Some men are woken by noise. Others are woken by history.
Shortly after midnight, Ugaas Yusuf Ugaas Hassan, paramount leader of the Hawadle, spoke in a social media video every Somali could share. He spoke to the Somali nation and to Hiiraan, which, he said, was under attack by forces “wearing the government’s uniform.” He asked Hawadle soldiers in the national army to come home. “There is nothing worth dying for there,” he told them.
An Ugaas is not an elder among elders. He is the crown of a whole people. When he speaks at that hour, he is not sounding an alarm. He is beating the drum, and when an Ugaas beats the drum, a whole people answers.
In May 2024, Abdullahi Mohamed Ali Sanbaloolshe, then head of the national intelligence agency, travelled to Hiiraan to honour his coronation. Today, as a former chief, he is back in Beledweyne beside the Macawisley. That is not a change of mood. It is a change of allegiance.
He is the second Ugaas under fire this year. On 3 June, government forces attacked the home of former Prime Minister Hassan Ali Khaire while some 70 traditional leaders sat inside. At their head was Ugaas Abdirizaq Ugaas Abdullahi Ugaas Haashi of the Murusade, whose coronation in April the President had attended.
On 5 November, the JSP’s leader in Galmudug, where the Murusade have deep roots, was sworn in at Dhusamareb with the President in the front row. Ugaas Abdirizaq was absent, and his absence speaks volumes. Some say he was not ready to sit beside the President whose forces kept him under fire through an entire night.
Tactics Are Not Strategy
Carl von Clausewitz (1832) taught that war is politics by other means. Lawrence Freedman (2013) calls strategy “the art of creating power.” Winning a town and losing a people does not create power. It burns it. President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud keeps winning towns and losing the country.
Baidoa Was the Rehearsal
On 30 March, federal troops entered Baidoa and ousted South West’s President, who still claims the office. In October, Laftagareen’s forces took Qansaxdheere, Buurhakaba, Bardaale, Diinsoor and Awdiinle, most of them without a fight. Towns do not fall without a fight unless they have already fallen in the heart. The leader the JSP installed in Baidoa admitted that of all South West, only Baidoa remains in their hands.
Then came Leego. On 26 October, federal troops sent to retake Buurhakaba from Laftagareen were ambushed by al-Shabaab. Military sources told Reuters that several dozen soldiers died. Sent against a rival, they were cut down by the common enemy. Al-Shabaab did not need to plan the war. It only needed to wait by the road.
The Pillar Becomes a Rival
Beledweyne lies about 340 km from the capital, nearly a hundred more than Baidoa. If a column could not get through on the shorter road, a soldier sent up the longer one carries his funeral in his pocket.
At the end of that road wait the Macawisley, named after the macawis, the sarong Somali men wear. In 2022, they rose against al-Shabaab’s crushing taxes and, with the government behind them, drove it from most of Hiiraan. They became the pillar of the President’s war.
Now the pillar has moved. About 2,000 fighters have left their trenches at Bulo Burde and Matabaan for Beledweyne. They did not cross to al-Shabaab. They went home to stand with their own people. No enemy did this. A decision did.
The Same Mistake, Three Times
In December 2024, federal troops flown to Ras Kamboni were routed by Jubaland’s forces, and some 600 soldiers fled into Kenya and handed their weapons to the Kenyan army. A national army was disarmed by a neighbour.
This year came Puntland. Again a political dispute was taken to the gun, through the Puntland Security Force, once led by today’s federal police chief. On 5 August, Puntland overran its base in Galkayo and arrested 101 of its men.
Then South West. Three regions, one method, one result. A method that fails three times is not bad luck. It is a policy.
Lose Hiiraan, Lose the Country
Beledweyne joins the capital to the central regions and the Ethiopian border. VOA wrote in 2009 that controlling it “has long been a vital goal for the Somali government.”
History has proved it twice. In June 1990, the United Somali Congress attacked the army’s camp in Beledweyne. Soon the army fled the town, and by January 1991 the state itself had fallen. In 2009, Beledweyne changed hands several times in six months, and al-Shabaab soon held most of the south and centre.
A government that loses Hiiraan does not lose a region. It loses the road to the rest of the country.
Somalia Has Seen This Before
Stathis Kalyvas (2006) explains the pattern: force that falls on whole communities pushes them to the other side. In Jubaland and Puntland, the government fought state administrations, and lost. In Bay and Hiiraan, it faces something graver. This is not two clans at war. It is communities rising against an administration.
Back to the Table
Force takes buildings, not consent.
The road to Beledweyne does not run through Bulo Burde. It runs through the people of Hiiraan. The Ugaas has beaten the drum, and a wise government answers a drum with a hearing, not a column.
President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud must sit down with the Ugaas, the elders and the Macawisley, hear their grievances, and resolve Beledweyne politically. A government whose own Supreme Court has ruled that its term ended on 15 May should be the last to settle politics with soldiers. Force has already failed three times. In Hiiraan, it will backfire again.
Awale Kullane is a Somali diplomat and political analyst who writes on institutions and political leadership in the Horn of Africa. Find him at www.linkedin.com/in/awale-kullane-2632a5388
