Commentary
Building the Center, Bearing Its Hostility: Puntland’s Recurring Paradox
It is something that happens every four or five years: an incident that further fuels and strengthens the anti-federalism policy towards Puntland. It also strengthens a form of government confined to Mogadishu. Puntland carries a responsibility that it is not actually aware of, a responsibility that harms its own interests, the interests of its people, and its region.
Since the founding of Somalia’s Third Republic, Puntland has been the power holding Somali statehood together. It was once the economic power that sustained Villa Somalia, and also the power base that gave Somali statehood the chance to rebuild itself. It played a major part in Somalia’s federalization. It put much of its economic strength into the transitional government formed in Mbagathi, Kenya, and played a major role in ending Somalia’s transitional status. It also played a part in implementing the transitional constitution in 2012.
Puntland gave up much of its own power in the process. It accepted sitting at the table and sharing power with administrations established fifteen years after its own creation. Puntland accepted a power-sharing arrangement with administrations that did not have the same capacity, budget, population, or a similar system of governance. It was a power-sharing arrangement built purely on the designation of “federal member state.”
Beyond that, Puntland also put much of its wealth, political power and effort into finding solutions to political disputes emerging from Mogadishu. It became a political counterweight equal to the power and legitimacy held in Mogadishu.
Puntland acts like the parliament of the federal government because the actual parliament has become a puppet of Villa Somalia. It presents itself as a power standing in the way of every unlawful overreach that comes out of Mogadishu. Yet this has brought Puntland nothing but losses. It is a cycle that keeps repeating itself every four or five years.
Above all, the authority and powers held by its administration have mostly served to strengthen Somalia’s opposition groups, without bringing its own interests to the table or giving sufficient attention to the conditions its own people are living under.
Every time Puntland becomes part of a change of power at Villa Somalia, the new administration immediately launches a campaign against Puntland. Its rights are obstructed, aid provided by the international community is blocked, and it is denied its rightful share within the federal system, as well as the federal representation to which its people are entitled. It faces a battle that seems to intensify from one period to the next.
