BELED-HAWO, Somalia – The recent military seizure of Beled Hawo by forces aligned with the Federal Government of Somalia (FGS) is more than just a tactical shift in a remote border town. It symbolizes Somalia’s existential struggles: the contentious balance between centralization and federalism, the political weaponization of impunity, and the dangerous diversion of resources from the existential fight against Al-Shabaab.

Events in July 2025 in the Gedo region have profound implications for national stability and regional security across the Horn of Africa.

For years, Beled Hawo has been a focal point of friction between Somalia’s federal government and the semi-autonomous Jubaland administration. Yet, the recent violence marks a dangerous escalation from political posturing to open warfare, exposing deep fault lines in Somalia’s provisional constitution and threatening its fragile national consensus.

A constitutional crisis 

The battle for Beled Hawo is not merely territorial but rooted in an unresolved constitutional crisis. Somalia’s provisional constitution, designed to distribute power and prevent authoritarianism, remains vague regarding the division of authority between the central government and Federal Member States (FMS). This ambiguity has fueled competing interpretations and tensions, particularly between Mogadishu and Jubaland.

The crisis escalated sharply following Mogadishu’s March 2024 constitutional amendments, which controversially expanded executive powers. Among the most contentious changes were the return to a one-person, one-vote electoral system and granting the president unilateral power to appoint and dismiss the prime minister without parliamentary approval. Jubaland’s President Ahmed Madobe vehemently rejected these reforms, perceiving them as a threat to regional autonomy.

Jubaland responded by amending its own state constitution to extend presidential terms from four to five years, holding elections on November 25, 2024, in which Madobe secured a controversial third term.

This direct challenge to federal authority led Mogadishu’s Banadir Regional Court, on November 27, 2024, to issue an unprecedented arrest warrant against Madobe for treason and undermining national unity. Thus, a political dispute escalated into a legal confrontation and, ultimately, violent conflict.

The Janan factor

Central to the federal assault on Beled Hawo was Abdirashid Hassan Abdinur, better known as Abdirashid Janan—a deeply controversial figure embodying the complex and cynical nature of Somali politics.

Janan first gained prominence as Jubaland’s security minister, notably controlling Gedo and strongly opposing Mogadishu’s influence. In August 2019, however, the federal government arrested him in Mogadishu on charges of severe human rights abuses committed between 2014 and 2017, extensively documented by Amnesty International and the UN.

In a dramatic twist, Janan escaped federal custody in January 2020, fleeing to Kenya, where he remobilized his forces and launched attacks against federal troops in Gedo throughout 2020. Kenya’s alleged support for Janan became a significant diplomatic issue, with Amnesty International urging his arrest and extradition.

Unexpectedly, in March 2021, after intense fighting and heavy losses, Janan surrendered to Mogadishu, citing a desire to end civilian suffering. In what many observers saw as a political compromise, all charges against him were swiftly dropped by a court in Benadir, raising serious questions about impunity and judicial integrity.

By July 2025, Janan resurfaced dramatically as a senior commander in Somalia’s National Intelligence and Security Agency (NISA), leading federal forces against his former Jubaland ally, Madobe, and completing a remarkable journey from regional strongman to federal fugitive, and finally, federal proxy. 

The conflict in Beled Hawo has regional implications, directly challenging the strategic interests of neighboring powers, especially Kenya. Nairobi maintains a long-standing security doctrine—the “Jubaland Initiative”—aimed at stabilizing southern Somalia as a buffer zone to protect Kenya’s northeastern border from Al-Shabaab attacks, arms trafficking, and refugee crises.

The FGS seizure of Beled Hawo undermines Kenya’s strategy, as violence spilled across the border into Kenya’s town of Mandera, injuring civilians and prompting mass displacement. According to the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), nearly 38,000 civilians fled the fighting, with many crossing into Kenya, triggering a significant humanitarian crisis.

The clearest beneficiary of the Beled Hawo conflict is Al-Shabaab, the al-Qaeda-linked insurgency. The federal government diverted elite, internationally-trained security forces—including Turkey-trained Gor Gor and Haram’ad brigades—from fighting Al-Shabaab to pursue political objectives in Gedo.

This shift creates dangerous security vacuums that Al-Shabaab readily exploits, enabling the group to regroup, rearm, and intensify attacks elsewhere.

This internal conflict thus represents a severe, self-inflicted setback in Somalia’s broader campaign against violent extremism. As federal and regional forces confront each other rather than terrorists, Al-Shabaab’s threat grows unchecked.

Somalia at a precipice

The seizure of Beled Hawo is not an isolated incident but the violent culmination of Mogadishu’s deliberate strategy to subordinate federal member states through coercive military action.

This aggressive federal approach threatens to unravel Somalia’s fragile state-building project, inciting further humanitarian suffering, regional instability, and enabling terrorist resurgence.

To prevent a catastrophic outcome, immediate steps must be taken. Firstly, a ceasefire and verified withdrawal of federal-aligned forces from Beled Hawo to pre-conflict positions is essential—not as a loss of sovereignty but as a necessary confidence-building measure for renewed political dialogue.

Ultimately, the crisis in Gedo forces Somalia to confront a stark choice: recommit to building an imperfect yet functional federal state grounded in consensus and rule of law, or regress to destructive zero-sum politics reminiscent of past civil wars.

Failure to act decisively now risks handing Al-Shabaab a strategic victory, allowing its black flag to rise again over the ruins of a fractured and failed Somali state.