bases rather than relying on Somalia’s kind of clan bargaining.
Somalia has none of these foundations. Its army depends heavily on international partners, its member states maintain their own forces, and al-Shabaab still controls parts of the countryside. In a country like this, power cannot simply be seized; it has to be negotiated. A leader who stops negotiating is not building a strong state but cutting the rope that holds a weak one together.
The past year shows these dangers taking shape. The Banadir local elections of December 2025, the capital’s first one-person, one-vote poll since 1969, were largely peaceful and historic, but opposition leaders saw them as a model designed in Villa Somalia rather than agreed by the nation.
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Then, in March 2026, parliament approved a new constitution by majority vote, providing for five-year terms for parliament and the president. The government argues that those provisions apply to the current leadership; opponents dispute that claim. As the original four-year mandates reached their end, the government remained in office under its interpretation of the new constitution.
Federal forces took control of Baidoa, South West State’s president Abdiaziz Hassan Mohamed Laftagareen resigned, and fighters loyal to him subsequently launched attempts to regain ground.
In May, security forces opened fire during an opposition protest in Mogadishu, killing one person, according to witnesses and opposition figures; police also acknowledged the death.
In June, government troops and opposition-aligned fighters clashed in the capital’s streets, with each side offering a different account of responsibility. Every soldier sent to Baidoa is a soldier not fighting al-Shabaab, and every state pushed away from the federation may give the insurgency more room.
Elections are promised for 2027, but a vote run amid a contested mandate, with Puntland and Jubaland outside the process, risks becoming the next crisis with a date attached.
His supporters make a serious case. The clan-based 4.5 formula allowed a small elite to trade parliamentary seats, and someone had to challenge it; regional leaders such as Laftagareen and Ahmed Madobe have also faced criticism over their mandates.
Direct elections are a worthy goal. But the method shapes the result, and one-person, one-vote delivered through a disputed extension and an atmosphere of military confrontation risks being remembered as one man’s project, not the nation’s.
Hassan Sheikh should know this better than anyone. In April 2021, President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed (Farmaajo) signed a two-year extension of his own term. Within weeks, opposition-aligned troops took positions in Mogadishu, fighting broke out, and Farmaajo backed down. Hassan Sheikh was among the opposition leaders who challenged that extension.
History suggests three possible endings: a negotiated retreat, as in 2021; a disputed election that leaves a president without broad national acceptance; or slow fragmentation, with the army spent fighting Somalis, member states drifting further from the federation and al-Shabaab benefiting from the divisions.
Somalia’s past offers little reason to assume prolonged centralized rule would unite the country without agreement. Sooner or later, the shir always returns.
This is why I believe the project is destructive, whatever its intentions. It treats a consensus society as if consensus were optional, and the result risks being not a stronger Somalia but a smaller, angrier and more divided one. Is one more year in Villa Somalia worth a war in Baidoa, a crisis in Hirshabelle and a Somaliland drifting beyond reach?
Somalia has never survived on one man. It has survived on agreement among many, and what it needs now is not a ruler above the shir but a president who behaves like a wise elder within it: one who listens, builds agreement and knows when to step aside.
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*Abdifatah Ahmed Hersi is the Dean of the Faculty of Economics and Management Sciences at Hormuud University, Mogadishu, Somalia.
**The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views or editorial position of Dawan Africa.