Hundreds of armed men calling themselves the Calmiskaad Defence Forces have left their garrison in Carmo and moved into the Xumbays area of eastern Puntland, creating a standoff with Puntland forces. An officer from the group said his men had neither surrendered to nor joined Puntland’s forces, but remained part of the Somali National Army and recognized no administration beyond the federal government. Puntland describes them as armed militias damaging security and stability. No federal decree, budget allocation or military order formally establishes the force. The group first appeared publicly in Carmo on 17 March, when its members accused President Said Abdullahi Deni of running Puntland like a private business. In early July, Prime Minister Hamza Abdi Barre said Mogadishu would recruit thousands of soldiers in Puntland, while President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud later described the recruits as members of the Somali National Army. The federal government has issued neither formal documentation recognizing the Calmiskaad force nor a denial of the links attributed to it. The report says politicians supported by Mogadishu, including a figure known as Mashruuc, have helped organize the militias. Those organizers are allied with Aran Jaan, a political network the federal government has relied upon inside Puntland. Aran Jaan was linked to the 2023 confrontation in Garowe after elections in the Nugaal region were blocked, and it is now helping assemble political opposition to the Garowe administration. Xumbays lies in the country surrounding the Calmiskaad range, which has served as the headquarters of Islamic State in Somalia since 2017. The mountains also host the Al Karrar office, a regional hub that moves money, fighters and instructions to Islamic State branches in Congo, Mozambique, Kenya, Tanzania and elsewhere. Abdulqadir Mumin, the founder of the Somali faction, is believed to run the office and remains at large. Puntland has fought through the mountains since launching Operation Hilaac in December 2024, its largest offensive in a decade. American aircraft carried out at least 32 supporting strikes during 2025, while Emirati aircraft conducted another 19. Puntland largely funds the campaign from its own revenue and does not receive the African Union logistics package supplied to federal forces in southern Somalia. On 25 July last year, Puntland forces working with American partners captured Abdiweli Mohamed Aw Yusuf and two others at Laag in the Xumbays area. Washington had designated him a global terrorist two years earlier, identifying him as an Islamic State financier who recruited foreign fighters and moved supplies and ammunition. His networks were assessed to have raised around $2.5 million in one year through extortion and mobile-money transactions. No published evidence links the Calmiskaad Defence Forces to the Islamic State faction. The immediate concern arises from the presence of several hundred armed men, outside any command structure formally claimed by either government, in an area where Islamic State retains logistics networks, couriers and senior leaders. The militia’s political organizers and much of the local Islamic State leadership come from Ali Saleban communities, but shared clan identity is not evidence of an organizational connection. The Carmo-to-Xumbays route crosses the western approaches to the Calmiskaad, where Islamic State extracts money from Bosaso businesses and traffic serving the port. As the report argues, a militia without a regular payroll or supply line may seek resources from the territory it occupies, raising the prospect of either conflict or an accommodation with the faction already taxing the same routes. Elders from Xumbays and Rako-Raaxo have opened mediation. Boqor Cabdirashiid Boqor Cumar urged the Puntland administration to consider carefully any action that could worsen conditions and called for the men to be brought back from the frontier. The federal government has yet to claim the force formally, order it to stand down or direct it to withdraw. Traders and transport operators using the Carmo–Xumbays road now face the risk of competing armed groups seeking revenue along the same route; if mediation fails, the political confrontation could directly disrupt traffic serving Bosaso’s port.