A strike in Sanaag and the question of who counts as a target
The killing of a traditional elder in the contested Sanaag region of northern Somalia has reopened raw questions about intelligence, accountability and the politics of a war that has stretched into its third decade. The U.S. Africa Command said the man, identified as Abdullahi Omar Abdi, was “responsible for procuring and transferring illegal weapons” for the militant group Al-Shabaab and that the strike that killed him on Sept. 13 was carried out “to degrade Al-Shabaab’s ability to threaten the U.S. homeland, our forces and our citizens abroad.”
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Relatives and local leaders tell a different story — that Abdi was a community mediator and critic of a newly declared local administration, not a jihadi facilitator. In a place where lines of authority are blurry and the memories of recent violence are fresh, the clash of accounts is more than a dispute over a single death. It is a test of whether outside military muscle, local politics and fragile justice systems can coexist without deepening grievance.
Who was Abdullahi Omar Abdi?
Family members interviewed by Somali media described Abdi as an elder who worked with local development committees and mediated disputes in and around Badhan, a town at the heart of competing claims by North Western State of Somalia and Puntland State. They said he had recently met Puntland State President Said Abdullahi Deni in Bosaso and was known as a critic of the self-declared Northeastern administration that emerged from the SSC-Khatumo movement.
“He was a peace mediator,” one close relative told reporters. “He was traveling alone when the strike hit.” Puntland State authorities retrieved parts of his remains from the scene, and investigators have opened inquiries into what happened and who gave the information that led to the strike.
The U.S. military’s explanation included a detail that speaks to the complexity of local warfare: the target, AFRICOM said, had been identified by locals and even family members. That, officials argue, is a strength of the current approach — strikes based on human intelligence, corroborated on the ground. But it is also a mechanism that can be manipulated, intentionally or not, in a region where clan rivalries and political dissent can be lethal motives.
Tangled jurisdiction and the perils of outsourced intelligence
Sanaag is emblematic of why precision strikes in Somalia are seldom merely technical operations. The territory sits between North Western State of Somalia, which declared independence from Somalia in 1991 but is not internationally recognized, and Puntland State, an autonomous state within Somalia. In recent years local movements such as SSC-Khatumo — now styling itself the Northeastern State — have added another layer of competing claims and fractured loyalties.
“In places like Sanaag, who reports what to whom and why is everything,” said a veteran Somali analyst who has worked with international missions in Mogadishu and Hargeisa. “A tip that in one context is credible human intelligence can in another be a political hit list.”
U.S. forces have relied increasingly on precision strikes and partner cooperation in Somalia, arguing they are necessary to keep pressure on Al-Shabaab, the brutal insurgency that has waged a violent campaign across Somalia for more than 20 years. But airstrikes and drone attacks depend heavily on local information and partnerships with federal forces — arrangements that have at times produced disputed outcomes, civilian casualties and accusations of heavy-handedness.
When the victim of a strike is a respected community figure, the consequences can be political as much as personal. The family’s insistence that Abdi had no jihadi ties and the prominence of his local roles risk rekindling tensions between Las Anod and rival administrations — tensions that have already produced protests, armed confrontations and displacement.
Wider implications: accountability, politics and the balance of risks
There are practical questions here and broader policy choices. Practically: how did the intelligence come together, and have investigators established any corroborative evidence beyond the initial human reports? Politically: will this incident be absorbed as a tragic mistake — or will it be used to rally opposition to external military involvement?
For Somali civilians who have lived under Al-Shabaab rule, foreign strikes can be a double-edged sword. Many welcome pressure on militants who have at times held towns and imposed harsh rules. Yet when strikes hit the wrong people, they can feed the group’s narrative that foreign forces are indifferent to Somali lives and customs. That narrative is powerful recruitment fuel.
For the United States and its partners, there is also a reputational calculus. Precision strikes offer a way to degrade militant capabilities with relatively low cost in Western lives, but they carry a high burden of proof and an obligation to be transparent when things go wrong. AFRICOM’s statement that the operation was done “in coordination with Somalia’s federal government and armed forces” reflects conventional practice — but it does not shield partners from scrutiny back home or in the communities where the strikes occur.
What now — and what questions must be answered?
- Investigators must establish how the target was identified and whether corroborating intelligence existed beyond local tips.
- There must be a clear accounting of who authorized the strike and what oversight mechanisms were in place.
- Authorities should assess whether the operation increased or decreased the risk of local violence or political backlash in a disputed region.
These are not merely bureaucratic exercises. At stake is the fragile trust between communities, their regional administrators and international partners. Can a strategy that relies on rapid, remote strikes coexist with the patience and granular local engagement that state-building requires? Or will such operations, even when well-intentioned, magnify the very fractures they seek to heal?
As families in Sanaag mourn and investigators collect evidence, the questions will reverberate far beyond one hillside outside Badhan. They are the same questions policymakers and local leaders face across Africa and the broader Global South where foreign militaries operate: how to fight extremist violence without eroding the social fabric that endures when the guns fall silent.
In a country where clans and politics are closely tied to identity and survival, each misstep can have consequences that last generations. The community that knew Abdullahi Omar Abdi as a mediator will want answers — and the wider world watching will want proof that, in the pursuit of security, justice was not left behind.
By Ali Musa
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.
