The author argues Mogadishu’s fight over Hassan Sheikh Mohamud’s constitutional changes and expired 2026 mandate misses the point: Puntland has already stopped treating Villa Somalia as the center.

Cited steps include withdrawing recognition in 2024, declaring Mohamud’s term over in 2026, a direct U.S. security deal in Bosaso, a unilateral Galkayo operation, and the Nairobi-based Somali Future Council with Jubaland and South West.

This is described as de facto confederation—unity in name, independent security and diplomacy in practice—and blamed on Mogadishu’s unilateralism rather than a formal secession bid.

Somalia’s political class is consumed by a fight over legitimacy: whether President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud’s unilateral constitutional amendments can survive the expiration of his own mandate, and whether Mogadishu can dismantle federal member states that refuse to bend to it. It is a real fight, and an important one. But it is also, increasingly, the wrong fight — because while the capital argues about the shape of a federation that is disintegrating in real time, Puntland has quietly stopped waiting for the outcome. It has moved, in practice if not in name, to a confederate relationship with the rest of Somalia. Mogadishu has not noticed, or does not want to.

A withdrawal that hardened into a system

Puntland’s break with Mogadishu did not happen in a single dramatic act. It happened in stages, each one narrower and more deliberate than the last, until what remained bore little resemblance to federalism as written in the 2012 Provisional Constitution.

The first stage came in March 2024, when Puntland withdrew recognition of the federal government after Mogadishu pushed through constitutional changes — including a shift toward direct presidential elections — without the consensus of the federal member states. Puntland declared it would operate as an independent government until a constitution acceptable to all parties was adopted through a public referendum.

The second stage came 14 months later, and it was more consequential because it was procedural rather than political. The Federal Parliament’s four-year mandate expired April 14, 2026, under Article 60 of the Provisional Constitution. President Mohamud’s own five-year term expired May 15, 2026, under Article 91. Puntland’s Council of Ministers, meeting in Garowe under President Said Abdullahi Deni, cited both articles precisely and declared Mohamud a former president with no legal authority to occupy the office. This was not rhetoric. It was Puntland asserting that the federal government Mogadishu now runs has no constitutional basis to run anything — and that Puntland, by extension, answers to no one in Villa Somalia.

What confederation looks like when nobody declares it

A confederation is not a press release. It is a pattern of behavior: independent security decision-making, independent foreign relations and a shared framework maintained more out of convenience than obligation. By that standard, Puntland has been living as a confederate state for months.

On Aug. 2, 2026, Puntland signed a security cooperation agreement with the United States directly — bypassing Mogadishu entirely. President Deni met a delegation from U.S. Africa Command’s Special Operations Command Africa, led by Maj. Gen. Claude Tudor Jr., in Bosaso, and........

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