Flights into Mogadishu, Somalia’s capital, trace the coastline on their descent to Aden Adde International Airport, which sits beside the Indian Ocean.

In June, when Somaliland’s president, Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi, stood alongside Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the latter drew attention to the geography connecting them. Israel and Somaliland, Netanyahu said, sit at opposite ends of the Red Sea but share an interest in confronting “extremism, terrorism and chaos”.

By recognising Somaliland in late 2025, Israel became the latest Middle Eastern power to establish a significant relationship with one of Somalia’s several political centres. Somaliland declared independence in 1991 but remains unrecognised by any other state. For Israel, the relationship offers a partner on the Gulf of Aden, close to Yemen and the shipping lanes where it has confronted the Houthis. For Somaliland, it delivered something decades of engagement with other foreign partners had not: formal recognition.

Israel’s arrival comes amid a much wider expansion of Middle Eastern engagement across the Horn of Africa. Gulf states and Turkey have committed an estimated $75 billion to projects across East Africa in recent years, according to the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, with the UAE alone accounting for roughly 60 per cent of the total.

The UAE has spent more than a decade cultivating commercial and security ties with Somaliland, Puntland and Jubaland, while Turkey has built its deepest relationships through Mogadishu. Egypt and Saudi Arabia have also strengthened federal ties as disputes over Ethiopia, Israel and Red Sea security intensify.

Middle Eastern money, arms and infrastructure therefore increasingly shape the resources available to different political centres, strengthening some administrations’ ability to raise revenue, secure territory, build institutions and withstand pressure from rivals. Red Sea powers have treated the Horn as part of their strategic neighbourhood for decades, but the scale of involvement expanded sharply from the 2010s.

Western governments initially saw much of this as an advantage. Judd Devermont, who served as President Joe Biden’s senior Africa official on the National Security Council, described cooperation with Middle Eastern partners as appearing to offer Washington a “cheat code”: additional capital, security resources and political credibility at a time when US attention was limited.

What has changed more recently is the political terrain through which those relationships operate. Formal sovereignty remains centred in Mogadishu, but practical authority is distributed among several competing centres with sharply different capacities to raise revenue, provide security and negotiate with external actors.

These centres are underpinned by clan coalitions whose control of ports, customs posts, territory and security forces helps determine the reach of their authority; foreign support can strengthen those coalitions and alter the balance between them. Somali political actors are therefore also enlisting outside powers into contests and state-building projects already under way. Some centres, like Puntland and Jubaland, sustain foreign relationships with little practical involvement from the federal government.

Mogadishu nevertheless commands a distinct set of assets. It holds Somalia’s sovereign powers — including the ability to sign and cancel international agreements, control airspace and act as the principal conduit for diplomatic recognition and external assistance — while regional authorities may control ports, customs revenues, security forces and commercial flows on the ground.

Somali governments have historically struggled to collect broad-based taxes, giving customs posts and maritime gateways an outsized role in financing the state. The federal government, for example, collects domestic revenue equivalent to only about 3% of GDP, among the lowest levels in Africa. Puntland’s Bosaso, Jubaland’s Kismayo and Somaliland’s Berbera are therefore crucial revenue generators for their respective administrations.

A recurring theme in interviews with officials across Somalia’s regional administrations was that they viewed foreign engagement as a negotiated exchange, not something simply imposed on them. Foreign governments provide finance, weapons, training, infrastructure or diplomatic support; Somali authorities offer strategically located territory, commercial access and security cooperation. The balance is not equal, but Somali actors actively solicit investment and negotiate terms, while successful relationships supply resources that can consolidate their authority further. Narratives framed primarily around a new “scramble for Africa” risk obscuring this agency by treating local actors as objects of external competition rather than participants who bargain with foreign powers in pursuit of their own political projects. The dependencies also run both ways. The UAE became a partner in Puntland’s campaign against IS-Somalia, while Somaliland has received significant diplomatic and political backing, as well as security cooperation, from both the UAE and Israel.

…

Kismayo is Jubaland’s de facto administrative and commercial capital. Its bustling markets are stocked with goods imported from the Middle East and as far afield as China.

Recent confrontations with Mogadishu show how differently these centres convert resources into political leverage. In late 2024, the federal government challenged Jubaland president Ahmed Madobe’s re-election and deployed troops toward Kismayo; fighting near Ras Kamboni ended with federal forces retreating into Kenya. More than a year later, federal forces took Baidoa in South West State, and President Abdiaziz Laftagareen was removed from power. The disputes were similar, but the centres confronting Mogadishu were not.

Jubaland’s authority is thin across much of its nominal territory, large parts of which remain under al-Shabaab control. Yet Madobe’s administration retains firm control of Kismayo, a historically important Somali coastal city and a valuable customs gateway, and has cultivated longstanding security ties with Nairobi, the UAE and Western partners. Those revenue and security assets have helped a relatively narrow, Ogaden-centred clan coalition sustain its security apparatus and resist federal pressure.

South West State has no comparable strategic gateway. Baidoa generates relatively little local revenue and remains heavily aid dependent, while the administration exercises much weaker control over the roads and productive hinterland on which the wider regional economy depends. During our fieldwork, traders described paying the federal government, South West State authorities, clan militia and al-Shabaab along the Baidoa–Mogadishu corridor.

While most goods entering Jubaland arrive through the port, smaller dhows also land cargo directly on the beach, where it is offloaded under the watch of ministry and security officials. Some goods remain in Jubaland, while others are transported onward to ports including Marka and to islands off Jubaland’s coast.

A centre with no gateway and no external patron has far fewer resources with which to hold its governing coalition together than one that does. Although these external relationships can intensify competition between political centres, and between them and the federal government, they can also provide the revenue, security support and institutional capacity that help stabilise the administrations they sustain.

The newly established North East State shows how those inequalities can shape political strategy. The administration emerged around Las Anod after conflict between Somaliland and members of the local Dhulbahante clan, but lacks an established port, substantial customs base or durable external relationships.

Officials we interviewed described federal recognition in 2025 not only as constitutional validation but as a route toward investment and security relationships that could strengthen state institutions. Hopes for Turkish investment centred heavily on Las Qoray, a small Gulf of Aden port whose importance remains mostly prospective. Officials argued that developing it could provide a direct maritime gateway and alternative to commerce routed through Puntland’s Bosaso, where importers first pay a customs tax to Puntland and later North East State authorities, increasing costs.

But any credible claim to the coast also requires a broader settlement with Warsangeli clan constituencies further north, meaning the search for infrastructure and an external investor is already shaping the kinship coalitions and territorial reach the administration would need to build more durable institutions.

Puntland shows what those relationships can look like once deeply institutionalised. Its ties with the UAE extend through security assistance and Bosaso port, giving the regional government resources only partly dependent on Mogadishu. When the federal government cancelled port and security agreements with the UAE in early 2026, Puntland maintained its own ties with Abu Dhabi. One official described the break as a “paper rupture”: goods continued to enter Bosaso, customs revenue continued to be collected at the port and the relationship endured. The dependencies also run both ways. The UAE became a partner in Puntland’s campaign against IS-Somalia, while Somaliland has received significant diplomatic and political backing, as well as security cooperation, from both the UAE and Israel.

The episode exposed a basic tension in Somalia’s external relations. Mogadishu retains formal sovereign powers that other Somali centres do not, but cannot always translate them into effective control where regional governments command infrastructure, revenue and durable external relationships. Puntland’s room for manoeuvre comes not from a formally independent foreign policy, but from having acquired enough practical capacity to sustain one anyway.

That autonomy can also create new dependencies. Bosaso airport and Berbera port have reportedly become conduits for arms and mercenaries sent by the UAE to Sudan, prompting complaints from Khartoum to a federal government that exercises little practical control over those facilities.

Given these issues, some in Puntland have therefore viewed the Somali-financed port at Garacad as a way to diversify its fiscal base and reduce reliance on UAE-linked infrastructure.

Somaliland’s relationship with Israel shows a different version of the same problem. Israeli recognition strengthened Somaliland’s position in Red Sea politics and gave its leaders greater access to power brokers in Washington, but it also changed the external threats the territory faces. The Houthis have threatened Somaliland should it host an Israeli military presence, while plans for a Somaliland office in Jerusalem generated domestic political criticism. Somaliland sought an external relationship to advance its long-running project of international recognition; in doing so, it also moved more clearly into strategic contests originating far beyond the Somali political arena.

Some regional officials have voiced concern about these developments. Mohamed Abdi Ware, Deputy Executive Secretary of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development, warned at the Antalya Diplomacy Forum earlier this year that not all external actors necessarily had the best interests of Horn countries at heart. Jama Egal, a senior Somaliland official, acknowledged the risks such partnerships can carry but argued that Somaliland was prepared to manage them. “You make enemies because of what you want and who you want to be,” he said.

The question is no longer simply which outside power has influence in Somalia, but which Somali authority can convert a foreign relationship into durable political capacity and what obligations that relationship creates on both sides.

Middle Eastern powers now bargain with several centres of authority in parallel. The result is neither straightforward consolidation nor simply further fragmentation. Middle Eastern engagement is helping stratify Somalia’s political centres, while drawing external powers more deeply into Somalia’s internal contests.

______________________________________________________________________________________________

This article was co-authored by Faisal Ali, Abdinor Dahir and Jethro Norman.

Abdinor Dahir advises governments and NGOs on governance, investment, and economic development in Somalia. Most recently, he served as Senior Strategic Investments Advisor to the Federal Government of Somalia’s Ministry of Planning, Investment and Economic Development. Previously, he was Sub-Saharan Africa Programme Director at the TRT World Research Centre. He is a regular commentator on Horn of Africa affairs and Managing Director of the Mogadishu-based consultancy, Taloford.

Jethro Norman is a postdoctoral researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies. His research and fieldwork has focused on East Africa (Somalia, Somaliland, Kenya, Tanzania, South Sudan), with expertise in humanitarianism, security, conflict and development. Jethro’s current research covers the politics of humanitarian assistance, trade and development in the Somali territories, with a particular interest in the role of the Somali diaspora.

This work is supported by the Cross-Border Conflict Evidence, Policy and Trends (XCEPT) research programme, funded by UK International Development. The views and opinions expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the UK government.