Puntland Forces Seize Federal Camp in Galkayo as Somalia's Legitimacy Crisis Deepens

Armed forces loyal to Puntland — a semi-autonomous region in northeastern Somalia, a country on the Horn of Africa — attacked and seized a camp held by Somalia's federal government troops on Tuesday, on the eastern outskirts of Galkayo, a contested city in the country's central Mudug region. It is the latest and most direct flare-up yet between Puntland and the federal government based in Mogadishu, Somalia's capital.

But the camp itself is a symptom, not the cause. Behind it sits a legitimacy crisis that has been building in Somalia since the spring, and a security force that neither side in Galkayo will actually admit belongs to it.

A force with no legal owner

The unit at the center of the fighting is known as the Puntland Security Force, or PSF — a name that, on paper, suggests it answers to the Puntland administration. It does not, at least not according to Puntland itself. In a statement issued after the latest clashes, Puntland's government formally declared that no force called the "Puntland Security Force" is legally recognized as part of its official defense structure. Puntland went further, adding that the unit operating under that name is also not registered under the federal government's authority.

That is an unusual admission for a conflict this serious, but it is not the full picture. The PSF was historically a US-backed counter-terrorism unit. Puntland has now formally disowned it outright, and federal officials say it has since been folded into the Somali National Army's 17th Brigade — placing its funding and chain of command with Mogadishu, whose own mandate Puntland and other opposition figures say expired earlier this year. Puntland disputes the 17th Brigade claim and insists the force remains under regional command, so the two governments are still disowning the same unit even as one of them, by its own officials' account, has absorbed it. Puntland has separately reported capturing PSF fighters and seizing military vehicles after clashes near Bosaso, and has warned the neighboring Galmudug state against allowing similar deployments in Gaalkacyo town.

The practical effect is a force that can fight, seize territory and declare allegiance to Mogadishu when convenient, while remaining accountable to no one on paper. Puntland accuses the federal government of quietly backing that ambiguity to extend its own reach into Galkayo without deploying its own uniformed troops — a charge Mogadishu has not directly answered.

Puntland has put a concrete claim behind that accusation. On August 4, a day before the camp seizure, Puntland said fighters aligned with the federal side tried to move a weapons consignment through the Galmudug-administered side of Galkayo into Puntland territory, in a clash that left at least two people wounded. Puntland separately took control of a freighter carrying armored vehicles and arms bearing Turkish markings off its coast, saying it acted in part to control access to the weapons on board — a shipment multiple outlets describe as destined for the federal government in Mogadishu. It is not confirmed whether that freighter and the August 4 Galkayo consignment are the same shipment, and Mogadishu has not responded to either claim, but the pattern is consistent: Puntland says Turkish-supplied weapons bound for the federal government are ending up in the hands of forces contesting its own territory.

The bigger fight: an expired mandate

The Galkayo camp seizure did not happen in isolation. Puntland and federal forces have been locked in a standoff since mid-June, one that regional analysts describe as part of a broader dispute between the federal government and Somalia's leading opposition coalition over the government's constitutional and electoral agenda.

The dispute has a hard deadline attached to it. Somalia's federal parliament's mandate expired on April 14, and President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud's own presidential term concluded on May 15. The federal government maintains that constitutional amendments passed beforehand legally extended the mandate of federal institutions. Puntland and other opposition figures reject that claim outright. Deni has warned that the federal government "will no longer be considered in existence" without a broad political settlement, and Puntland has since declared it will pursue direct engagement with international donors, urging them to bypass Mogadishu.

Whatever the merits of the disputed extension, the vacuum it opened is now being fought over in Galkayo. A federal government that argues it retains a legal mandate has an obvious interest in demonstrating it can still project force in a Federal Member State that says otherwise — and in a security force whose loyalty is deniable is a convenient tool for doing exactly that without formally deploying the national army against a regional state.

One country, three centers of gravity

Galkayo's fighting is also a reminder of how contested Somalia's internal map has become. Federal Somalia, Puntland and Somaliland each now function as separate centers of political and military gravity inside a state that remains, and should remain, a single sovereign country under its federal constitution.

Puntland's dispute with Mogadishu is not a secession bid — Puntland has consistently framed itself as a Federal Member State, not a breakaway state, unlike Somaliland. But an unresolved mandate crisis in the capital, combined with a security force both sides refuse to own, is exactly the kind of opening that lets a regional dispute harden into something closer to Somaliland's long-running separation. For a federal government already fighting to prove its own legitimacy after May 15, losing effective control of towns like Galkayo to forces it cannot even name is a cost it can ill afford.