They can all talk to MbZ but can’t talk to each other …

In a recent interview on Risaala TV, Somalia’s controversial former spy chief, Fahad Yasin, offered an interesting observation on a bizarre paradox of contemporary Somali politics. Muse Bihi (now out of office), Said Deni, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud and Ahmed Madobe virtually don't speak to each other; but that is obvious for anyone who has been following the family drama that masquerades as politics in Somalia. “And all of their qiblas are the Emirates”, Yasin said, making reference to the fact despite their mutual animosities, they all maintain excellent relations with Abu Dhabi.  

Elaborating on why he thought this was the case, Yasin added that the “Tigrayan regime in Ethiopia” (meaning the TPLF-dominated EPRDF) had a policy towards Somalia: “hold them all, but keep them apart” [from each other]. “When the Tigrayans were in the country, everyone went to Addis Ababa, but no two got along”, he said. Abu Dhabi, he implied was maintaining that very effective policy to keep Somali leaders in check.  

Yasin is an ardent critic of the UAE and has close ties to Qatar, so his motivations for making this point can be interrogated, but the reality of what he says cannot be denied. Puntland has broken with the federal government for the umpteenth time (and is even mulling a separate currency now), Ahmed Madobe is still rogue, Mohamud wasn’t able to make any meaningful headway with Muse Bihi on resolving Somaliland’s constitutional status, and all Somalis are worse off for it. Ignoring questions about what might be gained through pooling resources and scaling up, the federal government and regional forces have been fighting among themselves. 

And meanwhile, the UAE maintains excellent relations with all of them apparently, and has even deepened ties with Garowe, where it is providing military support for the state’s ongoing operation against IS-Somalia. This week Hassan Sheikh Mohamud made an abrupt visit to Abu Dhabi where he met with Mohammed bin Zayed in what is widely being interpreted has as a plea for assistance as al-Shabaab causes carnage in Middle Shabelle. Ali Mohamed Omar, the state minister for foreign affairs, was called upon to explain the trip, particularly in light of foreign minister Ahmed Moalim Fiqi’s statement a few weeks ago that Mogadishu would take measures against the UAE for inviting Somaliland’s president, Abdirahman Irro, to the World Governments Summit. In an unexpected turn, Omar suddenly described the UAE as “a reliable partner in trade and military support.” 

All of these leaders are, however, at each other’s throats. Ahmed Madobe recently recorded an entire hour-long interview in which he essentially complained about how awful Hassan Sheikh’s leadership has been and likened the president to Mohamed Abdullahi Farmaajo, whom they collaborated in ousting in 2022.  

Yasin veers off into questions about the UAE’s intentions in Somalia. He doesn’t speculate specifics but its conduct in the region does leave much to the imagination. Andreas Krieg, a senior lecturer in security studies at King’s College London, said that the UAE was building an “axis of secessionists”, a play on Iran’s infamous “resistance axis” — which runs from South Yemen, through Puntland and Somaliland, all the way to Sudan, where the Rapid Support Forces had just declared a widely condemned “parallel government.” 

Whatever their motivations, as Yasin explains, they have their interests, and, like any country, they will pursue them. But what of the Somali leaders? 

Their mutual hostility doesn’t augur well for those who hope the country will begin addressing some of its most pressing national issues, which, in almost a decade, it hasn’t really got around to, such as designing a proper constitution for Somalia, building a solid army and establishing robust and functional national institutions.  

Ahmed Ismail Samatar, a politician in Somaliland today, reflected on this problem back in 2008 in an essay for Bildhaan journal. He called it the “Porcupine Dilemma” 

Ahmed Ismail Samatar, a politician in Somaliland today, reflected on this problem back in 2008 in an essay for Bildhaan journal. He called it the “Porcupine Dilemma”, an idea borrowed from the German philosopher, Arthur Schopenhauer, which Samatar relays through the English conservative political thinker Michael Oakshott’s book Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays.  

The lesson comes to Oakshott through a fable narrated by Schopenhauer about a colony of porcupines who because of the biting cold winter need to huddle together for warmth, but every time they do so, they’re “plagued with the pricks of each other’s quills” and are forced to draw back apart. “Thus they remained, distracted between two misfortunes, able neither to tolerate nor to do without one another,” Oakshott writes.  

Reflecting on the porcupine story from the period when he was among Somalia’s unionist intellectuals, Samatar says, “Somalis have become the paradigmatic embodiment of self-inflicted politicide.” His problem, in his own words, is that the “nationalist spirit of collective belonging has been gravely damaged” and the “consequences include mutual suspicion, anger, pent-up revenge, outright hate, and social pulverization”.  

Schopenhauer’s porcupine story ends with the realisation among the spiked mammals that there was a healthy distance from which they could “delight in one another’s individuality and enjoy one another’s company.” “Unknown to themselves,” writes Oakeshott, “they had invented civil association.” 

Samatar’s insights are useful again, if pitiless and bitter. He warns Somali leaders against pursuing political vendettas and fighting for “Potemkin political appellations and appointments” and urges them to take a proper look at what the moment demands. 

Samatar’s insights are useful again, if pitiless and bitter. He warns Somali leaders against pursuing political vendettas and fighting for “Potemkin political appellations and appointments” and urges them to take a proper look at what the moment demands. “Somalia cannot amount to much, even in East Africa, let alone in the world, without a revival of that very national identity,” he says, and so there is no choice but to figure out a “workable civil association,” like those porcupines, which keeps the bonds between Somalis alive and vibrant, but at a healthy enough distance to stop causing harm. 

A start could be good-faith dialogue, because surely, if all Somali leaders manage to maintain good ties with the UAE despite its ties with all their political opponents, these leaders can speak to each other?  

Even the US managed to break its taboo around negotiating with groups it considers terrorist organisations when Adam Boehler, Trump’s special envoy for the hostages, entered into direct negotiations with Hamas for the first time ever (that we know at least). When the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, was asked to explain the move, she said Boehler had the authority to speak to anyone in order to do what was in the “best interests of the American people”. Trump pressed ahead with this policy, fully aware of the anger it would provoke in Israel and from the powerful Zionist lobby in the US. 

Surely, Somali leaders are far-sighted enough to recognise that the mandate they hold, whatever we may think of how they acquired it, is to serve their people — a task that would likely require them to resolve some of their issues, so that they might better discharge their duties.  

Soon there will be no choice. The alternative, Samatar warns, will “bestow a vulgar concreteness” to the Argentine novelist Jorge Luis Borges’ condition of “two bald men fighting over a comb.”