Minnesota to Mogadishu: the Colonial Map is Burning

You know, I've talked before about, how much recalibration is gonna have to happen during the transition of the global economy. This movement towards a, what you can call a post western reality. The rulers and the governments are gonna have to recalibrate. The populations are gonna have to recalibrate. We're gonna have to recalibrate our thinking, recalibrate our concepts, our assumptions, our expectations, and so forth.

Because the truth is that the earth is really shifting beneath our feet, and it's happening very rapidly. And you have to be very agile, you have to be very adaptable because this global shift is gonna happen one way or another, and it's gonna bend you in all different kinds of ways, and flexibility is your only survival mechanism. The more flexible you are, the more adaptable you are, the less painful it's gonna be. And the better your chances are of not just getting snapped into by what's going on. Yes.

As I've said, I believe that the ultimate outcome is gonna be positive, but the process of getting to that outcome, as I have always said, is going to include a great deal of difficulty and a great deal of discomfort. You know, there's an ayah in the Quran where Allah promises that he will make a way out for you. He'll make a way out for you from hardship and from difficulty from where you never imagined it could come. Now sometimes, I think, of course, that will literally mean miraculous ways, but logically, it can also mean that your liberation may come from where you never imagined simply because you lacked imagination. You understand?

You lacked perception. You didn't see that your rescue, was in fact already taking place. So when it comes about, it comes as a surprise. You understand? So this ayah not only gives us hope in Allah but it also is a reminder to us that we should try to perceive opportunities where we might otherwise not perceive them.

Now, a few things are taking shape in terms of either the modalities by which the transition will take place or perhaps in terms of how things are gonna end up looking once the transition is complete. In other words, are some things that are going on in the world right now that might be a part of the bending process, you know, things that enable the transition, or they might be indications of how things will be in the post transition world order. And one of these things is something that I've talked about before, which is the sort of theme of decentralization. Decentralization of authority, decentralization of supply chains, of technology, of information sources, and so on. Now this is relatively predictable if you think about it.

You know, when one sort of orbital hub is dissolving, when the center around which, things have, historically revolved is withdrawing or is being dismantled, decentralization is just sort of an inevitable byproduct. But now one would normally assume that centralization around a new hub would eventually emerge at some point, but it may not. It may not. Because like I've talked about before, multipolarity, which everyone is talking about these days, multipolarity essentially means the formation of multiple spheres of influence, multiple smaller scale hegemons, regional hegemons. And that may very well be the new norm because, of course, that has been the norm throughout most of human history.

And the other thing that's actually a part of decentralization is the emergence of, more or less, independent non state military actors. The demonopolization of violence, militias and so forth. Private military contractors, mercenaries. Obviously, these have already been a significant player globally for quite some time now, but now it seems to me that we're seeing a normalization of this. And even official state agencies like ICE for example are behaving as and have really adopted the logic and the function of mercenaries.

In some parts of the world you can call it warlordism, but practically it does mean a practical territorial control can become institutional and official on the basis of your military or your power to inflict and to enforce violence. This is just a practical reality that we have to accept. Now for obvious reasons, we are resistant to do this because there are very obvious questions about accountability, about loyalty to the population, and of course about whose interests are being served and so forth. But in so far as we see these informal military actors sort of coalescing around tribal, or community identities, you know, sort of localized monopolies on violence, for the purpose of securing the interests of specific populations, then these are less like mercenary forces and more like sort of an autonomy enforcement apparatus. You understand?

This becomes not only a byproduct of decentralization of authority, but it also becomes an accelerator of decentralization of authority. Meaning, authority itself becomes de facto in the hands of those actors in the territories that they control. For a regional hegemon, you can understand how this approach would be a useful management model in terms of realpolitik. There are many many reasons for this. First, of course, you're dealing with a smaller entity.

If you're an outside power, I'm saying, and you're dealing with a sort of localized agent, a tribal authority, and on the ground sort of administrator of a territory within a larger state, well, that's easier than dealing with a central government. Isn't it? Through them, you can establish your influence in that in the that whole territory. You're also very practically speaking, you're also sort of testing the actual control of the central government, in fact. Because the truth of the matter is that they may not actually have much real existing power or authority outside the center itself of the of the state.

You know, peripheral territories, within an official state, may operate in real terms with relative autonomy, which makes dealing with the central government actually quite inefficient and unnecessary. In other words, you're basically stress testing the official power structure. And if it fails that test, then you are determining that it only exists in name, thus and it cannot really be even be justified. So if you're still nodding to the nation state central authority when it does not actually control its own peripheral territories in real life, that's more or less just of a a a kind of a cordiality because they don't really have power. So this is not really dismantling a state, it's proving that the state already doesn't exist and you're identifying where the real power is and you're opting, to deal with that real power.

Okay? Now I'm saying all of this as a preface to talking about Somalia because, depending upon how you look at it, I think that the Horn Of Africa today, Somalia, Somaliland, Ethiopia, Sudan, Yemen, you are either gonna see, depending on how you look at it, you'll see collapse or recalibration. And it kind of depends on whether or not you think that the nation state model is sacred. This will determine how you view what's going on because what is definitely collapsing is the colonial map, you know. The borders that Europe drew for their own purposes on somebody else's land, on somebody else's soil.

Those are dissolving. And what is emerging is not actually anarchy because beneath those colonial borders, there's still the memory of the world that we had before the colonizers arrived. It was a world of Sultanates within the Khilafa, you know, Emirate like polities, coastal confederations, caravan economies and so forth. Maritime civilizations connected to the Gulf, connected to the Red Sea, connected to the Indian Ocean and so on. Connected there, not connected to London and not to Paris and not to Washington and so forth.

Okay? Granted this sort of unearthing or or excavation of pre existing structures can look like instability. And to the West it will look like state failure because of course they see it that way. Because it is the states that they set up that are collapsing. You understand?

And yes, the process is going to be disruptive. It is going to be difficult. It's gonna even be anarchic in some ways. Just like how an excavation might look like, you're just digging up and disrupting the land. But the fact of the matter is what lies beneath the colonial layer is actually more stable and more durable.

The colonizers actually burned the grass so that they could lay astroturf and now that astroturf is being burned. Inshallah for nature to take its course and for the original structures to return. Inshallah be ithnilah. Understand. You must understand.

I know it seems like an obvious observation. It seems like I shouldn't have to say this, but whether we admit it or not, a lot of us have convinced ourselves that this very obvious observation, internally we've convinced ourselves that this observation of this reality is not actually the case. And that is that colonization, colonialism, did not improve what preceded it. I'm saying that many of us do not recognize that this is the reality because like I said, we do see our people clinging to things that the colonizers put in place. Models of governance, political ideas, liberalist rhetoric and so forth.

You wouldn't be so desperate to maintain those types of things if you truly understood that they were not in fact improvements on what you already had. Seeing them go away would not cause you any distress. It would only cause you relief. But a lot of us, like I say, have actually bought into the colonizers rhetoric, in my opinion. I think a lot of us really think that those westerners dragged us into the so called modern world and without their systems and without their models and so forth, we were actually just primitive and disorganized.

And that we would be that same way again if those models and those systems are dismantled. But of course that's not the case, that is just the colonizers self justifying deception that you've fallen for. We were fine before they got here and we can do fine on our own and according to our own ways without them and their models and their ideas. You really have to calibrate yourself to this because either way like I say, we are living through the unraveling of the colonial and the neo colonial structures. That is happening.

Whether you're ready for it or not, whether you like it or not, that is what's happening. And like I say, if you are not able to be flexible and to be adaptable, if you're gonna be resistant, well then you're gonna break. You're gonna break right along with those systems. Now, let's talk about Minnesota because we can't actually talk about Somalia and the Horn Of Africa without actually also talking about Minnesota. I know it sounds strange but Minnesota in fact is part of the colonial battlefield.

First of all, I've been telling you for a long time now. I've been telling you for a long time that you are profoundly mistaken to think, that the colonizers disregarded your humanity in your own country but that they will suddenly respect you as a human being if you're in their countries. That's not the case and you're seeing that now. They see you exactly the same way when you're walking in the streets of Minneapolis as they would see you when you were walking in the streets of Mogadishu. They don't look at you any differently.

And in fact, they will see you that way even if you just look like you would fit in walking in the streets of Mogadishu. It doesn't matter if you're even from there. If you don't look like them, and by them you know what I mean. If you don't look like what they consider to be an American, then they will always see you as less than them. They'll see you as less than human.

They'll see you as part of the global South, part of that part of the world that they have historically attacked, invaded, occupied, colonized, enslaved and exploited and thought that you were eligible for that and they'll still think you're eligible for that. It doesn't matter if you're in Dearborn, doesn't matter if you're in Chicago, in Atlanta or LA or in London or Paris. They think that you belong under their boot. If you're from the global South they think you belong under their boot. If you're from the global South or if you even look like you would fit in in the global South.

When they say American it's just a euphemism you and I both know for white and it's a euphemism for rich. If you're neither one of those things then you're never gonna be a citizen in their eyes. That's a fact. And you should understand that even if you are in America they will always be inclined to treat you the same way that they would treat you if you were still in the global South. And you should understand that increasingly that is exactly how they are going to treat you in America.

You understand? They never treated you like that because of where you were, they treated you like that because of who you are and you're still that same you whether you're in Somalia or you're in Minnesota. You get this through your head. So wherever you are, where you are that is a colonial battleground, always. A western passport is not gonna be protection against colonizer hatred.

It never has been and it never will be. You see the demonization now of Somalis in Minnesota, you know, Trump's cheap racist slurs, their crackdown on remittances, their character of the Somali immigrants and the immigrant families as fraudsters, as terrorist supporters and what have you. And you might think that this is just racism for domestic consumption for Trump's political base, and of course it is. Of course it is, but it is also more than that. The fact of the matter is that America cannot manage the world anymore, But they can't just step back.

America can't just step back. They can't just admit that they can no longer do what they never had a right to do in the first place because their whole self image is supremacist. You understand? They don't know how to do anything without being aggressive, even give up. They don't even know how to give up without being aggressive.

They have to give up like they're going in for the kill. You understand me? And yes, attacking the Somalis in Minnesota is America giving up. And yes, Minnesota is connected to Somalia. Now let me explain what it looks like to me.

You know there is Somalia and there is Somaliland. Somaliland is in the North. They've been comparatively stable relative to the rest of the country. And they want to separate. They want to secede.

They wanna be their own independent country, Somaliland. Now, like I've said many many times before about various other situations like this, I have never personally been in favor of secessionist movements. I have always favored territorial unity. But this was based on the operative global power structures that I grew up in. You understand?

Meaning according to the way things were, the way things have always been my whole life, according to that situation, a breakaway state, a secessionist move creating a smaller disconnected state is inherent inherently makes that more vulnerable. It makes you easier prey for multinational corporations. It makes you easier prey for western predatory powers. Your bargaining power was decreased significantly. So I didn't see any benefit in that sort of thing.

Historically, secessionist movements have always been backed by the CIA for exactly the same reasons that I just mentioned. So I have always personally been against this. But like I said, even I have to recalibrate my thinking about these sorts of things as the global power dynamics have changed so you have to update your understanding. It seems to me that what I talked about earlier may be what's happening. In other words, the dissolution of the colonial maps because Somalia did not used to be, in fact, one unified territory.

The North, what is now Somali land, was its own territory. In fact, in both the North and the South politically, the land was always organized between multiple sultanates, city states, you know, clan based political entities and so forth, shifting influence. The specific North South divide is colonial in origin with the British in the North and the Italians in the Central and the Southern parts. Now, the capital, Mogadishu, is there. Once both of the territories were unified in 1960, they made Mogadishu the capital, and there have been problems between them, the North and South, ever since.

And this, of course, is a pattern that we see repeated over and over and over again in all of the colonizer imposed nation states. You know, you have formerly autonomous communities with their own legal structures, their own habits, their own sort of customs, their own systems of authority, traditional systems of authority being unevenly integrated into a centralized state. Basically being subordinated, and this causes persistent tensions and it always has. I mean, the truth is you can in fact trace almost all of internal divisions in formerly colonized countries to colonization itself either because of what the colonizers did when they were there or what they did when they left. Now, the pressure on Minnesota, on Somalis in Minnesota doesn't really hurt Hagisa in Somaliland as much as it potentially hurts Mogadishu Because most of the Somalis in Minnesota come from Somalia, they don't come from Somaliland and that's where their remittances go.

Their remittances go to Somalia. So clamping down on their use of the Hawala system potentially deprives Somalia of about a billion dollars or more than a billion dollars potentially. So that weakens the federal government of Somalia. It it weakens their independence. It weakens their resilience and it will push them push the South deeper into dependence on Gulf capital, on Turkey, on Gulf logistics, on Turkish and Gulf led construction and so forth, infrastructure.

All of these players, Qatar, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and so on, They have been investing and they have been supporting Somalia. And officially, right, officially they do not approve of Somaliland independence. But the truth is weakening the central government would obviously accelerate Somalia's absorption into the system of collective sovereignty that's being built across the region by those players. So the crackdown on Somali immigrant families in Minnesota is potentially tilting the political economy of the Horn Of Africa in favor of the GCC's long term architecture. And let's be clear here, the GCC, Saudi Arabia, The UAE and Qatar, they are not replicating the neocon playbook.

You might think that they are, but they're not. They're not bombing countries into dust just so that they can rule over the rubble. They're not, you know, evangelists of liberal imperialism trying to install a McDonald's and rainbow flags on top of an ancient civilization. That's not what they're doing. Yes, they are ruthlessly pragmatic, absolutely.

But they're not heartless, they're not nihilistic and they're not aspiring to be a a new Washington, you know, Washington in a thobe. No. In my opinion, what they wanna do, they want to have a region that will govern itself. A region that will govern itself. A region that is internally sovereign, externally respected and woven together by ports, by pipelines, trade routes, food security corridors, political and economic coordination across the region, which is basically a Sultanate type of a world view scaled up to the twenty first century.

It resembles the way that our lands were organized and the way that our lands were governed during the Khilafa period before colonizing nation state models were artificially imposed on our lands. And that's why The US now behaves like a regional power in The Middle East, not a global regulator anymore. Trump doesn't dictate policy to The Gulf, he takes policy from The Gulf because The Gulf has a strategy. They have a plan and America does not. And even if America did have a plan, they don't have the muscle to impose that plan anymore.

And yes, as I said, I think that The Gulf is pursuing this strategy with cunning and with ruthlessness and it is extremely effective. You can like it or not, you can agree with it or not, but it is what is happening. And in my opinion, in my opinion, the ultimate outcome is going to be collective sovereignty and that's a good thing. Saudi Arabia and The UAE have absolutely mastered the art of geopolitical theater. What we can call the good cop bad cop strategy in my opinion.

This is what they're doing. On the surface, Riyadh plays the diplomat hosting peace talks, offering economic carrots, you know, preaching restraint in any conflict on the world stage, earning international respectability. Abu Dhabi meanwhile is the enforcer supporting proxies, seizing strategic real estate, and creating irreversible facts on the ground. You see a lot of talk about competition or even antagonism developing between Saudi Arabia and The UAE, particularly regarding Sudan, Yemen, and Somalia, but I don't believe it. Personally, I don't believe it.

In my opinion, this isn't a rivalry, it's choreographed strategy. Saudi Arabia maintains the plausible deniability and the diplomatic cover, and the perception of disagreement between them and The UAE allows the UAE to do the dirty work that secures Gulf dominance without Riyadh's fingerprints being on it. Both advance the same shared interests containing Iran, controlling resources and reshaping the Horn Of Africa and reshaping the Arabian Peninsula, reshaping the entire Middle East, North African region into a single cohesive polity of quasi sultanates all within the same sphere of influence. Collective sovereignty. There's good cop bad cop strategy you see everywhere.

In Yemen, Saudi Arabia engages with the Houthis with the Muscat talks, dangling airline deals, you know, eased blockades to signal their interest in de escalation and peace talks and so forth. Even as The UAE backs the transitional council, the STC, their militias to storm Hadraman's oil fields. Okay? Riyadh demands their withdrawal publicly, which is just pure theater in my opinion, but they quietly are tolerating The UAE securing those southern ports and those pipelines. You understand?

This duo track pressures the Houthis from diplomacy in the North and territory grabs in the South, fragmenting anti Gulf forces without any full Saudi recommitment to war. You understand? And in Sudan, you see the same thing, the good cop bad cop. The strategy is ruthlessly effective. The UAE is taking an indifferent laissez faire position towards the RSF.

While weapons are being smuggled through Chad and RSF gold is being sold in Dubai and they're not stopping that. This is enabling their brutal sweep through Darfur. They're grabbing mines and Red Sea access. And then you have Saudi Arabia hosting talks in Jeddah, backing the Sudanese armed forces officially, positioning themselves as the peacemaker, you know, countering Islamist threats and so forth. But look closer, they're just playing both sides against the middle in my opinion.

The SAF is losing their hegemony. This opens Sudan for even more Gulf investment, it funnels logistics to UAE ports in Somaliland and so forth. Saudi's diplomacy buys time and it buys legitimacy. While UAE's bad cop brutality reshapes Africa's underbelly ports, gold, mercenaries into a UAE dominated corridor linking all the way to Yemen. It's no coincidence that The UAE is calling for ceasefires at the same time that the RSF is making gains.

The SAF is refusing the ceasefire because they think that they have important international backing. Meanwhile, all they're really doing is just committing themselves to losing more territory and losing their own hegemony. And then the good cop, bad cop strategy we see again, and in my opinion, repeating in Somalia. This ties it all together as the logistics hub. The UAE bankrolls secessionists in Puntland, in Jubaland, and in Somali land, building Barbera Port, arming anti Shabab militias with RSF tides, securing shipping lanes and so forth.

Saudi Arabia funnels aid and and makes all of their anti terror rhetoric to Mogadishu's federal government, decrying instability, you know, without ever really challenging The UAE's beachheads that they've set up. The UAE grabs the Indian Ocean choke points, Saudi Arabia claims the moral high ground. This segments Somalia and it limits Turkey and Qatar's influence, and it creates a gulf controlled arc from Aden to Swakim. Saudi is the diplomatic mediator. The UAE reaps the spoils for the GCC.

Houthis, SAF, Shabab, all being squeezed in the vice. This is peak realpolitik. Western analysts will call this strategy, they will see this strategy as a rivalry between The UAE and Saudi Arabia because they can't imagine these inferior Arabs having strategic thinking. Yes. I know it's not pretty.

It's an excavation. The nation state model is being dug out. And just like with an archaeological dig, the historical substructures are being recovered, but it looks messy for a while. Now look specifically at Somaliland. Right?

Regarding talk about recognition, recognizing independent Somaliland. It doesn't matter whether there's ever a western embassy set up in Hargeisa or not. That's irrelevant. Somaliland is already recognized where it matters. It's recognized in the operational plans of the GCC, in the shipping lanes of the Arabian Peninsula, in the geostrategic calculations of Ethiopia, and in the overall deliberations of the OCGFC, in my opinion.

Like I say, The UAE controls Berbera, which is strategic. Ethiopia cannot survive without the sea, and if Berbera is one of the arteries that gives Addis Ababa, oxygen, then whoever manages that port has soft power over one of Africa's rising giants. Not to dominate it, but to manage it. To bind it into the regional system instead of letting it fester in isolation or or or letting it be dragged into western geopolitical machinations. No.

Like I said, this is not neo colonialism. This is pre colonial logic reasserting itself. The Arabian Peninsula and the Horn Of Africa reconnecting along the old routes of trade, of migration, of religion, of governance. All that existed before the British ever even knew that this region existed. You know, western analysts love that term failed state.

They say it like it's proof of African inferiority or Arab inferiority, not that it's proof of the inferiority of the model itself. Because what's actually failing? Not the people, not the culture, not the indigenous political structures. What's failing is the colonially imposed nation state model. Sudan wasn't a homogenous country, you made it one artificially.

Yemen was never one clean administrative block. Somalia was not born as Somalia. It was always a quilt of Sultanates, of clans, of ports, of emirates, Trans Indian Ocean networks and so forth. So when the nation state begins to fall apart, the West panics because their whole order depends on the illusion that they can freeze people into the borders that they drew. But we don't panic or we shouldn't.

No. We should recognize that volatility is not the end, that's the process. The nation state dying is the birth of collective sovereignty. It's the birth of a region that is reorganizing itself according to its own historical logic, not according to the blueprint of sir somebody somewhere from the colonial office in The UK. This is why Saudi Arabia appears as the calm responsible anchor and The UAE appears as the cold experimental surgeon.

It's not a conflict in my opinion. There's no conflict or rivalry between The UAE and Saudi Arabia. What there is is a division of labor. One stabilizes, one reshapes, but both are steering towards the same destination. They're steering towards a functional interconnected post colonial regional order.

What's happening in the Horn Of Africa, what's happening in the Red Sea in the Arabian Peninsula is not a collapse, it's a correction. The artificial state is weakening. The organic region is rising. And the power to define the future is shifting from those Washington think tanks to Riyadh, to Abu Dhabi, to Doha, to Ankara, to Hagisa, to Mogadishu, to Addis Ababa, And beyond that, it's shifting to the millions of people who live in these spaces and who are rediscovering their own political agency. The West accuses or portrays all of this as being very dangerous because yes, it is.

It is very dangerous. It's dangerous to the West, but it's not dangerous to us, not long term. Don't mistake the brutality of this transition as a cause for pessimism. Yes. It's very difficult.

But if you're familiar with our own political history, you'll recognize this process. It has happened before. Restoration is itself disruptive, but the arc of it bends towards sovereignty and not towards servitude. The Gulf is not building a new empire. They're building a new collective region, One that is gonna be protected, it's gonna be organized, it's gonna be integrated.

I'm not saying it's gonna be perfect. I'm not saying it's gonna be neat, it's not gonna be pretty, and it won't always be morally pleasant, but neither were the Sultanates, neither was the Khilafa. But they preserved civilization, they preserved commerce, stability, scholarship and so forth for centuries. And compared to the West's legacy, genocide, plunder, slavery, partition, ideological narcissism, while our imperfections look like a mercy. So understand this moment for what it is.

Okay? The United States is shrinking into a regional power, a regional hegemon. The GCC is shaping a macro regional order. The Horn Of Africa is reorganizing back into an updated version of its pre colonial logic. Somalia and Somaliland are not splitting, they're reverting back to their origins.

Ethiopia is negotiating its destiny through a coast that it lost a century ago. And Minnesota, yes, Minnesota is a frontline in the struggle over who gets to narrate Somali identity in the age of decolonized geopolitics. The future is not Western. The borders are not sacred that they drew. Their map is not permanent.

We're not watching collapse. We are witnessing the birth of twenty first century Sultanates. And this time, they will be built with fiber optic cables, sovereign wealth funds, energy grids, desalination plants, and digital economies. But the heart and the logic and the sovereignty, those will be ours.