Haybad Qaran and Somalia’s Politics of Power and Perception

[Deeq A.]

Members of the Haybad Qaran alliance, a coalition of prominent Somali political figures positioning itself within the evolving power landscape in Somalia.

Mogadishu and Garowe (PP Report) — Haybad Qaran (meaning National Stature in Somali), the new political alliance led by Abdi Farah Shirdoon, has a penchant for alliterative taglines, as shown by the two phrases the alliance chose to portray itself in the Somali political landscape: Han Sare iyo Hufnaan (High Ambition and Integrity). The intention to contest for the highest office in Somalia, the presidency, reflects this high ambition, but integrity is a quality that many analysts regard as lacking in Haybad Qaran.

Members of Haybad Qaran are addressed as Haybadle (a person of status) or Haybadlayaal (people of status), a term that can also be interpreted more broadly as “citizens”, as Shirdoon used it in his congratulatory message marking the end of Ramadan in 2026.

The public face of Haybad Qaran is Fahad Yasin, the former Director of  the National Intelligence and Security Agency ( NISA), who fell out with the former Somali President Mohamed Abdullahi Farmaajo a few years after the latter lost the Somali presidential elections in 2022. Both Fahad and Farmaajo live in Qatar. Fahad was a former correspondent for Al Jazeera before he found a way to run the 2016 campaign of President Farmaajo, who was elected President of Somalia in February 2017.

Abdi Farah Shirdoon, former Prime Minister, leading the Haybad Qaran alliance.

Shirdoon managed to cobble together an alliance made up of diverse political figures, including Abdikarim Guled, a former Federal Interior Minister and  co-founder of Damuljadiid, to which the President of Somalia Hassan Sheikh Mohamud belongs or has belonged; Dr Guled Salah, the former Chairman of the Puntland Electoral Commission and founder of SIDRA, a think tank in Garowe; Farah Ali Jama, a former Finance Minister of Puntland State of Somalia and Thabit Abdi Mohamed, a former Mayor of Mogadishu.

Dr Guled Salah is the political ideologue of Haybad Qaran. He is tasked with formulating a political programme based on an exhaustive study of the institutional bottlenecks that plague the federal system of Somalia. His 2024 book, Federalism Imperative in Post-Conflict Africa: The Case of Somalia, is based on his doctoral dissertation at University for Peace (UPEACE).

Dr Guled Salah, policy thinker behind Haybad Qaran’s approach to Somalia’s federal challenges.

Dr Guled argues that lack of conceptual clarity affects the federal system, given the ambiguities in the Provisional Constitution. No one made a stronger case for entrenching this ambiguity than the former President of Puntland State of Somalia, Abdirahman Farole, who, during the drafting of the Provisional Constitution in 2012, contended that “since Puntland is the leading federal member state and originator of the federal system, the Provisional Constitution should never contradict the Constitution of Puntland State of Somalia.”

“The slow progress of the federal system in Somalia has partly resulted from centralised systems in the periphery, a trend of which Villa Somalia continuously takes advantage. This centralised structure in  several Federal Member States comes in the form of a legislature controlled by the executive branch of government” a political scientist in Boosaaso told Puntland Post.

Dr Guled’s experience in the democratisation process in Puntland informs his perspective on addressing the problems pushing Somalia towards centralisation. In his book, Dr Guled lauds the role of Puntland State in its earlier days in peace-building and advocacy  for a federal system for Somalia before Puntland fell victim to a winner-takes-all presidency and failed to foresee how the emerging Federal Member States would undercut the influence of Puntland State, which stands accused of reneging on its promises on institution-building and fiscal federalism.

Shirdoon, an avowedly anti-federalism politician, aims to strike a balance between the sober analysis of the causes of the tug-of-war between the Federal Government of Somalia and some Federal Member States, which Dr Guled presented in a recent political strategy meeting in Mogadishu, and the commitment to the agendas of other members of Haybad Qaran who do not want to see the new alliance as an opportunity to politically rebrand Puntland State of Somalia at a time when the Garowe-based administration is counting the costs of self-imposed political isolation from national institution-building initiatives in the Federal Republic of Somalia. Nothing to say of the perceptions among many political circles that Haybad Qaran is an attempt by Qatar to have another shot at controlling Villa Somalia by installing a favoured politician.

© Puntland Post, 2026