By Maxamed Dhugad
Somalia’s political landscape has evolved through repeated cycles of contest and confrontation, where progress is constantly overshadowed by deliberate actions of a political class that sees stability as a direct threat to its privileges. Every time a government begins to implement reforms that strengthen institutions, improve service delivery, or advance the long-delayed transition toward a democratic electoral system, a familiar and predictable pattern emerges. Opposition groups and recycled political actors begin to manufacture instability to weaken the momentum of reform and create an atmosphere of uncertainty that serves their ambitions.
This manufactured instability takes many forms, adjusted to the moment and the stakes involved. It is propagated through carefully curated narratives that erode public trust in national systems. It is amplified by coordinated disinformation campaigns that distort truth and inflame emotions. It is energized through political alliances that weaponize clan sentiment at critical moments to reconfigure power arrangements. All of these actions serve a single purpose, which is to disrupt any reform process that threatens the political leverage and informal access to state resources that certain elites have depended on for decades.
What appears on the surface as political disagreement is, in truth, a deeper and more structured phenomenon. Security scholar Rachel Kleinfeld describes this pattern as a form of privilege violence, where elites intentionally weaken state institutions so that those institutions cannot constrain their power. In such political orders, institutions are not failing by accident. They are being hollowed out by design.
Elites maintain influence by keeping the state too fragile to enforce accountability, aligning themselves with violent spoilers, disinformation networks, business cartels, and clan-based mobilisers in order to protect their access to national resources. This framework explains why every meaningful reform effort in Somalia is quickly met with resistance. Reform is not destabilizing the country. It is the fear of losing an entrenched privilege system that drives certain actors to sabotage progress.
This dynamic was starkly visible during the 2020 election cycle, which the International Crisis Group described as one of the most tense and politically polarized moments since the federal system was created. In its briefing, Staving Off Violence Around Somalia’s Elections, the organization detailed how elites used disputes over electoral models, timelines, and federal-state relations as leverage to manufacture uncertainty and negotiate political advantage.
Political groups mobilized clan structures, framed technical issues as existential threats, and pushed the country to the brink of confrontation. The report warned that this brinkmanship was not a by-product of weak institutions. It was an intentional strategy aimed at extracting concessions, delaying reforms, and maintaining influence.
Rather than provide alternative visions for governance or compete through policy-based debate, these actors depend on strategic disruption.
When reforms begin to stabilize the environment, manufactured noise is introduced to confuse the public. When institutional processes accelerate, new doubts are released to slow implementation. When the government gains public confidence, polarizing narratives are activated to fracture national unity.
Kleinfeld’s work shows that this pattern is common in countries where elites fear losing their grip on public resources. The Crisis Group’s analysis shows that Somalia’s version of this sabotage is highly organized, often coordinated through federal-state rivalries, clan mobilization, and politicized security structures.
The result is a political environment that struggles to mature. Progress becomes vulnerable to manipulation. Public confidence becomes a casualty of political performance. National development is interrupted as leaders are forced to divert energy from governance to crisis management. This is the hidden cost of instability that is intentionally produced and repackaged under polished slogans such as “Samatabixin” and “Badbaado Qaran”. It is presented through well-rehearsed Jazeera podium theatrics in every election cycle.
What the public sees as chaos is neither confusion nor coincidence. It is a calculated strategy to protect privilege by weakening the foundations of democratic progress.
Somalia’s challenge is not unique. Countries from Mexico to Georgia, from Brazil to South Africa, have navigated similar cycles in which elites tolerate or encourage instability to maintain influence. Their experience shows that progress becomes possible only when societies recognize manufactured instability for what it is and refuse to be manipulated by crisis narratives. Progress emerges when coalitions of citizens, institutions, reform-minded leaders, and accountability actors commit to building resilience against political sabotage.
Somalia now stands at such a moment. The public faces a clear choice: either recycled political actors continue weaponizing fear and uncertainty, or a new civic culture emerges in which institutions are strengthened rather than weakened and reforms move forward because the public understands exactly what is at stake.
A layered national response is essential. Institutional protections must be fortified through laws that criminalize the incitement of clan-based violence and regulate political financing to disrupt the economic machinery of manufactured instability. Civic counter-measures should empower independent media and real-time fact-checking platforms capable of exposing disinformation networks before they take root. Electoral accountability must follow, with an informed electorate systematically withdrawing support from actors who repeatedly manufacture crises for political leverage. When these approaches converge, they form a collective defence. This is how a nation inoculates itself against the politics of sabotage.
Maxamed Dhugad is a civic policy advocate and humanitarian expert who writes on governance, democratic transitions, and leadership in fragile contexts.