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By the beginning of 2018, Africa Confidential was claiming that Farmajo had lost a lot of credibility during his first year in office and had become “dictatorial”. There were arrests of political opponents and peaceful critics in Mogadishu at the end of 2017. Some of the regional state administrations have been undertaking similar repressive measures.

Africa Confidential assessed in January 2018 that there had been no improvement in the security situation since Farmajo took office. Since 2016, after several years of fighting in which it lost control over substantial areas of territory, al-Shabaab has increasingly prioritised conducting asymmetrical attacks on Mogadishu and other urban centres. However, it retains control over substantial tracts of territory in the south of the country and supply routes between towns.

President Farmajo has so far had no success in improving relations with the self-declared independent state of Somaliland.
As we saw above, Somaliland played no part in Somalia’s 2016-17 (s)electoral process. Diplomatic efforts to persuade it to become involved were unsuccessful.

In March 2017, Somaliland gave the UAE permission to open a naval base in the coastal town of Berbera. The UAE (through the state-owned company DP World), along with Ethiopia, is also involved in the ambitious plans for the development of Berbera’s port. 53 The Farmajo government has expressed its strong opposition, requesting mediation by the Arab League, and the lower house of the federal parliament has voted symbolically to cancel the deal and ban DP World from the country. The Somaliland authorities insist that it will go ahead.

Having come to blows on several occasions in the past, in January 2018 there was another confrontation between the two polities, when Somaliland troops violently forced out Puntland troops from the town of Tukaraq in Sool.