Why Some Somali Politicians Need Crisis More Than Peace

Every Somali political crisis arrives with a familiar explanation. Weak institutions. Clan competition. Foreign interference.

A state still struggling to recover from the collapse of 1991.

All of these contain truth. But they often miss a more uncomfortable reality. What if some of Somalia’s political problems persist because too many powerful people benefit from them? Not because they hate peace. But because the Somalia that exists today is the Somalia that made them important — and the Somalia that might emerge from genuine stability could make them irrelevant.

This is the contradiction at the heart of Somali politics.

For more than three decades, influence in Somalia has rarely been determined by institutions alone. Power flows through clan structures, personal relationships, militias, and access to foreign partners. It accumulates through the ability to position yourself as an indispensable broker during moments of crisis.

In such an environment, instability becomes a resource.

Every crisis creates new opportunities for relevance. Every dispute generates new leverage. Every unresolved problem produces a new class of political brokers whose influence depends on the problem staying unresolved.

This does not mean Somali politicians deliberately manufacture every crisis. The reality is more subtle than that.

Systems develop their own logic. After three decades of fragmentation, an entire political ecosystem has grown up around managing instability rather than eliminating it. Nobody designed it that way. But enough people benefit from it that it persists.

Consider what genuine peace would actually require. A security apparatus loyal to the state rather than to individuals. Transparent budgets. Competitive elections. Institutions that derive legitimacy from governance rather than crisis management.

In that Somalia, today’s sources of influence lose value. The militia commander becomes less important. The political broker becomes less necessary. The crisis negotiator becomes less indispensable. Power would not disappear. It would simply be redistributed.

And that is precisely where resistance emerges. Because peace does not merely end conflict. Peace reorganizes who matters.

This explains one of the most striking features of Somali politics — the endless cycle of negotiations that produce agreements that produce new crises that produce new negotiations. Observers call this failure. But what if the system is not failing?

What if it is functioning exactly as many of its participants need it to function? Not well enough to solve problems. Well enough to preserve influence.

Enough stability for commerce to continue. Enough instability to keep the brokers relevant.

The uncomfortable truth is that Somalia’s greatest challenge may not be a shortage of peace agreements. It may be the existence of a political economy built around their failure — a system in which too many careers, alliances, and sources of power depend on fragmentation continuing.

The politicians who cannot afford peace are not Somalia’s only obstacle. But they are among its most consequential.

Because everyone will keep talking about peace while far too many people remain quietly dependent on its absence.