Somalia at a Strategic Inflection Point in the New Geopolitics of the Horn of Africa

Political Settlement Before Total Geopolitical Capture

Date | 5 October 2026

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.