From Togwajaale 1964 to UN Security Council 2025: Devotion to Somalia’s Flag, Land, Dignity

Two moments, six decades apart, tell a single story about Somalia’s unbending idea of itself. In 1964, a young Somali soldier bled to keep the national flag from touching the ground. On Monday, Dec. 29, 2025, a diplomat stood at the United Nations Security Council to insist that no one can redraw Somalia’s map. Both acts — one on a battlefield near Togwajaale, the other in the world’s most formal chamber of diplomacy — were rooted in the same doctrine: sovereignty as a lived creed, not a slogan.

Hero Mohamed Abdulle Xalane joined the Somali National Army in 1957 and rose quickly on merit — disciplined, brave, decorated with the Medal for Bravery and the Medal of Honor. His name is inseparable from Somalia’s early post-independence trials, especially the 1964 border fighting in the Waqooyi Galbeed region. When a heavily armed force overran a small Somali unit guarding the area, the troops, after a fierce engagement, had to pull back. As they regrouped, Xalane saw the flag still flying inside the occupied base. Refusing to leave it behind, he turned back alone, pressed through incoming fire, and carried the flag out. He was struck repeatedly, but the colors never fell. He died of his wounds, having completed his mission. The episode is remembered for its words as much as its deed: “The enemy is not made of iron — crush them, and never allow them to bring down the soil and the Somali flag.”

On Monday in New York, Ambassador Abukar Dahir Osman — widely known as Baale — stood before the Security Council and mounted a legal, moral, and political argument for the Federal Republic of Somalia’s unity and territorial integrity. Grounding his remarks in the U.N. Charter and long-standing rules of noninterference, he rejected any attempt to divide or fragment an internationally recognized state. He condemned, in his words, acts of aggression by Israel that he said sought to violate Somalia’s sovereignty. The speech drew notice because it fused principle with precision: a call for the Council and the broader international system to uphold norms they routinely cite but too often apply unevenly.

Somalia’s sovereignty has not been an abstraction. It has been stress-tested for decades — by state collapse and insurgency, by maritime and land boundary disputes, by local secessionist claims and external deals struck at Somalia’s expense, by foreign meddling that alternates between overt and deniable. The arc from Xalane’s battlefield courage to Baale’s diplomatic brief maps the country’s struggle to hold its political center while navigating a fraught neighborhood. In a Horn of Africa where alliances are fluid and leverage takes many forms — ports, security cooperation, recognition politics — the assertion of sovereignty is both shield and compass.

Symbols have power because they encode obligations. Xalane’s flag — safeguarded at the cost of his life — is a symbol only if the institutions beneath it are strong enough to justify its protection. Baale’s speech, measured and legalistic, is the descendant of that same duty. One defended the emblem; the other defended what the emblem stands for: a territory, a people, and a legal personality whose rights are not contingent on another state’s interests. That continuity matters. Nations endure when memory reinforces policy, and when policy is anchored to law.

The law is clear where practice is murkier. Article 2(4) of the U.N. Charter prohibits the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state. The corollary is equally settled: recognition of states, not substate regions, is a prerogative of the international community operating through established norms, not bilateral improvisation. For Somalia, whose borders are recognized and whose government sits at the U.N. table, the argument is straightforward. What is complicated is the enforcement — converting diplomatic principle into political consequence when lines are crossed.

That is where the craft of statecraft matters. Audiences in the Council chamber are plural: great powers wary of precedent; regional blocs balancing norms against interests; neighbors calculating costs; and domestic constituencies measuring whether their flag still commands respect abroad. Baale’s address sought to fit Somalia’s case into a larger frame officials claim to value — that territorial integrity cannot be transactional. The approach is sound politics because it aligns with widely shared texts and because it transforms a national grievance into a universal proposition.

At home, the message resonates because it connects generations. Xalane’s sacrifice is part of a national archive that Somali families still recite to their children. It lives in diaspora communities that have carried the blue flag and the white star into new contexts and insisted that distance does not thin loyalty. But memory alone does not guarantee outcomes. Sovereignty is not only defended at borders or in New York; it is consolidated through credible institutions, inclusive politics, professional security forces, diversified economic ties, and a posture that is firm yet pragmatic as alliances shift.

There are risks to mismanaging that balance. Rhetoric outrunning strategy can isolate a country; a purely legal case, absent partners and pressure, can be ignored. The counterweight is coalition-building — in the African Union, the Arab League, and IGAD — and consistent use of international legal avenues where they exist. Somalia’s most persuasive tool is consistency: apply the same sovereign logic to every file, avoid selective outrage, and maintain a policy that is accessible to allies who may not share every interest but recognize the peril of letting borders be bartered.

Which brings the narrative back to its human core. A soldier lifting a flag under fire and a diplomat speaking into the quiet of a Council chamber are not equivalent experiences. Yet they share a posture: an insistence that the state is not a rumor. Xalane kept the symbol aloft; Baale argued to keep the space it represents intact. If sovereignty sometimes feels like an old word in a world that prizes networks and trade over maps, Somalia’s past and present say otherwise. For nations that have had to fight to maintain their voice, sovereignty is not a relic. It is the price of dignity — and the condition for any future worth having.

By Ali Musa

Axadle Times international–Monitoring.