BELEDWEYNE, SOMALIA – The Hawadle declared in Beledweyne on Monday 21 September that no Hirshabelle election held without a prior political agreement will take place anywhere in Hiiraan, nine days before the joint parliamentary and local council vote the federal electoral commission has scheduled for 30 September. The position came out of a week of consultations that followed the arrival of the clan’s traditional leader, Ugaas Yusuf Ugaas Hassan. It called residents of every district to protest peacefully against what its spokesman called a forced election. The ruling Justice and Solidarity Party has named President Ali Gudlawe, from Middle Shabelle, as its only candidate, and six of the twelve districts due to vote lie in Hiiraan. A rival Hawadle council in Mogadishu has endorsed him, and President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud is in New York.
A Hawadle Press Conference Nine Days Before the Vote
Hiirey Ahmed Roble, a former secretary of the Banadir Regional Administration, read the outcome of the consultations to reporters in Beledweyne. “The primary outcome of the meetings is the clan’s rejection of any election conducted without a political agreement,” he said, and no forced election lacking consensus could take place in Hiiraan, in its cities, districts or villages. He thanked residents of Jalalaqsi, Matabaan and Jawiil, who he said had already demonstrated against the process, and asked people across the region to mobilise peacefully and make their position public.
Jalalaqsi, Matabaan and Jawiil are all on the electoral commission’s list. The commission named twelve districts in August, six in Hiiraan (Beledweyne, Jalalaqsi, Bulo Burde, Matabaan, Jawiil and Farlibaax) and six in Middle Shabelle, and it moved polling from 20 August to 30 September for three stated reasons: voter registration was still running in four Hiiraan districts, political organisations needed time to mobilise their supporters, and they needed more time to submit their candidate lists. Its revised timetable set the distribution of voter cards for 16 September and the submission and verification of candidate lists for the House of Representatives and district councils for 17 September.
Monday’s statement restated in public a decision the Hawadle had already reached. On 16 September a meeting of the clan’s intellectuals and politicians in Beledweyne called for every election and every state-formation step in Hiiraan to be halted until an agreement was reached, and asked that the formation of the third Hirshabelle administration rest on an inclusive process guaranteeing justice, representation and power sharing. “All elections and procedures not founded on agreement and the consent of the community must be stopped,” the communique said. It also warned that the electoral commission would bear responsibility for any unrest that followed a vote held without consensus, asked the Hirshabelle officials working in Hiiraan to heed the meeting’s decisions, and said no lasting Hirshabelle could be built while the grievances of the Hiiraan communities were ignored.
One Clan, Two Hawadle Councils
Ugaas Yusuf Ugaas Hassan flew into Beledweyne from Mogadishu on Monday 14 September with members of both houses of the federal parliament, and the Hiiraan governor, Mohamed Hussein Arab, met the delegation at the airport with Hirshabelle officials from the clan and a large crowd. The Ugaas said the visit was meant to review the political situation and unify the clan’s decisions. He called on those with influence, money or other resources to play their part in carrying out whatever the consultations produced. Before the delegation landed there were reports, never officially confirmed, that the federal government was considering stopping its aircraft from using Beledweyne airport.
The next day a second Hawadle body took the opposite side in Mogadishu. The clan’s Supreme Political Council, chaired by former President Ali Abdullahi Osoble, the first president of Hirshabelle, met President Ali Gudlawe at his campaign headquarters, endorsed him and backed a one-person, one-vote election. Former President Ali Abdullahi Osoble said positions should not be reserved for any particular individual and that the Hawadle would cooperate with whoever led the administration. President Ali Gudlawe accepted the endorsement and called the meeting a sign of a united Hirshabelle.
Within days former President Ali Abdullahi Osoble criticised the Hirshabelle vice president, Yusuf Ahmed Hagar Dabageed, telling him his office had come to him by luck, and he criticised Abdullahi Mohamed Sanbaloolshe, the former director of the national intelligence agency, over the mobilisation in Beledweyne. Sanbaloolshe answered with a string of proverbs aimed at his critic, reported on 21 September. Both men had already broken with Villa Somalia in public. On 11 September Dabageed told Hawadle elders in Mogadishu that no election could be held in Hiiraan without agreement “even in a single village”, and Sanbaloolshe warned that if the federal president and his candidate were content with Jowhar and Balcad, Somalis would form another government.
The Card Villa Somalia Dealt in Hiiraan
The quarrel goes back to the formation of Hirshabelle in 2016, when Hiiraan and Middle Shabelle were joined under federal mediation, Jowhar became the capital and the presidency went to a Hawadle leader from Hiiraan. Former President Ali Abdullahi Osoble held it first. The allocation broke in 2020, when President Ali Gudlawe, an Abgaal from Middle Shabelle, took the office and Jowhar kept the capital, and a decade after the settlement the presidency has never returned to Hiiraan. Beledweyne has already expelled the state administration once, in March 2024, when a Hiraan State movement drove Hirshabelle officials out of the city.
Dabageed told the Hawadle on 11 September that President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud had promised him the Hirshabelle leadership and then informed him that the choice had gone to President Ali Gudlawe, whose clan the federal president shares. Villa Somalia made the choice plain by handing President Ali Gudlawe the Justice and Solidarity Party’s only card for the state presidency. Dabageed has also said that Hiiraan has grievances against both the federal government and the Hirshabelle administration, that the Hawadle leadership wants dialogue over what it considers the region’s political rights, and that the region does not want chaos. Neither Villa Somalia nor the Hirshabelle administration has answered the Hawadle statement of 21 September.
In South West State the federal government removed an incumbent by force in March and installed a successor through a managed vote in June, a script Villa Somalia has followed in more than one state. Galmudug’s election was annulled in August and rerun by the federal electoral commission in September. In Hirshabelle the party that runs the federal government chose the candidate before the registers were complete, and the electoral commission has kept its date while the Hawadle, whose political base is Hiiraan, say the vote cannot take place there. Crisis Group has warned that bilateral security arrangements after the African Union mission could split Somalia into zones of influence that follow the existing quarrels between Mogadishu and the member states.
Registration Centres Held by the Men Who Fought Al-Shabaab
On 1 September Macawisley fighters took over the voter registration site in Beledweyne and said they would allow no vote for a president whose term had expired, and on 7 September gunmen identified locally as Macawisley attacked a registration centre in the city, killing one person, wounding two and forcing the staff to flee. Police left several registration centres on 11 September without explanation, and on 12 September the city held two opposing demonstrations, east of the river against holding the vote in Beledweyne and west of it in favour.
After the Ugaas arrived on 14 September, security was tightened across Beledweyne and footage circulated showing weapons and military vehicles in parts of the city, with no independent confirmation that clan forces were being mobilised for any operation. Ali Jeyte Osman, the former Hiiraan governor who helped mobilise the Macawisley against al-Shabaab from late 2022, was reported on 14 September to be heading to the city to join the elders.
The Macawisley carried the federal campaign in Hiiraan when it began in 2022, and Dabageed has said the Hawadle bore a heavy burden in it and that most of the clan’s constituencies were later recaptured by the insurgents. At the start of August al-Shabaab took Teedaan as Hiiraan slipped further from Mogadishu. On 18 September Crisis Group judged that parts of Hirshabelle would be vulnerable once the African Union mission leaves, because of the concentration of al-Shabaab forces in the area since 2025, and named Jalalaqsi on the main road as a town that would come under pressure.
Jalalaqsi is one of the three districts whose residents Hiirey Ahmed Roble thanked on Monday for protesting against the vote. The electoral commission has not changed its date, President Ali Gudlawe remains the only candidate on the ruling party’s card, and President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud addresses the UN General Assembly on Thursday while the Hawadle ask every district in Hiiraan to protest peacefully against the vote.
