Somalilandsun: After months living at an upmarket inn close to Mogadishu’s airport, Somalia’s opposition leaders, including two former presidents and their armed teams, have decamped, spreading across the capital in what is seen as a strategic move.
In another part of Mogadishu, troops supporting the recently sacked police commander, Sadiq “John” Omar, have set up roadblocks around his residence, ready to fend off any government attack.
“I definitely think that we are barrelling towards a major conflict, because we are a fragile nation kept together through a tenuous reconciliation process and a provisional constitution,” said Abdi Aynte, minister of planning from 2015 to 2017 and co-founder of the Heritage Institute for Policy Studies.
A formidable opposition with sizeable personal security and aligned clan militia, as well as leadership in the upper house, does not recognise the president’s legitimacy, let alone the extension.
But under his tenure the states and the seat of government have become further entrenched, blaming each other for Somalia’s problems.
In a recent report on the country, Dr Ibrahim Farah, a Somali academic, wrote: “Politically, Somalia is more or less the same as it was in the late 1990s.”
