Opinion: President Hassan Sheikh’s Four Years End as Somalia Fractures

By: Abdirahman Jeylani Mohamed Saturday May 16, 2026

Somalia has reached a fraught political milestone. On 15 May 2026, President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud’s constitutional mandate formally expired, landing the country in one of its most precarious moments in recent memory.

The date carries heavy symbolism. It coincides with Somali Youth Day, a commemoration of the generation behind the Somali Youth League (SYL), which once imagined a united, democratic and sovereign Somali republic built on civic nationalism rather than division and repeated political crisis. Instead, Somalia meets the occasion deeply polarized, constitutionally unsettled and increasingly frustrated with the direction of its leadership.

When Hassan Sheikh Mohamud returned to office in May 2022, he cast himself as the leader who could steady the state after years of confrontation and deadlock. Foreign partners greeted his comeback as a chance to rebuild consensus in the federal system, intensify the fight against Al-Shabaab and restore Somalia’s diplomatic standing in a shifting Horn of Africa.

At the outset, his administration enjoyed a notable reservoir of goodwill. Military campaigns against Al-Shabaab raised hopes that the insurgency’s grip on territory might finally be reversed. Progress on debt relief was hailed as proof that state institutions were strengthening. The government also spoke boldly about democratization and universal suffrage, presenting itself as the force that would move Somalia beyond the worn-out clan-based indirect electoral system. Yet four years on, the defining feature of Hassan Sheikh’s second term is not reform or reconciliation. It is fragmentation.

Above all, the administration has failed to build the kind of political legitimacy needed to steady Somalia’s fragile federal order. Rather than easing tensions between Mogadishu and the federal member states, the presidency came to be associated increasingly with centralization, coercive politics and the use of security concerns to police political disagreement.

Opposition-led regional administrations repeatedly accused the federal government of turning state institutions and security forces into instruments against rivals. Over time, sections of the security apparatus were seen less as national bodies and more as tools of political pressure aimed at disciplining dissenting federal actors and opposition networks. That perception seriously damaged confidence in the Somali state’s neutrality.

In post-conflict settings, perception often carries as much weight as legal authority. Once federal forces are widely viewed as partisan rather than national, the framework for political coexistence begins to crack.

The administration’s worsening ties with key federal member states mirrored a broader inability to manage Somalia’s delicate federal bargain. Negotiations increasingly gave way to standoffs marked by mistrust, constitutional uncertainty and power struggles among elites. What emerged was not consolidation, but a widening legitimacy crisis.

Domestically, the government’s record on governance also drew sharp criticism. Forced evictions in Mogadishu and other cities pushed vulnerable families out with little protection or compensation, feeding public anger that development under the current administration served politically connected elites more than ordinary citizens. For many urban poor, the language of reconstruction became inseparable from dispossession.

That perception proved politically damaging because it widened the gap between official claims of progress and the day-to-day reality of many Somalis. Meanwhile, the administration’s flagship military effort — the “total war” against Al-Shabaab — failed to produce the decisive breakthrough promised from Villa Somalia.

Somali forces and allied clan militias initially regained ground in central regions, but the advance slowed and eventually stalled. Al-Shabaab adapted quickly, continuing to carry out lethal attacks nationwide, including in Mogadishu. The group remained capable not only of surviving, but of exerting psychological pressure through bombings, assassinations and economic intimidation.

The government’s inability to crush Al-Shabaab highlighted the limits of Somalia’s security approach. Military pressure without lasting political reconciliation, local governance and institutional credibility cannot sustainably defeat an insurgency rooted in a fragile state environment.

By the last year of Hassan Sheikh’s mandate, the gulf between official claims of success and conditions on the ground had become difficult to hide. Just as serious were the administration’s shortcomings in foreign policy and in safeguarding national sovereignty.

Somalia entered Hassan Sheikh’s second term amid one of the most volatile geopolitical periods the Horn of Africa has seen in decades: sharper Gulf rivalries, tensions between Ethiopia and Somalia, the militarization of the Red Sea and intensifying competition among regional and global powers. Yet rather than expanding Somalia’s leverage, several developments exposed how exposed its external position remained.

The most striking setback was Israel’s expanding diplomatic engagement with North Western State of Somalia — which has moved toward formal recognition — a development that carried major symbolic and strategic consequences for Somalia’s territorial integrity. For many Somalis, the issue was not simply a bilateral diplomatic matter, but evidence of a broader weakening of Mogadishu’s ability to defend Somali sovereignty abroad.

The prospect of formal recognition for North Western State of Somalia during Hassan Sheikh’s presidency heightened fears that Somalia’s fragmentation was becoming normalized in parts of the international system. Critics said the federal government appeared to be reacting to events rather than shaping them at a time that demanded more sophisticated regional strategy.

That impression reinforced domestic accusations that the administration had failed to defend core national interests despite its extensive outreach to foreign partners. The social cost of these failings has been just as stark.

Many young Somalis now see politics as a closed field dominated by elite bargaining, corruption and coercion rather than democratic participation or public service. Journalists, critics and activists have complained of intimidation and a shrinking civic space. Detentions of government critics became emblematic of a wider democratic backslide. Meanwhile, thousands of Somali youth continued to take deadly risks across deserts and seas in search of opportunity abroad because they no longer believed the state could deliver security, justice or economic dignity.

That reality may define Hassan Sheikh Mohamud’s second presidency more than any constitutional reform or international conference ever could.

A country enters dangerous territory when its younger generation stops emotionally investing in the future of the state.

Still, reducing Somalia’s crisis to a single leader would oversimplify the depth of the country’s dysfunction. Hassan Sheikh inherited a state weakened by decades of civil war, insurgency, institutional breakdown, dependence on outside actors and unresolved constitutional contradictions. Somalia’s federal system remains unfinished, its democratic culture fragile and its political class deeply divided.

But leadership is judged by how well it navigates those constraints.

Four years after his return, Somalia still lacks an agreed constitutional settlement, durable federal cohesion, universal elections and a clear military victory over Al-Shabaab. Instead, the country once again approaches a political transition in an atmosphere of uncertainty, mistrust and constitutional dispute.

That is the deeper tragedy of 15 May 2026.

What once marked the rise of Somali political nationalism now serves as another reminder of how far the Somali republic remains from the SYL generation’s vision: a sovereign state able to command internal legitimacy while defending national unity abroad.

The central promise of Hassan Sheikh Mohamud’s presidency was that Somalia would finally move from chronic fragility toward stable democratic statehood. As his mandate comes to an end, that promise remains unfulfilled.

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The author is Abdirahman Jeylani Mohamed, a Somali journalist based in Mogadishu, foreign policy commentator and communications specialist. You can reach out to him: [email protected]