Somalia’s Jan. 12 Cabinet decision to annul all agreements with the United Arab Emirates is more than a diplomatic rupture. It is a strategic reset framed around sovereignty, constitutional authority and the insistence that foreign engagement run through recognized national institutions. In a region where parallel arrangements and external rivalries often seep into domestic governance, Mogadishu is choosing consolidation over convenience.
At the heart of the move is a simple claim: sovereignty is not a slogan but a system. That system, Somali officials argue, requires that political, security and economic ties with outside powers flow through the federal government. When foreign states transact directly with sub-national actors, stand up security structures beyond federal oversight or shape port and revenue arrangements without national consent, authority fragments and the state erodes. Over time, those patterns do not stabilize a fragile country; they hollow it out.
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Officials say the decision follows prolonged restraint and repeated diplomatic engagement. The government’s message is that the annulment is not a rejection of the United Arab Emirates as a partner, nor a turn away from diplomacy. It is a line-drawing exercise: engagement is welcome, but only on transparent, state-to-state terms that reinforce national institutions rather than bypass them.
Critics have labeled the move drastic, warning that severing existing arrangements could unsettle port operations, complicate security coordination and spook investors. The counterargument from Mogadishu is rooted in both recent history and institutional logic. In fragile contexts, tolerating fragmented authority in pursuit of short-term gain often prolongs fragility. Durable stability, the government contends, comes from clarifying who is in charge, aligning external support with constitutional chains of command and ensuring that foreign involvement augments, not substitutes, the state.
In practical terms, the decision asserts several principles that will govern Somalia’s external relationships going forward:
- Agreements concluded with sub-national administrations are nullified if they bypass federal consent.
- Security cooperation that operates outside constitutional oversight is suspended.
- Port and strategic-asset arrangements must not dilute national control or undermine intergovernmental fiscal federalism.
- All foreign engagements are to be conducted through relevant national institutions, as a matter of international law and diplomatic practice.
This legal framing is not novel; it recites a baseline expectation in international relations. But it matters in the Horn of Africa, where the pull of geography and proximate conflicts can blur lines between pragmatic cooperation and interference. Somalia’s location at the hinge of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, along vital corridors for global trade, investment and energy flows, elevates those stakes. The country’s ports and security posture are not just national assets; they are regional critical infrastructure. Parallel channels of influence and authority do not merely complicate governance; they can become conduits for external agendas, with ripple effects beyond Somalia’s borders.
The government acknowledges concerns about near-term disruption. To blunt those risks, officials say mechanisms are in place to ensure continuity in port operations and security responsibilities, including the potential use of neutral international operators to keep trade moving where necessary. The broader point is that clarity now is an investment in stability later. Investors, after all, are less wary of strict rules than of inconsistent ones. A unified legal and political environment is what unlocks capital expenditure and long-horizon planning. Fragmentation, by contrast, multiplies counterparties, confuses accountability and raises hidden costs.
Framed this way, the Cabinet’s decision is also a signal to domestic audiences. Reasserting constitutional boundaries is as much about internal coherence as it is about external posture. In federations, federal authority and local autonomy must be balanced, but not at the expense of national control over defense, foreign policy and strategic economic assets. Somalia’s position is that the federal government alone has the mandate to negotiate, conclude and oversee such arrangements. Anything else risks turning national policy into a patchwork of localized bargains shaped by outside leverage.
There is, of course, a political dimension. Moves that recalibrate long-standing ties can invite backlash abroad and friction at home. They can also galvanize public debate about what sovereignty means in practice. By casting the annulment as a law-driven corrective rather than a geopolitical pivot, Mogadishu is attempting to minimize that turbulence. The door remains open to the UAE and other partners, officials say, provided future cooperation is transparent and constitutionally grounded.
The regional implications are not minor. The Horn of Africa has repeatedly served as an arena for proxy competitions that distort local incentives and fragment governance. A Somalia that insists on orderly, lawful engagement—one that is not a venue for external contests—reduces risk for neighbors and for global commerce. In that sense, the government argues, a strong and united Somalia is an asset for the region as a whole.
The narrative shift may be the most consequential element of all. For years, Somalia has been spoken about as an object of regional politics: a place where things happen, rather than a state that makes things happen. By annulling agreements that sidestep national institutions and suspending security deals that evade oversight, Mogadishu is asserting itself as a subject of international law, a sovereign equal rather than a fragmented space open to parallel influence.
None of this removes the challenges ahead. Rebuilding trust with partners under new terms takes time. Reconfiguring port management and security cooperation requires operational discipline and policy steadiness. Domestic stakeholders will test the limits of federal authority. And critics will keep pressing the case that pragmatism sometimes requires bending rules. But history is rarely kind to states that delay hard decisions in the name of convenience. Clarity, once established, creates its own momentum.
Somalia’s message is therefore both narrow and expansive: narrow in the sense that it applies immediate changes to a specific set of agreements; expansive because it outlines a model for the country’s engagement with the world. In an era of complex interdependence, sovereignty remains the architecture that makes cooperation durable. Enforcing it is not isolationism. It is the precondition for any partnership that can last.
By Ali Musa
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.
