Thursday November 10, 2022
CREDIT: SONNA
Mogadishu (HOL) - President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud departed Egypt for Eritrea on Thursday - where up to 5,000 Somali troops are stranded - for a meeting with Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki.
According to Villa Somalia, Mohamud will discuss bilateral relations and cooperation in fighting al-Shabaab. However, sources have shared that the real motive behind the visit is to discuss repatriation efforts for the nearly 5,000 Somali soldiers who have been stuck there since they completed their clandestine training.
Security experts believe President Mohamud is looking to capitalize on the recent peace agreement signed by Ethiopia's federal government and the TPLF rebels that ended two years of intense fighting.
At the same time, Somalia's intelligence director, Mahad Salad, travelled to Ethiopia on Wednesday for high-level security discussions.
Mohamud visited the recruits during his last visit to Eritrea in July, marking the first time the Eritrean-trained Somali soldiers appeared in public. The President promised that the troops would return home to participate in the offensive against al-Shabaab fighters. However, President Mohamud did not commit to a timeline for their return.
At the end of the July meeting, the two leaders signed a seven-point MoU focusing on defence, security, diplomatic, and political cooperation.
The soldiers - numbered in the thousands - first arrived in Eritrea in mid-August 2019 and as recently as June 2020. The recruits have reportedly received specialized training.
The Eritrean training programme was the brainchild of the Farmajo administration. Interestingly, it was managed by senior officials within Somalia's intelligence agency, NISA, and not the Somali National Army.
For years the federal government and top military officials denied that the training program was in operation.
Farmajo conceded that the program was active following his electoral defeat in May. He added that they would have been repatriated sooner, but the heightened tensions created by the protracted elections delayed their return.
Throughout its tenure, the covert training program came under heavy criticism from opposition figures and family members of the recruits.
The Hassan Sheikh Mohamud administration announced that a few recruits died during the training. Although figures vary, soldiers who defected from the program in 2021 reported between media 4 and 7 deaths.
In September 2018, Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed (Farmaajo), President of Somalia, Isaias Afwerki, President of Eritrea, and Abiy Ahmed, Prime Minister of Ethiopia, signed a similar pact formally titled the Joint Declaration on Comprehensive Cooperation Between Ethiopia, Somalia and Eritrea.
According to a UN report from the previous year, Eritrean-trained Somali fighters supporting Ethiopia allegedly fought alongside Eritrean soldiers in the Tigray war. According to a Globe and Mail story from January, Somali soldiers committed war crimes in at least six Tigrayan villages between December 2020 and February 2021.
Both the governments of Eritrea and Somalia have vehemently denied the allegations.
The repatriation of Eritrean-trained troops comes amidst reports that President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud has embarked on a similar venture by quietly sending Somali recruits to a UAE-funded training program in Egypt.
Somalia's President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud built strong ties with both countries during his previous presidency from 2012 to 2017.
The UAE has trained hundreds of Somali troops since 2014 but cancelled the military training program in response to Somali security forces' detention of a UAE plane and seizure of millions of cash in April 2018.
During an official state visit to Egypt in July, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi promised to provide counterterrorism support to Somalia. Political analysts believe Egypt sees Somalia as a bulwark to Ankara's growing military and strategic presence in Africa.
Somali Minister of State for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ali Mohamed Omar, told VOA in late September that the government was seeking financial assistance from international partners to secure the Eritrean-trained recruits' release.
"Those forces will be returned to the country, as promised by the President," said the Minister, "but their resettlement would require a lot of money, trucks, military camps, and fighting equipment."
Somalia's government denied unconfirmed reports that Eritrea was seeking as much as $50 million for training and equipment