Inside Somalia’s Shadow Information War. UAE-Funded Network Targeting the Federal Government

For a long time now, things in Somalia are taking a nasty turn in the political arena, and as is usually the case, beneath the surface of this rather complex, heated war of words and acrimony another, even greater battle is underway to determine whose is to be the narrative of the country.

Under cover of Somalia’s runaway political communication, campaigning, and lobbying, an information-influence project linked to the UAE's interests is spreading hatred against the Federal Government of Somalia.

As many have pointed out, information and propaganda is spread and distributed through many platforms and outlets in order to convey a political message to the masses. The simple nature of this process in terms of distribution does not reveal the true nature and depth of said operation.

A political allegation emerges.

A sympathetic media outlet publishes it.

Commentators repeat it.

Facebook pages turn it into graphics.

TikTok accounts reduce it to short, emotional clips.

X accounts amplify it.

Within hours of an issue being brought to light, what could have been a localized issue raised by a politician in a press conference or by a television channel becomes a national issue in Somalia.

Is this what constitutes opposition in Somalia, or is there in fact a very sophisticated campaign to influence public opinion being clandestinely sponsored by foreign funds?

The allegations point repeatedly toward Abu Dhabi.

Follow the Money

It is also the hardest to track down: who is funding Somalia’s increasingly sophisticated political media scene?

Most of Somalia’s media outlets are struggling to survive due to lack of funding. As a result, the few dollars of advertising revenue they get, and the marginal subscriptions they have, can be easily influenced by political and foreign funding.

That financial vulnerability therefore is a huge entry point for external actors.

The allegations surrounding the UAE-linked network are that money does not necessarily travel in a straight line from a foreign government to a newspaper.

Instead, a foreign government can be said to have influenced a media organization via businessmen, politicians, consultancies, etc. including charitable organizations, commercial transactions, etc. etc. including family members and associates of politicians.

The result can be difficult to trace.

A media organization that appears on the surface to be independent, may in reality be dependent on people whose political interests are aligned with those of an outside government.

Many political figures, commentators and online portals can be financially supported by one and the same foreign party.

All these are supported by a large array of so-called media.

It creates an ecosystem.

All these apparently independent actors might sometimes say something similar at roughly the same time and that would appear to be coordination rather than repetition.

That distinction matters.

Repetition creates credibility.

The Political Intermediaries

The above description also applies to the information makers of opposition politicians.

The foreign financing of Somalia’s opposition is a highly sensitive topic and when media outlets and political groups who are being financed by similar external parties start to promote each other’s work, it becomes a very serious matter.

The alleged architecture is straightforward.

Political figures introduce the narrative.

Media organizations legitimize it.

Commentators simplify it.

Social-media networks distribute it.

Online activists attack anyone challenging it.

The cycle then repeats.

Influence operations also function in such a manner that no source is required to feed information to other participants, and that the journalists, who spread the information subsequently, need not even know where the information originated from.

Influence operations are effective not only because the originating message can be attributed but also because they become organic as the message gains traction in the information space.

That makes attribution difficult.

It also makes the operation more effective.

From Political Messaging to Manufactured Reality

Note that the above narratives can vary greatly but they can be structured in a similar fashion.

Government decisions are framed as conspiracies.

Diplomatic agreements become alleged secret deals.

Security operations become political repression.

Electoral reforms become dictatorship.

International partnerships become surrender of sovereignty.

These errors are exaggerated while success is ignored or flipped and presented as failure.

The aim here seems not to encourage people to support individual opposition figures.

The broader objective appears to be erosion.

Erode confidence in the presidency.

Erode confidence in federal institutions.

Erode confidence in the security forces.

Erode confidence in international partnerships.

Erode confidence in the political process itself.

Destabilisation of the political situation becomes easier once the public at large has realized that all institutions are corrupt and that all pronouncements of government are a pack of lies.

Most influence operations today do not consist of one piece of disinformation amplifying to become very large. Instead, they consist of a large amount of disinformation, many ‘pieces of rumor’ that in aggregate create influence.

They depend on volume.

A hundred small distortions can be more powerful than a single big lie.

Social Media Is the Force Multiplier

The battlefield is no longer television.

It is the smartphone.

Facebook still commands a lot of respect among Somali audiences, but of late TikTok has taken the lead in influencing decisions as it creates an environment even faster than Facebook for issues to spread like wildfire within minutes, affecting hundreds of thousands in no time as journalists and government officials take days to verify information that by then would have already been integrated into the existing political discourse.

As aforementioned, WhatsApp groups are generally confined to families, businesses, government offices and even members of the Somali diaspora community.

Telegram channels distribute documents, screenshots and anonymous claims.

X is also now used to distribute to the diplomatic and international communities identical copies of the material already disseminated.

This creates an extraordinary asymmetry.

A misleading claim can be created in minutes.

Correcting it can take days.

The original misinformation is often consumed and incorporated into public discourse before contradictory information can be distributed to audiences.

Information campaigns today are designed to get a point across while realizing maximum benefit even if only a small percentage of information is believed by the audience.

They do not need audiences to believe everything.

They only need them to doubt everything.

The UAE Factor

The UAE’s political influence in the Horn of Africa adds further weight to the claims being spread in information campaigns.

Abu Dhabi has forged relationships over years with leaders, with institutions, with companies and with administrations across the Horn of Africa.

Somalia occupies an especially strategic position.

A country with an 800km coastline along some of the world’s most traded commodities sits in the midst of much of that. Along this coastline are several of the world’s major ports – used for both commercial purposes and security. The country is also a key player in a complex network of relations between many of the Horn’s governments and those of a host of players from outside the region including Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

Turkey’s growing partnership with Somalia is therefore of particular significance for rival powers to the country.

Ankara has been training Somali national security forces as well as investing in key Somalis’ infrastructure. There are also very deep relationships with key politicians in Mogadishu as well as frameworks of cooperation with Somali institutions regarding maritime security and future energy prospects.

For rival powers, the competition for influence over Somalia is not about the Somalia government but about how to position themselves within the regional competition.

It is about regional positioning.

As such, it would be worth investigating how media campaigns targeting Somalia’s government are channeled in synchronization with negative propaganda aimed at destabilizing good relations between Somalia and Turkey.

When same media outlet constantly attacks Somalia and Turkey one after the other, one may wonder whose interests such information might serve to further.

Rather, it is whose strategic interests are being served by the information that is being distributed.

A Government Asleep at the Wheel

The Foreign Influence alone are not responsible for the communiqué failures of the Federal Government of Somalia.

The Ministry of Information has failed time and again to deliver information in a timely, sufficient, competent and disciplined manner.

The Federal Government is ultimately responsible for its own failure to effectively manage the information environment and it is largely the failure of the Ministry of Information and its leaders to develop an effective strategy for information warfare in the modern era.

Government communications remain too slow.

Too reactive.

Too bureaucratic.

The comments by now have often already been firmly solidified in the political discourse by the time a statement by the government is issued.

That failure has consequences.

An effective Ministry of Information would be able to implement a rapid-response communication system to respond to emerging misinformation and communicate information quickly to the public through all venues.

It should understand social-media analytics.

It should monitor coordinated narratives.

It should identify manipulated material.

It should brief journalists rapidly.

It should produce information in Somali, Arabic and English.

It should treat strategic communication as part of national security.

Instead, federal communications seem to operate from a totally different playbook – and one that resembles nothing so much as a traditional government press office.

That is not enough.

Transparency Is the Missing Weapon

Instead of taking the route of suppressing free expression, of detaining and prosecuting writers and politicians for their criticism of the government, the government should be transparent.

That would be both wrong and counterproductive.

The answer is transparency.

Media receiving substantial foreign funding should disclose it to the public.

Political organizations which are financially assisted by foreign governments or foreign linked entities must also disclose such assistance.

Major political advertising to be published and labeled as to who paid for it.

Digital platforms should label sponsored political content.

Disclosure of misinformation affecting agreements, security matters and government finances should be published by government very fast.

Sunlight is more effective than censorship.

Transparency about foreign funding by independent media is in their interest because it cements their credibility.

If financed by a domestic entity, it is best to disclose this to dispel any suspicion.

Yet, while foreign funding of a media outlet does not necessarily render it indelibily suspect, funding by foreign governments or foreign entities of political parties does bear some explanation.

That is the central issue.

Not whether journalists criticize the government.

Not whether opposition politicians attack the president.

Those are normal features of political life.

The real issue therefore is not how journalists and politicians behave but whether foreign money is secretly determining the space of information in which Somalis live their political lives.

For if the allegations are true then, the manner in which information regarding Somalia is conveyed is not hostile reporting by the government and opposition, written and disseminated by overseas-based media.

It is dealing with an information architecture built to manufacture distrust.

An information operation is not looking to capture any territory and can be accomplished by influencing the public’s perception of a situation while it is still evolving.

It only needs to capture the public mind.