Somalia’s politics rarely arrive at a tidy ending, and the events of mid-May 2026 have confirmed it. On May 15, the term extension granted to President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud formally took effect — an extension his opponents have refused to recognise. Two days earlier, negotiations between the Federal Government of Somalia and the opposition coalition, branding itself the “Council of the Future”, collapsed in Mogadishu after a heated dispute over the country’s stalled electoral process. The state is now operating without a mutually accepted constitutional clock.
This is more than a procedural quarrel. Somalia has spent the better part of a decade trying, and failing, to deliver a one-person-one-vote election to replace the indirect clan-based selection model that has produced every Somali presidency since the collapse of the central state. The Federal Government has promoted the new direct-voting framework as a generational reform. The opposition argues that the framework was rewritten unilaterally, that the constitutional amendments enabling it bypassed proper consultation with the Federal Member States, and that the result is a one-sided rulebook drafted by the team that intends to play in it.
The danger now is not abstract. Somalia’s politics are organised, in practice, around armed constituencies. The Somali National Army, the Danab special forces, the National Intelligence and Security Agency, the Federal Member State forces in Puntland and Jubaland, the Macawisleey clan militias fighting al-Shabaab in central Somalia, and the various private security arrangements around political families — each has a sponsor and each can be activated. An institutional impasse between the FGS and the opposition after May 15 raises the probability that those affiliated forces will move from posturing to clashes, especially in Mogadishu itself, where rival security details have repeatedly tested each other since the Farmaajo era.
The regional context makes the calculus more delicate. Ethiopia and Somalia are still working their way through the diplomatic crater left by Addis Ababa’s port access agreement with Somaliland. Egypt has positioned itself as Somalia’s preferred external partner and is now embedded in the African Union Support and Stabilisation Mission, AUSSOM, alongside Uganda, Djibouti, Kenya and Burundi. Each of those troop-contributing countries has its own preferences about who controls the political centre in Mogadishu. A constitutional crisis that descends into street-level clashes could draw external actors into very public choosing of sides — exactly the dynamic that nearly unravelled the African Union Mission in Somalia in earlier transitions.
There is also the al-Shabaab problem, which never stops being the problem. The militant group has demonstrated repeatedly that it exploits political fractures faster than the State can patch them. The Macawisleey-led offensive in Hirshabelle and Galmudug, which had been one of the few clear successes of Hassan Sheikh’s first term, has lost much of its momentum over the last 18 months. If Somali forces redirect attention to internal political confrontation in Mogadishu and the regional capitals, al-Shabaab will read that as an invitation. The group’s recent operational tempo in Lower Shabelle and around the Bakool border zone already suggests it senses the State’s distraction.
For Kenya, the implications are immediate and concrete. Kenyan troops remain in southern Somalia under AUSSOM. The Lamu Port-South Sudan-Ethiopia Transport corridor passes through a region whose stability depends on what happens west of Mogadishu. The Dadaab refugee complex, which Kenya has tried and failed to close several times, will not be closeable while Somalia is convulsing. Trade between Mombasa and Mogadishu, the khat flights from Wilson Airport, the diaspora remittances flowing through Eastleigh — all of these depend on a Somalia that is, at minimum, governable. A protracted constitutional standoff in Mogadishu is a direct national security cost to Nairobi, regardless of which side ultimately prevails.
What is striking about this moment is that no external mediator has emerged with the credibility to break the deadlock. The Intergovernmental Authority on Development, IGAD, is constrained by its own internal divisions, particularly the Ethiopia-Egypt-Somalia triangle. The African Union has limited leverage when its own troops are deployed in the country. The United States under the current administration has signalled, repeatedly, that it does not intend to spend political capital on Somalia’s internal arrangements unless they touch directly on counter-terrorism. That leaves Somalia’s political class largely on its own.
What to watch next is whether the Council of the Future declares any parallel structure — a parallel inauguration, a parallel parliament, or even a parallel security force. Each of those moves would mark a hard transition from political crisis to state fragmentation. If a quiet face-saving deal emerges, Somalia will have bought another fragile year. If not, the region should prepare for a Mogadishu that, once again, becomes a story of armed factions sharing the same city.
