Hidden in Plain View: Challenging Abdi-Rizak Warfa on Mustafa Omer’s Dissident-to-President Journey

Mustafa Omer and the Somali Region: A Debate That Mirrors Ethiopia’s Bigger Test

On a breezy evening in Jigjiga, you still hear the word “isbeddel” — change — tossed around tea houses in the old quarter like a benediction and a warning. It’s the phrase that came to define Ethiopia’s Somali Region after 2018, when a feared security state gave way to an administration that promised to open space, lower voices, and put civilians at the center. Today, that promise — and the man who personified it, regional president Mustafa Omer — is the center of a heated and unusually public argument.

That argument was ignited by an essay from Abdi-Rizak Warfa, who profiled Mustafa as a dissident-turned-leader, and widened by an emphatic rejoinder by writer and former regional official Mohamed Olad. The debate is bigger than a biography. It’s about whether Ethiopia’s most far-flung region is becoming more inclusive and confident inside a fragile federation — or whether old habits are simply wearing new clothes.

What sparked the fight

Warfa’s profile tracked Mustafa’s years as a rights advocate, his public clashes with the previous regime, and his rise during a volatile national transition. But it also carried sharp critiques: that he mishandled the ONLF (Ogaden National Liberation Front) file, entrenched clan politics, over-centralized power, and leaned too heavily on the federal center in Addis Ababa. Olad’s response challenged the framing and the facts — from high-school years in Harar to a stint at a Teachers Training College — but more importantly, accused Warfa of using anonymous quotes and recycled grievances to paint a partial picture.

There’s a deeper story here: a region trying to rewire a political order after nearly three decades of security-led governance. How do you assess change when the baseline was so stark — mass detentions and Liyu police abuses under former president Abdi Iley — and when the national landscape beyond the Shinile plains remains turbulently contested?

The tone war: fear or freer air?

Warfa framed profiling a sitting president as “risky.” Olad countered that the region has moved far from the era when criticism could land you in a cell. The truth likely sits between. Rights groups have documented new red lines across Ethiopia in recent years, especially amid conflicts in other regions. Yet in the Somali Region, the day-to-day climate is undeniably looser than it was. Public meetings are held without the dread that once hung over town halls; social media is messy but vibrant; independent voices in Jigjiga’s universities and civic spaces are more audible than a decade ago.

Is this progress fragile? Certainly. But measured against its own history, the Somali Region’s free-expression landscape looks like a different country — even as activists caution that institutions, not personalities, must anchor those gains.

Inclusion vs. centralization

Here, the ledger is complex. Olad points to a fuller house: historically marginalized communities — including Jareerweyne and Gabooye — represented in the regional assembly and cabinet; opposition figures holding seats in executive councils; and women occupying roughly a third of the assembly, by his tally. He highlights new districts carved out for long-neglected communities in remote corners like Shaakisa (El Kere), Jaarso, Garanuugle (Gaashaamo), Duuban, Buuhoodle and Burqayar, arguing the state is finally visible in peripheries it once ignored.

Critics see something else: a cartography that can track too neatly with clan lines, and a governing style that leans on conflict to consolidate authority. Ethiopia is not unique here; redistricting in emerging federations—from Nigeria’s state creations to Kenya’s devolution—often mixes inclusion with local power plays. The test is whether service delivery improves beyond district maps: water points dug, clinics staffed, teachers paid on time. In towns along the Jijiga–Gode road, those are the metrics people use, not party manifestos.

The ONLF question: a transition many movements struggle to survive

Warfa charges that Mustafa undermined the ONLF’s unity; Olad argues the Front’s fragmentation was baked in, given it began life as an insurgency in a different era and has struggled to evolve into a conventional party. Comparative cases bear out Olad’s point. Armed movements rarely glide into parliamentary politics. Look at Ethiopia’s own OLF, or the fractious transitions of groups in South Sudan and Sudan. Personal rivalries, patronage gaps, and the hard pivot from bush discipline to budget committees leave scars. Whether the Somali Region’s ruling party sought to weaken a potential rival is a fair political question. But it’s also fair to ask: when does an ex-insurgency’s internal reckoning become its own responsibility?

Federal dependence, fiscal facts

Another flashpoint is money. Warfa suggests Mustafa’s reliance on federal support blurs autonomy; Olad replies that Ethiopia’s Constitution sets a formula for transfers to all regions, and that the Somali Region has expanded its own-source revenue. Without independent, current budget data, the exact percentages are hard to verify. But the architecture is clear: in Ethiopia’s fiscal federalism, the center handles customs and major taxes, then distributes grants according to a national formula. Regions with smaller tax bases depend more on those transfers, not as an exception but by design.

Supporters of the administration say own-source revenue has grown since 2018 and that procurement monopolies from the Iley years were dismantled, opening public works and import channels. Business owners in Jijiga describe a less clubby marketplace; critics insist new networks have emerged. Both can be true at once during a reset of economic power.

Behind the rhetoric, a region looking outward

It’s easy to get lost in the polemics. But the Somali Region’s stress points are deeply practical: drought cycles that have devastated herds, the need to repair rural boreholes after years of hard use, the pressures of a young population, and a delicate border economy tying Jigjiga to North Western State of Somalia and Somalia’s markets. Climate shocks have made pastoral mobility a political question, not just a livelihood one. In that context, the most consequential debates aren’t about slogans. They’re about whether the state can deliver basics to the far edges of Afdheer and Warder without fueling new resentments closer to Jigjiga.

Why this debate matters outside Jigjiga

The tussle over Mustafa’s legacy has become a proxy for Ethiopia’s larger experiment: can a multiethnic federation, battered by conflict, still produce regions that feel both autonomous and invested in a national project? The Somali Region’s experience — moving from a security-first order to something more pluralist — suggests it’s possible. But the ending isn’t written. The habit of balancing inclusion and competence, distributing power without freezing it in place, remains hard everywhere. In that sense, the Somali Region is less an outlier than a mirror.

One Somali proverb says, “Gacmo wadajir bey wax ku gooyaan” — joined hands cut through. The question for the Somali Region in 2025 is whether its political class, critics and incumbents alike, can keep their hands on the same task: building institutions that outlast them. Can the region sustain its freer air while hardening procedural guardrails? Can ex-combatants become credible legislators? And can fiscal federalism evolve in a way that rewards local initiative without starving poorer regions?

The debate between Warfa and Olad doesn’t settle those questions. But it does something healthy: it brings them to the public square, in a region that not long ago had no square at all.

By Ali Musa
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.