The Leak That Ended a Presidency: How Washington Turned on Hassan Sheikh Mohamud

[Deeq A.]

The Leak That Ended a Presidency: How Washington Turned on Hassan Sheikh Mohamud

The collapse of U.S. confidence in President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud didn’t come with a press release. It came with a leak—a cold, calculated release of a private letter from the Somali president to the U.S. President Donald J. Trump. The letter itself was unremarkable, but its disclosure was anything but accidental. It was a warning. Widely interpreted as a deliberate act of dissent from within the U.S. Embassy in Mogadishu, the leak signaled the end of Washington’s patience with Mohamud’s leadership—a relationship that had been steadily unraveling for months.

The letter—intended to secure U.S. support—backfired. It exposed a weakened president pleading for help while his government lost credibility domestically and internationally. According to multiple sources, the leak originated from embassy officials fed up with President Mohamud’s defiance, paranoia, and inaction. “This was not an accident,” said one senior U.S. official. “It was a deliberate signal that the relationship is over.”

That signal marked a decisive rupture between President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud and the American diplomatic establishment. U.S. and regional officials point to his failure to control Somalia’s security landscape and his obstruction of counterterrorism efforts. “The leak was a shot across the bow,” said another senior official. “We’re done covering for him.”

The fallout follows months of unfulfilled commitments, strategic defiance, and a pattern of provocation. Tensions peaked when Mohamud’s government publicly dismissed a U.S. Embassy security advisory, calling it baseless—a move seen as both reckless and deliberately antagonistic. The final blow came when he delayed firing his Defense Minister despite repeated U.S. requests. When he finally acted, he blamed U.S. pressure, triggering backlash in Washington. Officials saw this as an attempt to undermine American diplomacy and shift accountability.

Inside the White House, the verdict is clear: “He’s out of alignment with every key regional and security interest we have,” said a senior administration official.

The Trump administration is now exploring alternative Somali leaders—those who can restore institutional credibility, rebuild trust, and cooperate on counterterrorism. Across the State Department, Pentagon, and National Security Council, officials describe Mohamud as unreliable, politically paralyzed, and self-interested. Within the U.S. Embassy in Mogadishu, the mood is described as one of cold hostility, driven by what many see as a pattern of lies, broken promises, veiled deals with foreign actors, and growing paranoia. “There’s a shared view now,” said one diplomat. “He is dangerous to Somalia, and he can’t be trusted. He says the right things behind closed doors but constantly undermines U.S. efforts on the ground.”

With Washington’s patience exhausted, the policy conversation has shifted to contingency planning.
Senior officials are engaged in internal discussions over a potential political realignment in Somalia.

“The question is no longer if there will be a transition,” said a National Security Council official. “It’s when—and how soon.” No one is calling it regime change, but no one is defending Mohamud either.
“His credibility is gone. So is our patience.”

More broadly, regional partners have grown alarmed by Mohamud’s inconsistent and transactional diplomacy. Officials in Cairo, Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, Doha, Nairobi, and Addis Ababa, who have long expressed concern over his erratic posture, now view his leadership as a source of regional instability and confusion—not because of one specific alignment, but because of a broader pattern of half-truths, broken promises, contradictory deals, and amateur statecraft.

• In Cairo, officials are frustrated by Mohamud’s simultaneous outreach to Ethiopia, a direct competitor, after having publicly committed to Egypt’s position on the Nile dispute—a move viewed as duplicitous and reckless.

• In Abu Dhabi, diplomats cite repeated instances where Mohamud has agreed to regional security cooperation, only to later backtrack or sideline Gulf-led initiatives in favor of ad hoc bilateral deals elsewhere.

• Even Riyadh and Doha, which had maintained more neutral ties, have begun to step back, describing Somalia’s foreign policy under Mohamud as chaotic, contradictory, and driven by short-term political needs rather than strategic vision.

For now, President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud remains in office. But his government is isolated, his allies are vanishing, and his enemies—inside and outside the country—are circling. The letter meant to save his presidency may instead become the document that sealed its unraveling.

https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/somalia-offers-us-exclusive-control-air-bases-ports-2025-03-28/

Qaran News