Politics & Security

Who Is Sanbaloolshe Working For? Ex-Spy Chief Eyes Hiiraan

Editor • 2 days ago

Former Somali intelligence chief Abdullahi Mohamed Ali “Sanbaloolshe” has reportedly crossed from Ethiopia into Hirshabelle with 28 Land Cruisers and armed men, aiming to seize Beledweyne. The move recalls the scenario in South West State, where Laftagareen’s forces and Al-Shabaab captured town after town. Sanbaloolshe’s name, meanwhile, is tied to the darkest day in Somalia’s recent history: the October 2017 Zoobe bombing happened on his watch.

MOGADISHU — Abdullahi Mohamed Ali, widely known as Sanbaloolshe, has reportedly entered Somalia’s Hirshabelle State from Ethiopia with 28 Land Cruisers and a large number of armed men, aiming to take control of Beledweyne, the capital of the Hiiraan region.

Sanbaloolshe’s move would open a new front against the federal government. It comes just weeks after militias loyal to Laftagareen, fighting alongside Al-Shabaab, captured Diinsoor, Buurhakaba and other towns in Bay region.

A familiar scenario

Confidential sources speaking to Red Sea Axis had already identified Sanbaloolshe as the principal figure in the Hirshabelle component of a wider campaign aimed at confining the federal government’s authority to Mogadishu. According to the sources, the campaign is financed by the UAE, supported by Israeli intelligence and carried out through Kenyan intermediaries. The same sources said the fighting was intended to spread to Hiiraan, Middle Shabelle and Lower Shabelle, creating multiple points of pressure on the capital.

That scenario now appears to be unfolding. In South West State, towns fell almost without resistance while Ethiopian AUSSOM troops stood aside. In Hirshabelle, a former intelligence chief is reportedly arriving from Ethiopian territory with an armed convoy. Government-aligned sources accuse Sanbaloolshe of acting in coordination with Laftagareen’s camp.

The map of the axis

This move would bring Beledweyne, and former intelligence chief Sanbaloolshe, into the network of regional actors aligned with the UAE-Israel axis in Somalia: Somaliland under Abdirahman Irro, Puntland under Said Deni, Jubaland under Ahmed Madobe, and Laftagareen’s forces in South West State. Hirshabelle joining this network would complete a ring of pressure encircling Mogadishu from the north, west and south.

A record in Zoobe’s shadow

Sanbaloolshe is no stranger to Somalia’s security establishment. He was appointed director of the National Intelligence and Security Agency (NISA) three times: briefly in 2014, from April to October 2017, and most recently from April 2024 until he was replaced in May 2025.

It is his 2017 tenure that Somalis remember. On 14 October 2017, a truck bomb exploded at the Zoobe junction in Mogadishu, killing more than 500 people in the deadliest attack in the country’s history. Two weeks later, after Al-Shabaab besieged the Nasa-Hablod hotel in the capital, President Farmajo dismissed Sanbaloolshe along with the national police commissioner.

In Somali political circles, Sanbaloolshe has long been regarded as one of Addis Ababa’s most trusted figures in Somalia. His critics describe him as someone whose career has been intertwined with Ethiopian security interests, from his years in the security apparatus to his political base in Hiiraan, a region bordering Ethiopia. Reports that he is now returning to Hirshabelle from Ethiopian territory with an armed convoy only reinforce that perception.

That a man who led the country’s intelligence service during its worst security failure is now reportedly advancing from a neighbouring country toward a Somali state capital with an armed convoy raises an uncomfortable question for Somalis: who is he working for today?