BELEDWEYNE, SOMALIA – Macawisley fighters in armed vehicles drove into Lama-Galay, the compound in Beledweyne that houses the Hiiraan regional administration and a Somali National Army base, on Friday 30 October, and the soldiers posted at its entrance withdrew without firing a shot. The fighters, accompanied by local politicians and businessmen, took up positions around the administration offices, at the approach to the Liqliqato Bridge and outside Ugaas Khaliif Airport, after an announcement on Thursday night that Hirshabelle’s new vice president, Abdifatah Hassan Afrah, would arrive in the town on Friday with a delegation. The militia that carried President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud’s campaign against al-Shabaab in Hiiraan now holds the regional seat of an administration his Justice and Solidarity Party secured in Jowhar six days earlier, while about two thousand federal troops remain stalled on the road to Buurhakaba.
Two Governors Inside Lama-Galay
Lama-Galay is divided into two sections, and on Friday each held a different claimant to the governorship of Hiiraan. Mohamed Hussein Mohamed Arab, whom President Ali Gudlawe removed by decree on 19 October, still worked from the administration offices in the front section, having refused to accept his dismissal. Muse Salad Weheliye, a former governor appointed in his place, was in the rear section, which serves as the army’s base. The Macawisley surrounded the offices and left the base to the soldiers, although one report on Friday morning said the armed men who entered Lama-Galay were looking for Muse Salad.
Mohamed Hussein’s removal came days after the Hiiraan administration published a statement objecting to the way tax revenue from the Beledweyne livestock market was being shared with other districts of the state. He argued that the districts receiving a share lacked the services and infrastructure to justify it, and that giving some areas larger shares than others was unfair. A spokesman for President Ali Gudlawe said the decision followed a proposal from the state interior minister, and the Hirshabelle presidency has denied any link to the revenue dispute. The decree was signed five days before the assembly in Jowhar re-elected President Ali Gudlawe by 81 votes to 13 and chose Abdifatah Hassan Afrah as his deputy by 79 votes to 16.
Mumin Mohamed Halane, a former district commissioner of Mahaas, said the fighters wanted control of the administration offices and had no quarrel with the soldiers at Lama-Galay. “We are not attacking the military. We have a common enemy,” he said, and he asked army and intelligence officers not to provoke them, adding that “if they do, we will defend ourselves.” Earlier on Friday heavy weapons had been reported on rooftops overlooking strategic points in the town, with anti-aircraft guns moved to the area around the airport, and the Hiiraan administration was reported to have warned airlines that any company flying a Hirshabelle official into Beledweyne would face action. No written order has been published, and its author, its target and its legal basis all remain unclear.
Abdifatah Hassan Afrah and the Road to Lama-Galay
Abdifatah Hassan Afrah governed Hiiraan himself before the Justice and Solidarity Party named him on 25 September as its candidate for the vice presidency. On 4 January 2025, as the region’s former governor, he was stopped at the airport in Mogadishu by officers of the National Intelligence and Security Agency on his way to Beledweyne and told that an order barred him from continuing the journey. He called it a blatant violation of the country’s law and an act of hostility by the Somali government. Reports at the time said the order came from the agency’s director, Abdullahi Sanbalolshe, who was then in Beledweyne trying to calm the town after soldiers were killed at Ceel Baraf.
Abdullahi Sanbalolshe, replaced at the agency in June 2025, said in an interview that circulated on Sunday 25 October that he and his Hawadle supporters were building a Hiiraan administration of their own, and when asked about al-Shabaab he did not rule out working with the group. One local report on Friday described the men who entered Lama-Galay as forces believed to be loyal to him, and another, published early on Saturday, said he had entered Beledweyne alongside Macawisley fighters. Neither account has been confirmed, and he has made no public comment on the takeover. Claims on social media the same day that the Macawisley had captured the airport and that the Hirshabelle-appointed governor had fled could not be verified.
Abdifatah Hassan Afrah has gone to Beledweyne against local objections before. On 29 September elders and politicians in Hiiraan declared that aircraft and delegations linked to the Hirshabelle administration would not be allowed to land in the region before a political agreement, and he arrived that afternoon, received by government supporters at the Ugaas Khaliif stadium, with soldiers and, by one local account, African Union troops from Djibouti and Ethiopia responsible for his security. The Hawadle had declared on 21 September that no Hirshabelle vote would be held in Hiiraan without an agreement, and the vote went ahead. Whether the new vice president reached the town on Friday, and whether he is now inside Lama-Galay, has not been confirmed.
The Militia That Fought for Mogadishu in Hiiraan
From 2022 the Macawisley, the clan fighters of Hiiraan, carried the federal offensive against al-Shabaab in the region with government support, and the towns they took became the showpiece of President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud’s war. Hawadle militias drove the group out of Ceel Baraf in March 2025. Government troops left Mahaas overnight in July 2025, al-Shabaab took Teedaan on 1 August 2026, and on Saturday 3 October the group announced an agreement with Hawadle elders in Mahaas to end four years of fighting, at a meeting attended by former Macawisley fighters. Federal soldiers and al-Shabaab fought around Hees in Mahaas district six days later, and the army lost the village to the group that week.
In January 2022, after President Ali Gudlawe’s repeated attempts to visit Beledweyne had been blocked by clan militias threatening violence, hundreds of Turkish-trained troops were airlifted into Ugaas Khaliif Airport, the same airstrip outside which the Macawisley took positions on Friday. The authorities said at the time that the troops were there to secure parliamentary polls, critics called the deployment an instrument of electoral manipulation, and President Ali Gudlawe, then at odds with Villa Somalia, described the airlift as a provocation. Four years on, the Hirshabelle president and the federal government sit in the same party, and the militias that once barred the state’s leaders from Beledweyne spent the years between fighting al-Shabaab with federal backing.
The soldiers who stepped aside at Lama-Galay belong to an army already committed on another front. About two thousand federal troops left Baledogle with more than two hundred vehicles on Saturday 24 October to retake Buurhakaba from the forces of former President Abdiaziz Hassan Mohamed Laftagareen, and al-Shabaab ambushed the reinforcements on Monday 26 October. Federal security sources put the dead at several dozen, and the defence ministry acknowledged no losses and reported about 75 militants killed. The ground forces commander visited positions near Leego two days later. The government has given no figure for the troops it keeps in Beledweyne, and none of the reports from Friday describes any reinforcement of the base at Lama-Galay.
A Second Term Counted in Jowhar and Refused at Lama-Galay
On Saturday 3 October the electoral commission announced in Jowhar that the Justice and Solidarity Party had taken 78 of the 99 seats in the Hirshabelle assembly, with 88,130 of the 112,451 valid votes cast in ten districts. The new assembly sat on Saturday 24 October and returned President Ali Gudlawe, first elected in November 2020, for a second term. In a 19-minute address after the count he did not mention Hiiraan, and the federal interior minister, Ali Yusuf Hosh, told reporters in Jowhar that efforts to settle the dispute between the region and the state were under way. Yusuf Ahmed Hagar Dabageed, the outgoing vice president, has said he will not give up the office until a comprehensive political agreement is reached.
In South West State the federal government removed former President Abdiaziz Hassan Mohamed Laftagareen in March, its preferred successor was installed through an assembly vote, and the man it removed now holds five districts in Bay; a federal committee listed him on 13 October among the financiers of al-Shabaab. In Hiiraan the armed refusal came within a week of the count in Jowhar. Elders and politicians meeting in Beledweyne had called on 16 September for every election step in the region to be halted until an inclusive agreement was reached, and Abdullahi Sanbalolshe has since spoken of an administration of their own.
No statement from the Hirshabelle presidency or from Villa Somalia on the takeover of Lama-Galay had appeared in any report from the town by Saturday morning, and no shots had been reported. The regional governor appointed by decree is working from an army base, the governor he replaced sits in the front offices under Macawisley guard, and the vice president elected in Jowhar on 24 October cannot land in the region he once governed without passing the Macawisley positions outside Ugaas Khaliif Airport.
