Propaganda is an art, and one of its indispensable requirements is a short memory. Yesterday's monster must be forgotten before today's incompetent can be introduced. The recent treatment of Puntland's security forces by parts of the Mogadishu media and social-media ecosystem offers an unusually tidy demonstration of the technique.
In April 2025, Caasimada Online reported claims that the United Arab Emirates had installed an Israeli-made ELM-2084 military radar near Bosaso Airport and the headquarters of the Puntland Maritime Police Force. The system was described as a sophisticated three-dimensional radar capable of tracking aircraft, drones, missiles and artillery. Other reports linked Bosaso to alleged Emirati military logistics connected to Sudan and Yemen. Social-media posts pushed the same picture further, presenting Bosaso as a covert operations hub with foreign military reach.
The picture was magnificent in scale. Bosaso had foreign partners, advanced radar, aircraft movements, intelligence infrastructure, maritime forces and strategic reach across the Gulf of Aden. Depending on the day's allegation, Puntland could apparently trouble Yemen, affect Sudan and provide a platform for Emirati or Israeli regional ambition. A reader encountering only those stories might reasonably have concluded that PMPF possessed the surveillance capacity of a small NATO member.
From Iron Dome to the Phantom Flotilla: When Puntland Succeeds, Mogadishu Media Conjures Forty Iraqis with No Ship, No Route and No Voyage
Then PMPF recovered Sibu 1. At that precise moment, the formidable Puntland of yesterday became curiously inadequate. The sophisticated coastal security system that had supposedly acquired regional reach was suddenly insufficient to explain the recovery of one hijacked tanker. Into the gap stepped approximately forty mysterious Iraqis associated with a tribe in Basra.
The documented chronology begins elsewhere. Sibu 1 was hijacked on August 20 after armed men boarded the tanker east of Al Mukalla, Yemen, and redirected it toward Somalia. By late September, Puntland maritime forces were conducting counter-piracy operations along the coast. On September 25, The Maritime Executive, a specialist international maritime publication, reported that the Puntland Navy and PMPF had freed the tanker in what authorities described as a planned forty-eight-hour operation.
Reuters recorded the same central sequence through PMPF commander Mohamed Jama, who said Puntland forces conducted the operation over two days and held the suspected pirates afterward. Hiiraan Online carried that account. Even Caasimada Online's own September 25 report said Puntland had announced the recovery and identified PMPF as the force that carried out the operation.
Then came the Iraqi claim. Shafaq News quoted Sheikh Ali al-Shaghanbi, a tribal figure in Basra, saying members of his clan had participated in recovering a tanker connected to a member of the tribe. That claim is reportable. It may establish participation by people associated with the vessel's owner. Horseed Media later reported, citing maritime-security sources, that personnel working independently for the company owning Sibu 1 assisted PMPF.
From this, Caasimada Online produced the much larger assertion that Iraqi reporting had "strongly disproved" Puntland's account. The trouble is that the Iraqi publication itself did not reach that conclusion. Shafaq's subsequent English report was titled "Competing accounts cloud Sibu 1 tanker rescue." It recorded the Basra sheikh's account, PMPF's account of a two-day recovery, and Somali reporting that people working for the shipowner also participated.
Thus the Iraqi newspaper displayed greater caution about the Iraqi story than the Somali outlet invoking it against Puntland. The move from "some Iraqis participated" to "Puntland was disproved" requires an evidentiary journey considerably longer than anything documented in the source material.
And here arrives the phantom flotilla. No source cited in the controversy identifies a ship carrying forty tribesmen from Basra to the Somali coast. No source gives a departure date, route, voyage through the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz, refuelling arrangements, command structure or maritime intelligence chain by which an independent tribal force located a pirate-held tanker off Somalia.
That absence does not establish that Iraqis played no role. They may have arrived by other means and may have performed significant tasks. It does establish that the grand independent expedition needed to replace PMPF in the story has never been documented.
Yet the imagination is invited to complete the voyage. Geography courteously removes itself. Hormuz becomes a minor editorial inconvenience. The Arabian Sea shrinks to the dimensions of a newsroom. Forty men materialise off Mudug, perform a maritime assault worthy of a special-forces documentary, and leave the prisoners, weapons, casualties and recovered tanker inside Puntland's security system.
One should hesitate before questioning courage. One may reasonably question teleportation.
The irony becomes richer beside the earlier Bosaso mythology. The same security architecture once portrayed as sophisticated enough to affect wars in Sudan and Yemen must now be considered incapable of finding a tanker off Puntland's coast. The radar allegedly capable of watching the Gulf of Aden becomes irrelevant. Patrol craft disappear. Local intelligence evaporates. Years of anti-piracy experience count for nothing. The operational vacuum is filled by forty Iraqis for whom the reporting supplies neither ship nor voyage.
Yesterday Puntland was practically Mossad with a coastline. Today it awaits the Basra cavalry. One wishes the propagandists would exchange notes.
The calendar is less cooperative. Puntland forces had already been conducting a broader anti-piracy campaign before the rescue. Maritime reporting on September 25 identified the Puntland Navy and PMPF. Reuters quoted a PMPF commander. Horseed reported Puntland forces taking control of the tanker along the Mudug coast. Caasimada itself first reported PMPF's operation before presenting the Iraqi claim a day later as evidence that Puntland's account had been disproved.
This gives the episode its finest comic element. Caasimada does not require Puntland to rebut Caasimada. Caasimada can rebut itself. On one day PMPF carried out the operation. On the next, an Iraqi claim appears. The Iraqi outlet says there are competing accounts. Somali reporting says owner-associated personnel assisted PMPF. International maritime reporting continues to identify Puntland forces. The headline nevertheless announces that Puntland has been disproved.
There is a serious question inside the comedy. If personnel connected to the Iraqi owner helped recover Sibu 1, they deserve accurate credit for whatever role they performed. If they boarded the tanker, supplied intelligence, negotiated, fought or provided security, those actions should be documented. The precise division of labour is an empirical question.
Their presence does not make PMPF disappear. Joint operations do not work by metaphysical exclusion. Discovering another participant does not erase previously documented participants. An owner's security team can assist a maritime police operation just as foreign advisers can accompany local forces. These propositions coexist comfortably until a headline requires one actor to vanish.
Social media makes the transformation easier. An image appears. A coordinate appears. A confident account assigns ownership, motive and geopolitical purpose. Repetition begins to resemble corroboration. A suspected radar becomes proof of an Israeli relationship; a logistics flight becomes a Sudan war corridor; the presence of Iraqi owner-associated personnel becomes proof that Puntland fabricated a maritime operation.
The mechanism is visible in the Bosaso debate itself. A widely circulated post by The Daily Somalia referred to unconfirmed reports that Bosaso was being used as a UAE operations hub supporting Sudan's RSF and mentioned Israeli-made radar, while also noting Puntland's denial. The qualification travelled less energetically than the accusation.
There are important differences within Mogadishu-based media. Hiiraan Online carried the Reuters account of the Sibu 1 recovery rather than treating the Iraqi claim as proof that PMPF was absent. The criticism therefore concerns a recurring current in the media and social-media ecosystem, not a claim that every journalist publishes identical material.
The contradiction remains striking. When Puntland is accused of serving foreign powers, Bosaso becomes dangerously capable: advanced radar, foreign aircraft, military infrastructure and regional reach. When the same institutions produce a successful counter-piracy operation, they become curiously incapable and the achievement is transferred to outsiders.
The actual record is less theatrical. Pirates seized Sibu 1. Puntland maritime forces pursued and recovered it. PMPF described a two-day operation. International maritime reporting recorded that account. Suspected pirates ended up in Puntland custody. Personnel associated with the Iraqi owner may also have participated. The exact distribution of roles can be investigated without inventing an invisible navy.
Nothing in Shafaq's reporting demonstrates that PMPF fabricated its role. Nothing in evidence of owner-associated participation logically cancels Puntland's operation. The phantom flotilla exists chiefly in the space between a modest Iraqi claim and an immodest headline.
Propaganda remains an art. Its more difficult discipline is archival memory. Yesterday's article remains online. Yesterday's radar remains in the headline. Yesterday's mighty Puntland refuses to disappear merely because today's argument requires an incompetent one. Place the stories beside each other and, eventually, they begin to laugh at one another.