GAROWE, SOMALIA – Mogadishu is building attempting to build second center of power inside Puntland, according to Puntland and FGS officials. Mogadishu has been recruiting militias in Puntland with the apparent aim of challenging the authority of the state in the guise of expanding the national army. Garowe has now drawn a hard line; on June 18, the Puntland cabinet declared that the state is not part of the national army and barred any force or vehicle from outside Puntland, in a statement from the presidency. It also refuses to recognize Hassan Sheikh as a lawful president now that his term has ended.
Mogadishu has been accused of arming and paying local militias, then calling them the national army. To the outside world, the story is statebuilding. On the ground, it is something else. The federal government is trying to destabilize Puntland from within. The few recruits who are not ghosts on a payroll have drifted into piracy.
Federal officials recruit young men in Puntland, train some, and place them on Villa Somalia’s payroll. President Said Abdullahi Deni says men with laptops sign up these troops in secret, then move them without notice. Mogadishu brands the project as the 54th Division, the army’s unit for Puntland. That label lets the government tell donors it is building a national army. Foreign partners fund armies, not militias, so the name buys both money and cover.
But notice what Mogadishu skips. It does not work through Puntland’s own government; a real national army would. Instead, the federal side raises its force behind Garowe’s back. That choice gives the game away: the goal is not to defend Puntland but to plant a rival power base and to destabilize Puntland from the inside.
Why Hassan Sheikh Picked This Fight
Puntland answered the steps taken by the FGS to change the Constitution by withdrawing recognition of the federal government in 2024. In early 2026, parliament stretched terms from four years to five, a move rejected by Puntland. Hassan Sheikh’s mandate then ran out in May, and he stayed anyway.
Puntland is the hardest obstacle in his path as it is the oldest federal state and the most self-reliant. It fought Islamic State in the Cal Miskaad mountains with no federal help. It also helped found the opposition Somali Future Council with Jubaland in 2025. For Villa Somalia, a strong and independent Puntland is a standing rebuke. So the plan to destabilize Puntland is also a plan to break the opposition’s strongest base. Villa Somalia is attempting to force the FMSs into submission: it ran a takeover in Southwest State, then pressed Galmudug until it rejected federal elections with force. Puntland is simply the next name on the list.
There is a colder logic at work as Mogadishu itself looks unstable. In June, government forces fought the opposition in the capital, and the crackdown killed civilians. A calm, working Puntland makes that chaos look worse by comparison. So critics argue Hassan Sheikh wants the north to burn too. If Puntland looks unsafe, his own disorder looks normal. That, they say, is the real point of the effort to destabilize Puntland.
Yet it is not working. Puntland still runs its own elections, courts, and security forces. It still fights pirates and militants on its own coast. The contrast he wants to erase keeps growing. The harder he pushes, the more Puntland looks like the steadier half of the country. So far, the campaign to destabilize Puntland has produced the opposite of its aim.
Ghosts, Then Pirates
The force Mogadishu has built is mostly fiction. Officials say ghosts fill the rolls and describe fingerprints taken from housewives, farmers, and old men, each fake name tied to a salary. In January, one of President Deni’s security advisers counted 1,376 federally paid soldiers in Puntland, far below the 3,000 the unit claims. The money, critics say, skips the Finance Ministry and comes straight from the president. So it is personal, and it dies when his term dies. As such, Puntland’s Mudug governor has accused him of arming clan militias rather than building an army.
But some recruits are real. And real men with guns and no clear mission look for one. They cannot fight Puntland’s forces head-on, because they are too few and too exposed. So many turned to the sea. President has Deni accused the president of openly creating pirates, and of funding armed youth in coastal towns like Hafun, Bandarbeyla, Eyl, and Jariban. Gangs are again holding ships off Bari, Karkaar, and Mudug. So the plan to destabilize Puntland has, in the end, armed its pirates.
In the end, state officials say that it will not host a force that skips its government, pads a payroll with ghosts, and seeds its coast with pirates. Every shilling spent on this scheme is a shilling not spent on al-Shabaab in Somalia. Mogadishu wanted to destabilize Puntland and drag it down to the capital’s level. Instead, it has shown Somalis the gap between a state that builds and a presidency that wrecks.
