Hussein Sheikh-Ali

Hussein Sheikh-Ali has spent his career at the meeting point of statecraft and scholarship, building the institutions of Somalia's security state and then writing about them. He founded and chaired two of the country's foremost security think tanks—the Hiraal Institute, established in 2018 (now defunct), and the Saldhig Institute established 2025 in Mogadishu—producing a body of research that has shaped how Somalia and its partners understand the threats it faces. Within government, he served twice as National Security Advisor to the President of the Federal Republic of Somalia, earlier as Principal Counterterrorism Advisor to the president, and as Deputy Director-General of the National Intelligence and Security Agency (NISA). From these posts he authored or helped draft many of the nation's foundational frameworks—among them the National Security Architecture, the National Counterterrorism Strategy, and the strategy for preventing and countering violent extremism—translating the abstract question of how a state holds together into working policy. Few have both governed the security of a fragile state and studied it this closely, and it is from that rare vantage point that he writes about the idea of a state.