Abdul Mohammed and Samira Gaid

On 12 September, the Houthis arrived on Mayun, also known as Perim, the island which sits at the mouth of the Bab el-Mandab Strait, after sweeping southward along Yemen’s Red Sea coast. Their strategic foothold menaces a chokepoint through which roughly 12 per cent of the world’s trade by volume transits. Riyadh has solicited U.S. assistance. Washington has pledged intelligence support but has not yet committed to any direct action.

With Bab el-Mandab suffering interruptions in tandem with the war in and around the Strait of Hormuz between the United States, Israel and Iran, the two straits are increasingly merging as the war in Iran widens. This development has substantially elevated the growing significance of the western shores of the Red Sea.

In the same week that Riyadh was pressing its case in Washington, Somaliland President Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi Irro was there too on a mission for closer relations and recognition. Somaliland is marketing itself as a safe trading partner and anchor for security in the Red Sea. But the case most likely to win over Washington – its location, Berbera’s facilities and what they might do against the Houthis – is also the one most likely to draw Somaliland into an external alliance system and militarise it from the start.

For Somalia, the war across the ocean is no longer a remote affair. It is starting to restructure Somali politics.

The Crisis Is Larger Than Domestic Divisions

Somalia is already afflicted by a major internal fracture. The constitutional amendments adopted in March are contested, and elections have been postponed without a consensus-based framework in place. Puntland and Jubaland are alienated from the Federal Government, and the opposition in South West has on several occasions resorted to violence. Recent clashes around Baidoa on 3 September led to civilian displacement and demonstrated how political disagreements can easily turn into armed confrontations.

Clan and sub-clan politics continue to matter for representation, security and access to resources. But decades of clan-centred analysis now obscure more than they explain. The decisive new force is external security entanglement and how this is becoming the major factor tipping the scale.

Somali actors increasingly seek protection, finance, weapons, training, diplomatic recognition and market access from outside powers. Those powers seek ports, airfields, intelligence access, commercial concessions and local partners in rivalries originating far beyond Somalia.

This transaction sustains itself. Domestic fragmentation invites external sponsorship; external sponsorship disincentivises compromise. Political leaders find external insurance against domestic competitors, while external actors find Somali proxies for broader rivalries. Though Somalia has been an arena for foreign patronage since Independence, what has now changed is the currency. Patrons no longer only provide reversible assets like money, weapons, and training. Today, the currency is recognition, basing agreements, and defence relationships. Ports, transport corridors and military facilities sit at the centre of the new geopolitical contest in the Horn of Africa, including Somalia.

The risk is that the next Somali political settlement, like any of the political settlements in the Horn of Africa, will be determined less by negotiation between Somalis than by the competing demands of Middle Eastern and international alliances.

Somalia remaking the state Through Political Settlement

Somalia’s state-building record, still largely a work in progress, should be judged more generously. Having lost a functioning state in 1991, Somalis have reconstructed their political life without a reliable blueprint. They have negotiated, improvised and adjusted. Crises were often managed rather than resolved. Yet this approach preserved a measure of continuity, enabled changes of national leadership and kept alive the possibility of a common political order.

That process was an ongoing political settlement. It was not a one-off conference, a final constitution, or an agreement among a small coterie of elites. It was the changing set of understandings about who could legitimately exercise authority, how the centre and regions would share power and resources, how security would be provided, and how conflicts would be defused and returned to negotiation before they became violent. Federalism provided a language for coexistence among actors who deeply distrusted each other, but who knew none could govern Somalia alone.

African soldiers fought and died to protect that settlement, and multilateral and bilateral partners provided security, finance and diplomacy. In spite of fragmentation, their contributions allowed Somalis to remain the main actors in the reassembly of the state.

This is now at risk, and the shift is already visible on the ground. As soon as leaders rely on patrons for security and survival, compromise is riskier, and room for maneuver narrows. Somali leaders may hold office but become junior partners in competing factions, unable to make deals for Somalia as a whole, beholden to foreign interests.

Federalism Is Becoming Foreign Policy

The warning was made explicit in January when the Federal Government of Somalia terminated a number of deals with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on defense, security, and the ports of Berbera, Bosaso and Kismayo. Somaliland, Puntland and Jubaland denounced Mogadishu’s move and stated that their ties with the UAE would not be affected. The UAE continues to have close commercial and security relationships with Somaliland and Puntland and a presence in Jubaland. A constitutional argument about federal powers had morphed into a power play over international orientation.

The Federal Government also has strategic partnerships, particularly with Turkey, and growing ties with Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Turkey’s relationship with the Federal Government is the largest single external security relationship in the country, covering training, a permanent facility, maritime and naval agreements and now energy exploration. The United States will remain at the center of counterterrorism efforts. In December 2025, Israel also recognized Somaliland, bringing in a new security actor directly across the Bab el Mandeb from Yemen.

The relationships are not in themselves illegitimate, and they are not two permanent blocs. Somalia requires investment and security cooperation. The problem is that foreign relationships now flow through competing Somali centres of authority. Various forces are accountable to different systems of training and finance, while ports and airfields are attached to distinct networks. Federalism then ceases to be about shared government and starts to split the country into external spheres of influence.

Al-Shabaab, too, profits from the expanding battlefield. Its alleged arms and training ties to the Houthis link a Somali insurgency to a war on the other side of the Gulf of Aden. The resurgence of piracy, as a result of the diversion of naval forces to other tasks, drives home the message that the security apparatus on the two coasts can no longer be considered separately.

Somaliland Risks Recognition Without Sovereign Freedom

Somaliland’s case deserves respect. It is based on a unique colonial history, the violent history of the defunct Somali state and over three decades of de facto self-rule. Its institutions and democratic transfers of power count. Its claims for recognition can no longer be written off as an outside creation.

Yet, recognition, if granted on the basis of the logic of the current war, could hollow out independence of its content. Israel’s recognition of Somaliland on 26 December 2025 was a diplomatic breakthrough, but tied Somaliland’s status immediately to the fight against Iran and the Houthis. It also tied this status to Israel’s standing in the Muslim world and its conduct in Palestine—an association Hargeisa will have to navigate both at home and abroad. In July, Le Monde reported building work at Berbera Airport that would enable its future use by the UAE, Israel and the United States. Somaliland has denied that a formal Israeli base agreement exists. The dispute itself, however, alters the threat environment. The Houthis have warned that an Israeli presence would be considered a military target.

If recognition is won mainly through offering strategic access, as President Irro’s recent visit to Washington underscored, it will come with obligations that Somaliland cannot control. A newcomer to the international system may be given a place in an alliance before it has secured the freedom to make its own foreign policy.

Somaliland could therefore be militarised before its sovereignty is consolidated. Berbera could become valuable to foreign militaries and vulnerable to their enemies at the same time. A state should enter international society with freedom of choice, not with a pre-assigned role in somebody else’s war.

A Political Settlement Before External Capture

The multilateral response, not least of all on the African continent that currently remains way behind the curve, needs to adapt rapidly, cognizant of the deepening fusion of security and economic dynamics of the Gulf and the Horn of Africa.

In Somalia, this means that fighting Al-Shabaab and maintaining the African Union Support and Stabilization Mission in Somalia (AUSSOM) are still important, but neither can replace a political settlement. The United States has informed the AU it will block the use of assessed contributions to finance AUSSOM after 31 December, the last straw that may break AUSSOM’s back. This exposes both a funding crisis and the eroding international consensus that underpinned Somalia’s recovery.

The African Union, IGAD, the United Nations and the European Union should make restoring Somali political agency their central objective, while contributing to shielding internal contestation from external competition. They should help the Federal Government, Federal Member States and major opposition forces to agree on a credible electoral and constitutional pathway, workable federal arrangements and rules for resolving disputes without force. This must build on Somalia’s tradition of incremental bargaining, not impose another external formula.

External relations must be regulated as well. Somalis need agreed procedures for access by foreign militaries, port concessions, provision of security assistance, and major resource contracts. Disclosure at the national level and prior review would make it more difficult for external powers to shop among rival authorities. Units trained by foreigners must serve accountable Somali institutions, not individual leaders or patrons.

Somaliland requires a genuine political track, with AU and IGAD patronage, which takes its history and aspirations seriously but does not prejudge the result. The short-term priority should be to ensure that its status question is not resolved by military bargains concocted by the Bab el-Mandab war.

External powers present on both shores have their own part to play and must accept minimal restraints: no support for armed contests between Somali authorities, no clandestine deals that shift the regional balance, no use of Somali territory in external wars without a transparent and legitimate Somali decision.

Time is running out. Somalia may reclaim its culture of political settlement while its leaders still have maneuvering space, or its factions can strike deals with states that want bases, ports and proxies. In the first path, strategic location becomes national patrimony. In the second, Somalis rule in parts while outsiders own the whole.

Sudan and Libya show where the second road leads. It is the immediate duty of Somalia’s rulers and their allies, as well as the multilateral bodies, to prevent that road from becoming Somalia’s destiny. Somalis must resolve the power equation amongst themselves before other countries’ alliances determine it for them.

By Abdul Mohammed

Sudan arrives at this General Assembly as expanding war across the Middle East and the Red Sea consumes diplomatic attention. The conflict with Iran has disrupted the Gulf and global supply routes, while the latest Houthi advance around Bab el-Mandeb has turned the maritime corridor facing the Horn into an active strategic front. Sudan risks being pushed aside precisely as its war becomes more dangerous.

That would be a grave mistake. Sudan sits where the Horn, the Gulf, North Africa and the Sahel meet, and its war is sustained by external weapons, finance, technology and political sponsorship. Neglect will draw it deeper into the wider confrontation.

Yet purposeful movement on Sudan is still possible. The war is not simple or fully “ripe” for negotiation, but the principles are known, the mediation formations exist and extensive consultations have taken place. Political cooperation could convert this groundwork into a practical path forward.

Responsibility rests especially with two sets of actors that already know one another: the mediators and Sudan’s political and civic formations. Their fragile relationship has known tensions, disappointments and measured progress. Yet it is a foundation, reinforced by Track II mediators and facilitators who have kept channels open. It must now be deepened and given common purpose. Each side must ask what more it can do.

To describe Sudan as a comparatively low-hanging fruit must never trivialize its tragedy. Nothing about it is easy. But in diplomatic terms, relative to the gathering storms, Sudan is unusually actionable. The planned face-to-face meeting of the Quad and the Quintet on 24 September could become the moment when consultation gives way to joint action.

A Humanitarian System at the Edge

On 14 September, the World Food Programme reported that almost 20 million people face acute hunger. Its funding had fallen from 645 million dollars last year to 206 million dollars this year, leaving a gap of almost 300 million dollars merely to sustain current operations. Many recipients receive only half rations. The International Organization for Migration warned that the entire humanitarian system could collapse within weeks.

This is no longer only a crisis of access. Aid organizations have delivery capacity they cannot use because resources are disappearing. Red Sea disruption is raising the cost of food, fuel and fertilizer, while severe dryness threatens agriculture in Darfur. The World Meteorological Organization warns that a very strong El Nino may persist into early 2027, bringing failed rains and crop losses in some parts of the Horn and destructive rain and flooding in others. In Sudan’s shattered economy, either shock could sever access, displace more people and spread disease. Combined with war and vanishing aid, it threatens an unprecedented regional famine emergency.

A week ago, the UN Security Council convened its second Informal Interactive Dialogue on Sudan. It confirmed that Sudan still has a diplomatic constituency. But attention is not strategy. A humanitarian system approaching collapse cannot be answered by another cycle of concern without decisions.

The War Trap Has Become a Red Sea Danger

The battlefield has changed, but the logic of the war has not. The Sudanese Armed Forces’ recovery and battle field gains restored confidence and national pride among many Sudanese. But military recovery is not national recovery. The Rapid Support Forces retain depth across much of Darfur, Kordofan remains contested, and fighting and drone attacks are spreading, including in Blue Nile.

Neither belligerent has a credible military path to governing a unified Sudan, yet each can deny victory to the other. Every advance renews hope for a stronger negotiating position; every setback brings new mobilization and sponsorship. Diplomacy is postponed until after the next offensive. This is the war trap: movement without resolution and sacrifice without a realizable national purpose.

Its destination is de facto partition as rival administrations, security structures, war economies and external relationships harden. Sudan needs no formally declared border to be divided by force. A war fought in the name of unity can become the instrument that destroys it. On that path there will be no victors, only the vanquished: the Sudanese people, their national institutions and the country itself.

The Quad members – the United States, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates – are not detached from this upheaval. Their interests and relationships can deepen differences, but they also provide unusual leverage. Cooperation on Sudan would not solve the region’s larger wars. It would show that collective action remains possible even among states divided elsewhere.

Mediation Has Produced a Foundation but Not Yet a Strategy

Sudan does not lack initiatives, envoys or communiques. It lacks a common strategy understood and carried by both the mediators and Sudanese political and civic actors.

The Quad established an important foundation: Sudan’s unity and sovereignty, no viable military solution, a humanitarian truce leading to a permanent ceasefire, and a credible civilian-led political transition. Its effort to secure a truce has stalled, but the objective remains indispensable.

The Quintet – the African Union, IGAD, the United Nations, the European Union and the League of Arab States – has concentrated on the civilian political track. Berlin established shared principles and supported a joint Sudanese call to end the war. Addis Ababa consultations tested positions across political and civic formations. A good-offices mission to Khartoum from 8 to 10 September then listened to the authorities, political actors, the Democratic Bloc, women and youth, and those associated with a proposed dialogue.

These efforts have established a working relationship between the formal mediators and Sudanese political and civic formations. It is intermittent and not consistently trusted, but it is real. Track II mediators and facilitators have strengthened it by sustaining channels, testing ideas and connecting constituencies when official engagement slowed. This foundation creates reciprocal responsibility. Mediators must turn listening into strategy, protect the civilian track and prevent rival initiatives from splintering it. Sudanese formations must convert consultation into a minimum national position capable of sustaining negotiations. Track II actors should support the common architecture rather than compete with it. Each can do more, and each should be accountable for doing so.

This is notable progress, but consultation is not negotiation. It tests consent, maps convergence and helps design a process; it does not create a legitimate dialogue or produce a transition. The next step must command the confidence of armed actors on security obligations and of political and civic communities on Sudan’s constitutional future.

The planned Quad-Quintet meeting on 24 September is the best immediate opportunity to make that transition. It should not create another mechanism. It should make the existing mechanisms work in one direction, drawing on structured Sudanese input before the meeting and returning promptly to Sudanese political and civic actors with a clear programme afterwards.

What the Meeting on 24 September Should Produce

First, the Quad and Quintet should agree on a single political destination: one sovereign Sudan; no sustainable military solution; preservation of legitimate state institutions without permanent belligerent entitlement; and an inclusive, Sudanese-owned process leading to civilian and constitutional government. These propositions already reflect substantial Sudanese and international convergence.

Second, they should adopt an immediate humanitarian rescue and de-escalation package. Measures often called confidence-building should sit inside a political strategy of de-escalation. Confidence is an outcome; the purpose is to break the war’s momentum and open a path to a humanitarian truce and then cessation of hostilities. Initial steps could protect population centres and humanitarian routes; establish local non-attack arrangements; restrain drone attacks and new fronts; open direct military communication; enable detainee releases; and establish verification. The logic is to reduce, reciprocate, verify and expand, converting security openings into political engagement.

Urgent financing must be included. Hunger, displacement and institutional collapse deepen recruitment, predation and fragmentation. Keeping people alive and communities connected is part of preserving the country for peace.

Third, internal de-escalation must be matched by external restraint. War cannot contract while arms, drones, finance, mercenaries and logistics replenish expectations of military advantage. The Quad is uniquely placed to begin an external de-escalation compact. Its members need not agree on every regional question to agree that none benefits from the disappearance of a coherent Sudanese state.

Fourth, they should confirm a disciplined division of labour. The Quad should pursue humanitarian arrangements, military restraint and cessation; the Quintet should advance the civilian political process. The African Union and IGAD should provide the regional bridge, while the Secretary-General’s Personal Envoy connects the tracks. Track II facilitators should sustain discreet channels and offer technical support within this common strategy. This is strategic complementarity, not institutional merger.

Finally, the meeting should produce an action plan, not simply common language. A 90-day programme through December should sit within a six-month horizon, assigning responsibilities and reviews. Within 30 days, the mediators should assess progress with representative Sudanese actors: is violence contracting, is access improving, is external support for escalation diminishing, and is civilian space expanding? The measure of diplomacy is whether politics becomes more authoritative than the battlefield.

The Political Sequence Must Be Protected

The political track also requires clarity. Its stages will overlap as humanitarian, military and political dynamics are managed simultaneously. But flexibility cannot become ambiguity. Each phase needs a defined purpose, an expected product and a clear test of completion.

Preparatory consultations should achieve three things: first, identify convergence and unresolved differences; second, agree the purpose, principles, participation criteria, safeguards and decision rules of the process; and third, secure consent for a credible preparatory mechanism and define how the civilian track relates to negotiations with armed actors. Their product is an agreed process design, not a claim to represent Sudan or govern it.

A credible preparatory mechanism should then organize an inclusive intra-Sudanese political dialogue, with its mandate and criteria agreed before names become a contest over patronage. The dialogue should produce a common anti-war framework, minimum principles for unity and civilian constitutional government, and a representative mandate for the next negotiations. Its product is a shared Sudanese political framework, not a premature government.

The political process should convert that framework into negotiated agreements on transitional authority, security arrangements, accountability and implementation, while connecting it to the humanitarian truce and cessation track. A national dialogue proper belongs to a later, sufficiently grounded phase. It should broaden public ownership, address the social contract, constitution and reconciliation, and help constitute a legitimate post-war order. It cannot substitute for negotiations that stop the fighting.

This clarity also reduces the false contest between an “internal” and an “external” dialogue. Any initiative, whether convened inside Sudan or elsewhere, should subscribe to the same political destination, sequence, standards and safeguards. Different spaces can then reinforce one strategy instead of becoming rival claims that polarize Sudanese and fragment mediation.

Humanitarian and security negotiations must proceed in parallel. Belligerents must deliver restraint, access, cessation and compliance. But arms must not confer ownership of Sudan’s constitutional future. The tracks must be connected without militarizing the civilian process.

A Patriotic Compact to Save Sudan

International cooperation can create space, alter incentives and support a credible process. It cannot manufacture the Sudanese will required to save the country.

Sudanese political and civic formations, professional associations, resistance communities, women, youth, displaced people, refugees and advocates around the General Assembly should converge around a minimum patriotic compact: one Sudan; an end to the war; no political future founded on military victory; preservation of national institutions without permanent belligerent control; equal citizenship; civilian political centrality; justice; and a Sudanese-owned constitutional path.

That compact would be the Sudanese contribution to a common strategy. The mediators should answer it with consistency, transparency and protection and centrality of independent civilian agency. Neither side should wait for perfect conditions or flawless performance by the other. The governing ethic must be reciprocal responsibility: what more can each do, now, to reverse the war dynamics?

This does not require Sudanese to erase differences, equate the belligerents or abandon justice. Negotiation is not absolution. It is the arena in which war can be ended, accountability pursued, one professional national army built and legitimate authority reconstructed. The most urgent divide is between a war that is unmaking the country and the recovery of politics as the means by which Sudanese can disagree without destroying Sudan. Anti-war politics is patriotism in its most practical form.

Joint Quad-Quintet action would be modest against the scale of regional crisis, but its significance could extend beyond Sudan. It would show that states divided by larger confrontations can still cooperate to prevent another country from being consumed by them, restoring a measure of confidence in African, Arab and international peacemaking.

The final responsibility belongs to the Sudanese. Only Sudanese can save Sudan; others can help. There can be no meaningful victor if the country itself is vanquished. On 24 September, the Quad and Quintet should leave with a common programme, named responsibilities and a review date. Sudanese political and civic formations should answer with a minimum patriotic platform and the determination to rebuild a national political arena stronger than the armed camps that displaced it.

The opportunity is real, but it will not remain open indefinitely. Before Sudan disappears from the world’s agenda – and before war makes Sudan disappear into rival territories – its people and their international partners must act together. Sudan is still possible.