The agreement reportedly bypassed Somalia’s central government, raising questions about the country’s already fraying federal system.
In early August, the top U.S. special operations commander for Africa signed a security agreement with the president of Puntland — a semi-autonomous region in northeastern Somalia — to expand the American military installation there.
The deal surfaced through a short statement from the Puntland government.
“Under the agreement, the United States will expand its military base in Bosaso to improve operations against terrorism and to help protect maritime security,” the Puntland Government of Somalia wrote in a statement. “The Puntland state remains committed to fighting terrorism and any threat that could harm the security, stability, and development of Puntland, Somalia, and the Horn of Africa.”
There are few details regarding the arrangement, which has no public text and has not yet been confirmed by the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) or anybody in Washington.
“The informality is really important,” said Samar Al-Bulushi, associate professor of anthropology at University of California, Irvine, and a non-resident fellow at the Quincy Institute. “If the U.S. wants to be able to stand by its claim — that seems to be a claim only — that it respects the sovereignty of the Somali government, then, in theory, it wouldn’t be negotiating formal agreements with these semi-autonomous regions.”
The deal was reportedly negotiated without input from the central government in Mogadishu — whose authority the government in Puntland does not recognize — marking a notable shift toward treating Somalia’s federal peripheral states as sovereign negotiating partners in their own right.
Though the agreement itself is vague, it signals a potential new direction in the Trump administration’s Horn of Africa policy. Experts say the driving force is the expansion of the Iran war into the Red Sea, not a reaction to events inside Somalia itself. But the move also risks deepening a rift between Mogadishu and the federal states it has long struggled to hold together.
American engagement with these states is not entirely new. Cameron Hudson, an analyst who previously served as director for African affairs at the National Security Council, told RS that the U.S. has used Puntland as a staging ground for operations inside Somalia for years, largely via an Emirati-run base in the port city of Bosaso.
“The United States probably now sees a longer term need to have a kind of wholly owned, wholly operated U.S. base in the region,” Hudson said, a move that likely indicates either an increase in military strikes within Somalia or part of a larger effort to combat growing threats in the wider region.
Washington has for years maintained what is known as a dual-track posture in Somalia, in which it supports Somalia’s internationally recognized central government while simultaneously building direct relationships with regional and local authorities outside Mogadishu, such as Puntland or Somaliland.
AFRICOM says that it has no plans to build a military base in Somaliland, though some Republicans in Congress have called on Trump to recognize the state’s independence. The U.S. was also recently the only member of the United Nations Security Council that did not condemn Israeli recognition of Somaliland.