By Qaran24 Security Desk | Humanitarian & Security Insight
For seventeen long years, Ahmed Madoobe has ruled Kismayo — never leaving his stronghold, never allowing real progress. Under his watch, Jubaland has become a place of ghosts. The small Somali tribes who once gave the south its culture and color — the Bajuni, Boni, and Shabelle — are disappearing. Al-Shabaab takes their sons, drones hunt their villages, and the rest of the world stays silent. What began as a regional promise of federalism has become a humanitarian tragedy hidden behind politics and power.
The world keeps funding “stability,” but in reality, it funds stagnation. The United Nations, African Union, and especially the Kenyan troops under ATMIS, maintain a fragile order that protects Madoobe’s position, not his people. While donors pay for peacekeeping, Jubaland’s children grow up without schools, without language, without future. Billions have been spent — yet fear still rules the forests, and the sound of Somali dialects fades from the coastlines.
If humanity can unite to save Gaza’s children, then it must also hear the cries from Jilib, Afmadow, and Waamo — places where silence has become the loudest sound. Somalia cannot defeat Al-Shabaab while local power remains in the hands of men who refuse change. The Somali government, the international community, and the diaspora must act together to build a new Jubaland — one that values people over politics and cooperation over control.
Seventeen years of silence is enough. Jubaland deserves leadership that unites, not divides — one that restores dignity to the forgotten and gives hope to those still trapped between militants and misrule. The world must stop paying for paralysis and start investing in the people who still believe Somalia can stand as one nation, free, just, and at peace.
