MOGADISHU (Somaliguardian) – President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud declared on Sunday that Somalia no longer needs foreign peacekeepers to guarantee its own security, telling African Union troops it was time to go home even as the continental mission they serve in faces the most serious funding crisis of its two-decade history.
Wararka Soomaaliya
“We have reached a point where we can now take full charge of our security. Let’s give African peacekeepers a bunch of flowers and send them home,” Mohamud said, speaking in Somalia’s central Galmudug state.
The president made the remarks at a graduation ceremony marking the passing-out of roughly 3,000 newly trained Somali National Army soldiers – the largest single graduating class the country has produced since the collapse of its central government in 1991. The recruits, drawn from across Somalia, completed a full year of training in basic soldiering, military discipline and combat tactics.
The graduation was delivered under a defence cooperation agreement Somalia signed with Saudi Arabia in February, through which Riyadh committed to training approximately 5,000 Somali soldiers; Sunday’s cohort accounts for the bulk of that pledge delivered in a single intake. Training took place at Hanan Bure in the Galgaduud region, a site Saudi military officials visited repeatedly over the course of the year to monitor progress. Instruction was delivered by foreign military personnel from Roma
Faahfaahinta
Mohamud cast the graduation as proof of Somalia’s broader recovery, describing it as testament to the reconstruction of the country’s national army.
A drawdown already under way
The president’s call comes only days after Ethiopian troops serving under the African Union handed over their forward operating base in the southern Somali town of Burhakaba to Somali government forces, part of a phased drawdown already reshaping the African Union Support and Stabilisation Mission in Somalia, AUSSOM, and its predecessor missions.
Saamaynta
AUSSOM, which succeeded the African Union Transition Mission in Somalia (ATMIS) on January 1, 2025, was itself designed around a gradual handover of security responsibility to Somali forces, continuing a process that began with the earlier AMISOM deployment in 2007. Somali authorities have said their forces assumed control of 23 former AU forward operating bases between January 2023 and April 2025.
But the mission Mohamud is now urging out the door is also fighting for its own survival. AUSSOM’s current mandate expires on December 31, and the mission depends heavily on the UN Support Office in Somalia, UNSOS, for fuel, transport, medical care and other logistics. Washington has told the African Union it will not support renewing that UN logistical arrangement beyond the current mandate – while stopping short of blocking a renewal of AUSSOM’s mandate itself, provided an alternative source o
A more crowded security picture, not a simpler one
Wararka.so waxay kuu soo tebineysaa wararka ugu dambeeyey ee Soomaaliya iyo caalamka. Si aad ula socoto wararkii ugu dambeeyey, booqo boggayaga.
