From Baidoa, in Somalia, to Mandera, the first Kenyan border town of any significance, there are only 250 kilometers—but also about seven hours by car, strictly off-road.
So when someone writes to me asking whether the violent clashes that broke out in Somalia “near the Kenyan border,” as someone (not me) put it, could affect security in the country where they live or go on holiday, I feel quite confident in saying no.
Especially since, right now in Nairobi, the final details are being ironed out for the reopening of land borders between the two countries, which have been closed for 13 years.

At first glance, the clashes in Baidoa look like yet another family quarrel in a Somalia that has too many political families and far too few shared tables. The federal army against Southwest forces: Mogadishu against one of its own limbs. A familiar story, with dust rising and civilians ducking.
But beneath that dust, longer shadows can be seen. Because Baidoa is not just a city: it is a fragile ???? di equilibrio where regional interests and geopolitical ambitions intersect. And where every gunshot risks echoing all the way to Addis Ababa and Ankara.

Somalia and Ethiopia: the sea as an obsession

The issue is always the same—ancient and yet strikingly modern: access to the sea.
Ethiopia is a landlocked giant, a country of over one hundred million people forced to breathe through other nations’ ports. For years it has relied on Djibouti, paying dearly for every breath. Now it is searching for alternatives, and one of them runs through Somaliland—the region that declared itself independent from Somalia in 1991 but remains unrecognized internationally.
This is where the friction begins:
Mogadishu considers Somaliland an integral part of its territory, while Addis Ababa deals with it as if it were a sovereign state.
Any agreement, even a purely commercial or logistical one, immediately becomes political. And every port can turn into a fuse.

Turkey: the interested mediator

In the middle of this game moves Turkey, with the calm of someone who knows it holds more cards than the others.
Ankara is not an observer—it is a full-fledged actor.
In Mogadishu, it has built infrastructure, manages ports and the airport, and trains the Somali army at the TURKSOM base. In practice, it is one of the main guarantors of the Somali state’s survival.
At the same time, it maintains solid relations with Ethiopia, a partner too important—economically and politically—to ignore.
So Turkey does what it does best: it mediates.
Not out of altruism, but out of balance. Because a stable Somalia guarantees it influence over the sea, and a satisfied Ethiopia helps prevent the Horn of Africa from turning into an open battlefield.

Baidoa as a symptom, not a cause

The clashes in Baidoa fit into this broader picture as an internal crack that risks widening under external pressure.

When the center (Mogadishu) and the periphery (the federal member states) do not trust each other, every external actor finds space.
When a country is fragile, its borders become negotiable—at least in the eyes of others.

And so it happens that local tensions intertwine with regional strategies, internal rivalries become diplomatic leverage, and a city like Baidoa ends up carrying more weight than its map would suggest.

The unstable balance of the Horn

In the Horn of Africa, no one can truly afford to win.
Because one side’s victory—a port, an agreement, a recognition—is almost always another’s loss.
Somalia fears losing pieces of itself.
Ethiopia fears being cut off from the world.
Turkey fears everything collapsing, taking years of investment and influence with it.
And so things move forward like this:
with small wars hiding bigger games,
with cities like Baidoa turning into metaphors,
and with mediators holding together balances that no one can truly resolve.
As long as the sea remains a promise for some and a possession for others, this region will never face just a local conflict.
There will always be something deeper knocking—like a tide that cannot be held back.