Southwest State in the Balance

The Federal Takeover of Baidoa · A Contested Succession · Dual Claims to the Presidency

Al-Shabaab’s Opportunity · Great-Power Rivalry at Baidoa Airport · A Displaced Population Caught Between

Compiled from open-source and public reporting · Published August 2026

About This Report

This special report examines the escalating political and security crisis in Somalia’s Southwest State — comprising the Bay, Bakool and Lower Shabelle regions — from September 2025 through August 2026. It was prepared as a companion to the Annual Peace & Security Report on Somalia and the Horn of Africa, and focuses in depth on a single, fast-moving flashpoint: the collapse of relations between Southwest State’s elected leadership and the federal government in Mogadishu, the federal military takeover of the state capital Baidoa in March 2026, a disputed succession process, and the return of open fighting in the city as recently as 17–18 August 2026.

The report draws on open-source and regional reporting, including coverage from the International Crisis Group, ACLED, Reuters (as carried by regional partners including TimesLIVE, Sowetan and Internazionale), Garowe Online, Hiiraan Online, Geeska, Axadle, WardheerNews, Kaab TV, Somalia Today, the Somali Guardian, Borkena, and FEWS NET, among other sources cited throughout and listed in full at the end of the report.

Southwest State’s crisis is emblematic of a wider confrontation playing out across several of Somalia’s federal member states over elections, constitutional reform and the balance of power between Mogadishu and the regions. This report treats Southwest State as a case study in how that confrontation escalates in practice: from a political rupture, to a military intervention, to a contested election, to open urban warfare within a matter of months. Given how quickly the situation has moved — including fighting reported just days before this report’s completion — readers should treat operational details as a snapshot as of late August 2026 and verify current developments against primary sources.

Executive Summary

Southwest State has, over the past year, become the clearest test case of Somalia’s broader federal-regional confrontation over elections and constitutional reform — and the starkest warning of where that confrontation can lead. A political rupture between the state’s elected president and Mogadishu escalated within six months into a federal military takeover, a boycotted election, a disputed succession, and, as of mid-August 2026, renewed urban combat in the state capital.

A rupture became a takeover. After months of friction, Southwest State President Abdiaziz Hassan Mohamed “Laftagareen” formally broke with President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud’s party in March 2026, rejected the federal government’s new constitution, and severed cooperation with Mogadishu. Federal forces, backed by allied clan militias, entered Baidoa on 30 March 2026 and removed him from power; he resigned rather than fight and fled to Nairobi.

The succession has satisfied almost no one. A federally steered process culminated on 13 June 2026 in the election of federal parliament speaker Sheikh Adan Mohamed Nur “Madobe” as Southwest State president by a vote of 88 to 2 in the regional assembly, after rival candidates withdrew and denounced the process as a “one-man election.” Laftagareen has never accepted his removal, continues to describe himself as the legitimate president, and in July 2026 briefly seized back control of the state’s official digital platforms.

The dispute has turned violent, repeatedly. Armed clashes tied to the succession struggle broke out in Baidoa on 30 May 2026, days before scheduled state elections, and again — far more seriously — on 17–18 August 2026, when forces loyal to Laftagareen mounted a direct assault on the city. Federal troops ultimately repelled the attack, but government and opposition accounts of casualties and who exactly was killed remain sharply, and tellingly, in dispute.

The instability is compounding, not contained. Southwest State sits on historically contested clan ground, hosts hundreds of thousands of displaced people, faces a resurgent al-Shabaab presence that federal forces themselves acknowledge redeployed into Bay and Bakool, and is becoming a proxy arena for wider regional rivalry as Ethiopian troops reportedly withdraw from Baidoa airport in favour of Egyptian forces amid unresolved Ethiopia-Egypt tensions elsewhere in the region.

1. Background: A State Built on Contested Ground

Southwest State was formed in 2014 out of Somalia’s Bay, Bakool and Lower Shabelle regions, and constitutes the historical homeland of the Rahanweyn, or Digil-Mirifle, clan family — one of Somalia’s major clan groupings, distinguished from the country’s other dominant clan confederations by its more settled, agropastoral traditions. Baidoa, the regional capital, sits roughly 250 kilometres northwest of Mogadishu and has long occupied an outsized strategic position: it is both a historic seat of Rahanweyn political authority and a critical node for federal and international military logistics in south-central Somalia.

The region’s politics carry the weight of unresolved historical grievance. Fighting remembered locally as the “Tuhun iyo Torabora” conflict, dating from the early 2000s, was fought over control of Bay and Bakool and, according to regional reporting, “devastated the area, killed innocent civilians, including women and children,” leaving communities that in some cases remain bitterly divided more than two decades later. That history matters directly to the events of the past year: Sheikh Adan Madobe, the man who would become Southwest State’s federally backed president in June 2026, was himself a participant in that earlier conflict — a biographical fact that has been repeatedly invoked by critics of his 2026 installation as evidence that old wounds are being reopened rather than healed.

Since its formation, Southwest State’s leadership has oscillated between figures asserting genuine regional autonomy and those more closely aligned with whichever administration held power in Mogadishu — a tension that came to a head, decisively, over the past year.

2. The Rupture: Laftagareen’s Break With Mogadishu

The break between Baidoa and Mogadishu did not happen overnight. By September 2025, President Laftagareen was already accusing unnamed federal member states and politicians of “serving foreign agendas” — an early public signal of the distrust that would define the following months. Southwest State subsequently moved to establish its own independent electoral commission, a direct challenge to the federal National Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission’s authority over the state’s elections, and a clear marker that Baidoa intended to chart its own course through Somalia’s contested transition to direct, “one person, one vote” elections.

Matters escalated sharply in March 2026. On 17 March, Southwest State formally suspended cooperation with the federal government, citing what it called “ongoing interference in internal affairs and security” — a reference, in substantial part, to federal troop movements into Baraawe and Buur Hakaba that the region characterised as attempts to encourage defections from its own regional security forces. The next day, 18 March, Laftagareen resigned as deputy chairman of President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud’s Justice and Solidarity Party, framing the move as “a matter of principle” against what he called “unconstitutional actions that threaten national unity.” He rejected Somalia’s newly adopted constitution outright, declaring that he recognised only the 2012 provisional constitution as legitimate — aligning Southwest with Puntland and Jubaland, the other federal member states resisting the federal government’s constitutional and electoral reforms.

Laftagareen’s accusations against Mogadishu went well beyond procedural disagreement. He alleged that the federal government was colluding with al-Shabaab and facilitating arms smuggling to militias operating against his own administration, and he moved to bar federal officials from entering Southwest State territory. With his departure, President Mohamud’s political coalition contracted to just two of Somalia’s five federal member states — a shift regional analysts noted could complicate the federal government’s own push for a term extension and for universal suffrage elections nationally. Rather than negotiate from that weakened position, Laftagareen instead organised unauthorised snap elections in defiance of Mogadishu’s own electoral timeline — a move that would, within days, precipitate federal military intervention.

3. The March 2026 Federal Takeover of Baidoa

The confrontation Laftagareen had been courting arrived on 30 March 2026. President Mohamud deployed Somali National Army reinforcements from Buur Hakaba toward Baidoa — a force that engaged al-Shabaab militants along the route before reaching the city — while allied clan militias moved in parallel to help seize control of the regional capital. Facing an operation backed by federal troops and local armed allies, and with Ethiopian African Union peacekeepers stationed in Baidoa declining to intervene on his behalf, Laftagareen chose not to fight. He resigned and fled to Nairobi, ending his tenure as Southwest State president in a matter of hours rather than through the electoral process either side claimed to be defending.

The takeover was not bloodless in the telling that followed. The regional security chief Laftagareen had appointed alleged that civilians were killed during the operation, an accusation that has not been independently substantiated in available reporting but that has nonetheless fed into the broader narrative of federal overreach used by Laftagareen and his allies ever since. In the takeover’s immediate aftermath, an estimated 2,000 troops loyal to the ousted administration remained positioned defensively near the city — a standing reminder, as subsequent events would confirm, that the military dimension of the dispute had been suppressed rather than resolved.

The International Crisis Group, assessing the operation shortly afterward, offered a pointed warning even while acknowledging the federal government’s tactical success: rather than resorting to further military force, it argued, Somalia’s government should use the space created by its victory in Baidoa to negotiate with its critics over exactly when and how the country’s next round of elections should be held. That advice went largely unheeded. President Mohamud instead moved quickly to consolidate control over Southwest State’s political institutions, conducting a multi-day mission to Baidoa in the takeover’s wake and positioning loyalists from his own inner circle to contest the succession — even as, per Crisis Group’s warning, the manner of the takeover itself all but guaranteed that Southwest’s political crisis would deepen rather than resolve.

4. A Contested Transition: The Race to Succeed Laftagareen

With Laftagareen removed, the federal government moved to install a successor through a process it framed as a model for Somalia’s broader transition to direct democracy — even as critics saw it as a demonstration of exactly the opposite. Three figures from President Mohamud’s inner circle initially contested the Southwest State presidency: federal parliamentary speaker Sheikh Adan Mohamed Nur, known as Adan Madobe; the federal Minister of Ports, Abdulkadir Mohamed Nur; and the federal Minister of Livestock, Hassan Elay. The National Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission set 28 April 2026 as the target date for parliamentary and district council elections using the new “one person, one vote” system, a departure from Southwest’s traditional power-sharing arrangements among sub-clans.

The lower-tier elections that followed, held on 11 May 2026, registered 376,212 voters — including 164,716 men, 211,496 women and 4,781 voters with special needs — across thirteen districts spanning Bay, Bakool and Lower Shabelle. Some 394 candidates from 15 political organisations contested seats in the regional House of Representatives, alongside 1,297 candidates from 18 organisations running for local councils. The Somali Future Council, a major national opposition alliance, boycotted the process entirely, arguing that it lacked consensus and accusing the federal government of manipulating the outcome in advance.

Tension over the still-unresolved presidential succession boiled over into violence on 30 May 2026, when forces loyal to the ousted Laftagareen advanced into Baidoa, clashing with forces backing the incoming administration in confrontations that included the Towfiiq area of the city. Casualty figures were not reliably established at the time, and independent verification of which side controlled which parts of the city proved difficult — a pattern of contested, hard-to-verify claims that would recur in August.

The presidential question was finally settled, at least on paper, on 13 June 2026, when the Southwest State assembly in Baidoa elected Adan Madobe president by a vote of 88 to 2. The process was contested even as it concluded: leading rival candidates, including former Southwest State president Sharif Hassan Sheikh Aden, withdrew beforehand and denounced the vote as a “one-man election,” while critics pointed to Madobe’s simultaneous role as federal parliament speaker as an inherent conflict of interest, and raised concerns that lawmakers may have been pressured to photograph their ballots before casting them — undermining the secrecy the vote was supposed to guarantee. Sharif Hassan’s verdict was blunt: “No credible election has taken place in Baidoa.”

5. A House Divided: Dual Claims to the Presidency

Formal installation did not settle the underlying dispute. Madobe’s ascent has been described in regional reporting as “widely denounced in the region as the product of a federal-orchestrated sham election,” lacking, in the words of one detailed account, the “credibility, inclusiveness, transparency, and legitimacy” it was marketed as delivering. Laftagareen, for his part, has consistently rejected the entire process as illegal and unconstitutional, maintaining that he remains Southwest State’s legitimate president and that he retains “substantial political and security backing across the region” — a claim the recurring outbreaks of armed clashes tied to his name have done little to disprove.

The dispute has played out symbolically as well as militarily. In July 2026, supporters loyal to Laftagareen seized control of the official Southwest State presidency website, stripping it of content associated with the Madobe administration and replacing it with material from Laftagareen’s own parallel government, including an Independence Day message and a video statement from his spokesman declaring that “our blessed struggle will not stop, and victory is inevitable.” The episode was more than symbolic theatre: control — or lack of it — over basic state institutions and communications infrastructure illustrated just how fragmented practical authority within Southwest State had become, with the Madobe government controlling Southwest State Television even as it could not prevent rivals from reclaiming the presidency’s own web presence.

Beneath the institutional struggle sit older and more specific grievances. Madobe’s own history includes direct involvement in the Tuhun iyo Torabora fighting over Bay and Bakool in the early 2000s, a history that critics argue makes his installation as president especially fraught in communities where memories of that conflict remain raw. His tenure as federal parliament speaker from 2022 to 2026 has also drawn scrutiny, having coincided with what regional analysts describe as “repeated parliamentary crises, procedural wrangles, and mounting concern over the weakening of legislative independence” — a record critics argue does not inspire confidence in his commitment to the inclusive governance Southwest State needs. In Lower Shabelle specifically, local communities have voiced concern that valuable agricultural land, coastal resources, public assets and investment opportunities could be diverted toward the new administration’s allies rather than managed for broader regional benefit. Even so, Madobe’s government has continued to build out the machinery of state: in July 2026 the Southwest parliament approved a new Cabinet, a step toward normalising the administration’s authority even as its underlying legitimacy remained sharply contested.

6. Security Fallout: Al-Shabaab and the August 2026 Battle for Baidoa

Southwest State’s political crisis has unfolded against the backdrop of a persistent and, at points, growing al-Shabaab presence in the same territory. As government offensives elsewhere in south-central Somalia pushed the group out of parts of Middle Shabelle, reporting from 2025 documented al-Shabaab fighters relocating — in some cases in organised fashion, moving with combat vehicles — into Bay and Bakool, prompting Somali National Army commanders to pledge close monitoring of the group’s movements in the region. That baseline threat has persisted through the succession crisis described in the previous chapters, even as federal and regional security resources have been increasingly consumed by the standoff between Mogadishu and Laftagareen’s camp rather than by counter-insurgency operations.

Those two threads collided directly in the early hours of Monday, 17 August 2026, when forces loyal to Laftagareen launched a major assault on Baidoa. Residents reported heavy weapons fire and gunfire across several parts of the city, including the Towfiiq neighbourhood, with both sides making conflicting claims about how much of the city each controlled as the fighting unfolded. By 18 August, federal troops had reportedly repelled the assault and pushed opposition fighters out of the city centre, in what local accounts described as the fiercest confrontation in Baidoa since the original March takeover. One local elder’s account of the human cost was stark: “I saw 10 dead people, including four civilians and six soldiers from both groups.” Somalia’s defence ministry put the toll considerably higher, stating that nearly 30 fighters had been killed — but described them as al-Shabaab militants.

That characterisation has itself become a point of dispute, and an instructive one. Laftagareen’s spokesperson rejected the government’s framing outright, maintaining that his forces had taken and held ground in the city and disputing any suggestion that al-Shabaab, rather than his own fighters, bore responsibility for the casualties. Notably, the federal government’s own initial statement on the attack had described the assailants as including “Al-Shabaab militants and fighters allied with Laftagareen” together — a formulation that leaves open whether the two forces coordinated, acted in parallel, or whether Mogadishu has an incentive to blur the distinction between an armed political rival and a designated terrorist organisation in its public messaging. Whichever framing is accurate, regional analysts have drawn the same underlying conclusion: political confrontations that escalate into open warfare inside a major city — one, in Baidoa’s case, that hosts hundreds of thousands of internally displaced people — create exactly the kind of security gap that a still-potent al-Shabaab, present in the surrounding countryside, is positioned to exploit, whether or not it played a direct role in this particular battle.

7. External Stakes: Troop Rotations and Regional Rivalry at Baidoa Airport

Southwest State’s internal struggle has become entangled with a distinctly external one. Reporting from mid-2026 indicates that Ethiopian troops responsible for securing Baidoa’s airport — a facility of considerable strategic importance given its role in AU and international military logistics for the wider south-central Somalia campaign — have received orders to withdraw, with airport expansion work reportedly underway to prepare for an incoming Egyptian deployment. As of this writing, neither Somalia’s federal government nor the governments of Ethiopia or Egypt has publicly confirmed such a handover, and the reporting on the shift should accordingly be treated as preliminary.

What is clearer is that the prospective rotation has itself become entangled in Southwest State’s leadership dispute. Laftagareen, before his removal, reportedly opposed replacing the established Ethiopian force with Egyptian troops, while the Madobe administration installed in his place appears considerably more receptive to the change — one more data point in a broader pattern in which Southwest’s internal factional alignments now map, at least loosely, onto wider regional and international fault lines. Analysts assessing the potential handover point to genuine arguments on both sides: proponents suggest that diversifying away from dependence on any single external security partner could enhance Somali sovereignty and provide Mogadishu greater diplomatic flexibility, while critics warn that swapping out a force with years of accumulated operational experience and established coordination mechanisms for a new partner risks creating exactly the kind of temporary security gap that a resurgent al-Shabaab, as described in the previous chapter, would be well placed to exploit.

The stakes are heightened by the fact that Ethiopia and Egypt are not neutral parties to each other regionally: their long-running dispute over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, alongside Ethiopia’s broader ambitions for Red Sea access, means that any Egyptian military presence in Somalia carries geopolitical signalling well beyond Baidoa’s own security needs. Should the reported rotation proceed, Southwest State — already the site of Somalia’s most acute federal-regional confrontation — would also become a live venue for a wider contest between two of the Horn of Africa’s most consequential regional powers.

8. Humanitarian Backdrop: Displacement and Drought Risk

The human stakes of Southwest State’s political and security crisis are magnified by the sheer scale of vulnerability already concentrated in and around Baidoa. The city hosts hundreds of thousands of internally displaced people, many of whom fled recurrent drought and earlier phases of conflict in southern and central Somalia and settled in and around the regional capital precisely because it offered relative security and access to humanitarian assistance. Each round of urban fighting described in this report — March, May and August 2026 — has put that population directly in harm’s way, with residents reported sheltering indoors as gunfire and heavy weapons fire moved through residential neighbourhoods.

That vulnerability compounds an already precarious food security picture across the state. The wider drought emergency that pushed 6.5 million Somalis into crisis-level hunger or worse by March 2026 bears down with particular force on Bay and Bakool’s agropastoral communities; FEWS NET has specifically flagged these areas as facing a risk of outright famine conditions should the April-June 2026 Gu rains underperform. A state capital absorbing repeated bouts of armed conflict is simultaneously less able to support returning displacement, sustain humanitarian access, or provide the basic stability that food security programming requires — meaning Southwest State’s political and security crisis and its humanitarian emergency are now mutually reinforcing rather than separate problems.

Outlook: What to Watch

Southwest State’s crisis is unlikely to resolve quickly, and several specific developments will indicate whether it is moving toward stabilisation or further escalation.

Whether Laftagareen’s camp can sustain an armed challenge

The 17–18 August assault on Baidoa demonstrated that Laftagareen retains meaningful military capacity more than four months after his removal. Whether his forces can mount further, larger-scale challenges — or whether federal and Madobe-aligned forces can durably neutralise that threat — will determine whether Southwest settles into an uneasy federal-backed status quo or remains subject to recurring rounds of urban combat.

Whether Mogadishu shifts from force to negotiation

The International Crisis Group’s post-takeover recommendation — that the federal government use its military success as leverage for genuine negotiation rather than further consolidation — has gone largely unheeded to date. A credible move toward dialogue with Laftagareen’s camp, or toward a more broadly inclusive Southwest political settlement, would be a significant signal; continued reliance on federally orchestrated processes without broader buy-in points toward continued instability.

How the Ethiopia-Egypt troop rotation unfolds

Confirmation, expansion, or reversal of the reported Ethiopian withdrawal and Egyptian deployment at Baidoa airport would be a significant marker of how deeply regional great-power rivalry is becoming embedded in Southwest State’s own political alignments, and of whether any security gap opens during the transition for al-Shabaab or other armed actors to exploit.

Whether al-Shabaab exploits the opening

Regardless of who was actually responsible for the casualties in the August fighting, the underlying warning from regional analysts stands: sustained federal-regional military confrontation inside Baidoa diverts resources and attention from counter-al-Shabaab operations at a moment the group retains an active presence in the surrounding Bay and Bakool countryside. A significant al-Shabaab attack on Baidoa or its approaches in the coming months — as opposed to further intra-Somali clashes mischaracterised or genuinely conflated with the group — would mark a clear deterioration.

The humanitarian trajectory

With hundreds of thousands of displaced people concentrated in a city that has now seen three rounds of armed conflict within five months, and with Bay and Bakool’s agropastoral communities facing possible famine conditions depending on this year’s Gu rains, the humanitarian consequences of continued instability in Southwest State are likely to be severe and immediate, irrespective of how the underlying political dispute is ultimately resolved.

Methodology and Sources

This report was compiled through a review of open-source reporting and publicly available analysis current as of late August 2026. It draws on reporting and analysis from, among others, the International Crisis Group, ACLED, Reuters wire reporting as carried by TimesLIVE, Sowetan and Internazionale, Garowe Online, Hiiraan Online, Geeska, Axadle Times, WardheerNews, Kaab TV, Somalia Today, the Somali Guardian, allAfrica, Borkena, SONNA, and FEWS NET, among other sources referenced in the underlying research. Casualty figures, troop numbers, voter registration data and other operational details reflect the most recent publicly reported figures available at time of writing; as the report itself documents, several of these figures — particularly casualty tolls and characterisations of combatants in the August 2026 Baidoa fighting — are contested between the federal government and Laftagareen’s camp and could not be independently verified.

Given the pace of events described in this report — three separate rounds of armed conflict in Baidoa within five months, and an unconfirmed regional troop rotation reported as recently as July 2026 — readers should treat this as a snapshot as of late August 2026 rather than a final account, and should verify current developments against primary and news sources before relying on them for time-critical purposes. This report does not constitute intelligence analysis; the Outlook section reflects a synthesis of publicly available expert commentary rather than original modelling or forecasting.