While Villa Somalia’s brazen theft of elections and suppression of dissent served to weaken the autonomy of the FMS, the deployment of security forces for the same purposes illustrated another, equally troubling development: the FGS had abandoned the fight against Somalia’s single greatest security threat – Al-Shabaab.
As Farmaajo entered the latter half of his four-year term, a consensus was emerging that the terror group taxed more efficiently, raised more money, provided greater security, and dispensed higher quality justice than the FGS did.
Since Mohamed Abdillahi Farmaajo took office as president of Somalia 2017, 12 journalists have been killed, and in 2021 alone, dozens have been arrested, making the country one of the most dangerous places for media professionals across the globe.
Like so many other things about the Somali Federal Government headed by President Farmaajo, the disappearance and alleged murder of a young female intelligence officer at the hands of her superiors ignited a national scandal that the government has aggressively quashed as a way of distracting, deflecting, and deterring anyone who might dare to question, or even contradict, Villa Somalia’s grotesque version of the “truth”.
Prominent opposition politicians, including two former presidents, have been the targets of assassination attempts staged by government forces. Another has been detained since 2018 without charge or appearance before a court.
Farmaajo’s inner circle, led by his intelligence chief, Fahad Yasin, planned to dismantle Somalia’s nascent federal architecture and centralize all power in Mogadishu. To pursue that aim, they needed weak, pliable proxies in charge of each of Somalia’s Federal Member States.
As the unchallenged expansion of Al-Shabaab’s influence on Farmaajo’s watch suggests a far more sinister explanation, the jihadists are possibly the only authority in Somalia that the FGS hasn’t chosen to pick a fight with.
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