Posted by Tyler Durden: Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

A US military delegation visited the local government in Somalia's northeastern Puntland region on Sunday and signed a deal to expand the US military presence in Bosaso, a port city on the Gulf of Aden, according to the Puntland government.

Saeed Abdullahi Deni, the president of Puntland State, held talks with a delegation led by Maj. Gen. Claude Tudor, the commander of US Special Operations Command Africa.

"Puntland and the United States also signed a new agreement to expand their cooperation. Under the agreement, the United States will expand its military base in Bosaso to improve operations against terrorism and to help protect maritime security," the Puntland government said in a statement on the meeting.

The US has been operating from a UAE-built airbase in Bosaso, which the UAE has reportedly used to arm the RSF in Sudan.

An expanded US military presence in Bosaso could be used as a launchpad for operations against Yemen's Ansar Allah, also known as the Houthis, and the deal comes as Ansar Allah is enforcing a new maritime blockade on Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea ports, which began after Saudi strikes on Yemen’s Sanaa International Airport, attacks that reignited the conflict that was in a state of ceasefire since 2022.

Tudor visited Puntland a day after meeting with officials in Somaliland, a de facto independent state within Somalia’s internationally recognized borders.

It’s unclear if any deals were signed in that meeting, but Israel recently became the first country to recognize Somaliland as an independent country and is seeking to establish a military and intelligence presence for operations against Yemen.

Claire's Observations:  Looks like Israel and the US are  bypassing  the entire (dysfunctional)  Somalian government in favor of regional alliances which may  assist them in meeting their goals in the Middle East.

  In asking Throck my AI why the current  Somalian government appears to be so dysfunctional ("fragile" was the description I saw here), this is what I learned:

"Somalia is among the world's poorest countries and faces:recurring droughts; floods; food insecurity; internal displacement; and dependence on foreign aid.

Somalia's governmental weaknesses are not primarily the result of one ineffective administration. They stem from the cumulative effects of 35 years of civil conflict, persistent insurgency, unresolved constitutional and federal disputes, clan-based politics, corruption, widespread poverty, and repeated humanitarian crises"

Yet, if you look at it's natural resources, still largely unexplored or developed, they include oil and natural gas; fisheries; livestock; and industrial minerals.

Perhaps the US and Israel see their best chance of "getting in", financially, on the development of these resources, is to be quietly responsible for the breakup of Somalia into smaller municipalities which can be better controlled than could be the entire country.

It has perhaps dawned on CENTCOM and the US government, currently "guests" of the government in Mogadishu, that the 76 bombs the US has dropped on Somalia in 2026, haven't moved the "security needle" here at all, so have decided to go to a "Plan B", which is to dismantle the country entirely.