In case you thought things in Somalia (still) couldn’t get any worse…

…the International Crisis Group warns that something is rotten in the state semi-autonomous region of Puntland.

If its government does not enact meaningful reforms and reach out to all clans, Puntland may break up violently, adding to the chaos in Somalia.

Somalia: The Trouble with Puntland, the latest briefing from the International Crisis Group, warns about the rise in insecurity and political tension that the semi-autonomous north-eastern region has been experiencing for three years. At its roots are poor governance and a collapse of the cohesion, particularly within the Harti clan, that led to its creation a decade ago.

“Most of the blame rests squarely with the political leadership”, says Daniela Kroslak, Deputy Director of Crisis Group’s Africa Program. “If a wide variety of grievances are not urgently tackled in a comprehensive manner, the consequences could be severe for the whole country and even for the Horn of Africa”.

Puntland is most widely known as the onshore haven to many of Somalia’s pirates. Piracy, though, the report argues, is “only a dramatic symptom” of Puntland’s problems, and I’d add that the instability in Puntland itself is only a “symptom” of the greater chaos in Somalia writ large.

Puntland is probably wishing that it had some of the good reputation of Somalia’s more successful semi-autonomous region, Somaliland, which some commentators have argued could provide a model of how to organize the country as a whole.

(image from Wikimedia Commons)