Somalia’s president and prime minister back Northeast State leaders after Las Anod election

Somalia’s new Northeast State tests fragile federalism as favored candidates win amid interference claims

In the sunbaked streets of Las Anod, the epicenter of a year of upheaval on Somalia’s northern rim, lawmakers this weekend chose a president and vice president for a new political entity they call the Northeast State. The result — a victory for Abdiqadir Ahmed Aw-Ali, known widely as Firdhiye, and his running mate Abdirashid Yusuf Jibril — was greeted in Mogadishu as a milestone for state-building. It was also met with a flare of accusations: that federal officials had leaned heavily on the process to secure an outcome in their favor.

Both things may be true.

What happened in Las Anod

Firdhiye, the former interim head of the SSC-Khatumo movement that drove North Western State of Somalia forces from Las Anod in 2023, emerged as the consensus pick after rivals stepped aside and votes realigned in a cascade. Jibril — a former speaker of the Northeastern State Parliament and a poet with a reputation for sharp couplets and sharper political instincts — secured the deputy post. The pair were widely seen as acceptable to the federal government in Mogadishu, a perception that hardened as the race narrowed.

Opposition figures alleged that federal officials lobbied lawmakers and dangled cash to lock in the win. “The government’s interference undermines the credibility and transparency of this election and could derail the process of forming a viable administration,” one candidate told local media, echoing a chorus of complaints that often surfaces during Somalia’s indirect ballots. The federal government, at least publicly, kept its counsel.

President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud and Prime Minister Hamza Abdi Barre, for their part, struck an upbeat tone. Mohamud praised what he called “a deep commitment to democracy and nation-building,” promising support as the new state integrates into the federal lattice. Barre called the outcome “a demonstration of the people’s ability to build state institutions,” crediting years of investment in governance reforms.

Why this matters

Somalia’s federal experiment is not a single story; it’s a thousand negotiations. The Northeast State now joins a map crowded with overlapping claims and unfinished borders. It grows out of the SSC-Khatumo movement — led largely by Dhulbahante clans — which reasserted ties to Somalia’s federal project after years under the de facto authority of North Western State of Somalia.

That alone reshapes the political equation in the north. North Western State of Somalia, which has long sought international recognition as an independent state, controlled Las Anod for more than a decade until heavy urban fighting in early 2023 forced a retreat, displacing more than 185,000 people, according to humanitarian agencies. SSC-Khatumo’s leaders then sought to formalize local authority within Somalia’s federal framework — a bid for legitimacy in Mogadishu and a rejection of Hargeisa’s claim.

Now, in design and in optics, the Northeast State becomes a test of how elastic Somalia’s federal system can be. Can a region in a contested zone build robust institutions with Mogadishu’s blessing without inflaming tensions with neighbors? What happens if Northeastern State — Somalia’s oldest federal member state and a player with its own long-running disputes with the capital — feels its interests pinched by a new authority next door?

The money and the mechanics

Somalia’s elections remain indirect, mediated by clan leaders and lawmakers, and lubricated by money. In Las Anod, reports circulated of hundreds of thousands of dollars coursing through the system as candidates courted votes. It’s not a uniquely Somali phenomenon; in many post-conflict states, the price of building coalitions is often paid in cash and favors. But in Somalia’s case, where donors fund much of the public budget and where political stability is precious, the optics are risky. Every allegation of interference chips at the social license of an administration still being born.

There’s also the paradox of state-building in a place that has known so little of it. To stabilize the Northeast, leaders will need to pay civil servants, secure roads, arbitrate land disputes, and restart services in towns still pockmarked by last year’s fighting. If MPs are seen as having been bought, how do you persuade police to accept salaries late, teachers to work through uncertainty, or elders to back tough compromises? Legitimacy is the cheapest currency until you squander it. Then it becomes the most expensive thing to reacquire.

A movement forged in conflict

Las Anod is not just another Somali town. For years, it sat at a fault line between North Western State of Somalia and Northeastern State, with loyalties and livelihoods split by a line on a map and the lines of poetry that so often carry politics here. In January 2023, the city became a battleground. Mortars fell near hospitals and markets. Families fled in the night to the harsher safety of the open plains. When North Western State of Somalia forces withdrew, SSC-Khatumo’s fighters, clerics, elders, and young activists rushed to fill the vacuum — an alliance of necessity that has since tried to morph into governance.

Firdhiye, a figure who rose amid that churn, now faces the harder task: turning wartime coherence into peacetime administration. Jibril’s selection hints at a strategy — a blend of local legitimacy and experience in institutional politics. In Somali cafes from Garowe to Hargeisa, you hear the same refrain: the gun can conquer territory, but only bureaucracy can hold it.

Mogadishu’s careful embrace

The federal government’s public congratulations signal an intent: to pull the Northeast State into the tent and avoid the centrifugal pull that has frayed Somalia’s union before. Yet timing matters. Mogadishu is navigating a delicate drawdown of African Union peacekeepers, the ongoing campaign against al-Shabab in the center and south, and tense relations with Northeastern State, which in recent years has protested federal constitutional changes and periodically suspended cooperation.

A misstep in Las Anod could widen those cracks. That is why the allegations of interference are not a side note; they are central to whether this project succeeds. If the Northeast’s leaders are seen as Mogadishu’s appointees rather than local champions, they will struggle to corral the region’s fractious politics and deliver the services that residents expect.

What success would look like

In practical terms, the new administration has a short list of must-dos:

• Stabilize security in and around Las Anod, including clear command structures and minimal friction with neighboring forces.
• Stand up basic services — clinics, schools, water points — as a signal that political change equals daily benefits.
• Build transparent revenue systems, even if starting small, to reduce reliance on ad hoc external funding and patronage.
• Manage relations with Northeastern State and North Western State of Somalia carefully, avoiding provocations while asserting administrative control where it has community backing.
• Invite independent monitoring of governance and human rights to bolster credibility at home and abroad.

None of this is glamorous. All of it is the work of real government. As one elder in Las Anod told me during a previous visit, sipping tea under a corrugated awning as dust devils spun across the road, “We don’t ask for much: a school that opens, a clinic with medicine, and someone to call when a dispute starts.” It is hard to design a constitution that delivers those things. It is harder still to make them appear on time in outlying districts.

A question for Somalia — and its partners

Somalia’s federal architecture has always been an iterative experiment, drafted in crisis and redrafted after each one. The Northeast State is the newest chapter. Will it show that regions forged in conflict can find a constitutional home without lighting new fires? Or will it become another layer in a crowded mosaic of competing authorities?

International partners who cheered the vote will have a role to play beyond statements. This demands quiet, pragmatic support: civil service training, budget transparency, and conflict mediation. It also demands restraint when local politics heat up, as they surely will. For Mogadishu, the task is to guarantee space for the Northeast’s leaders to prove their autonomy while setting clear lines on accountability.

Democracy here rarely looks like poster-perfect elections. It is a negotiated order that moves forward a little, falls back, and then inches forward again. Firdhiye and Jibril have won their first negotiation. The next will be with their own people — and that is the one that will matter.

By Ali Musa
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.