By Isha Qarsoon
When President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, his ministers, or his supporters are confronted with the government’s failure to provide basic public services, they return to one answer: it made Mogadishu safer. They point to the contrast with the capital in 2000 or 2010. Mogadishu is calmer, more functional, and more stable than it was during the worst years of the conflict. From that improvement they draw a broader political conclusion: whatever the government’s failures elsewhere, it restored order and built the security system that now protects the capital.
The comparison establishes that Mogadishu changed. It does not establish who secured the city, who sustained that security, or whether the Federal Government can preserve it without foreign forces.
For nearly two decades, a foreign-financed and foreign-led military coalition has defended Mogadishu and supported the wider security architecture around it. The Kampala summit that concluded on 31 July was convened to address the future of that coalition’s funding. Instead, it forced Somali officials to confront the premise beneath their own political rhetoric. When asked, in effect, what would happen if the foreign structure disappeared, they did not answer that Somalia could now manage without it. They asked for more time, continued logistical support, and a gradual withdrawal to prevent a security vacuum.
That response is the admission. In political terms, Kampala may be the emperor-has-no-clothes moment for the government’s claim that it secured Mogadishu. The claim rests on the image of a state that has already built the capacity to protect the capital. The government’s own case in Kampala was that this capacity is still being built.
On 1 July 2026, the United States informed the African Union that it would not support renewal of AUSSOM’s mandate in December if the mission continued to depend on funding and logistics supplied through the United Nations Support Office in Somalia, UNSOS. For years, UNSOS has kept roughly 12,000 African Union troops supplied, transported, medically supported, and operational. Without that system, AUSSOM cannot continue in its present form. This is not a quarrel over accounting. It is a threat to the mechanism that has underwritten security in Mogadishu since 2007.
Two convenient stories now compete. One predicts immediate collapse once AUSSOM leaves. The other insists that the Somali National Army is already capable of taking over and that foreign support merely postpones a transition that is otherwise complete. Neither proposition has been tested. The foreign military presence has never been removed long enough to show what the Somali state can sustain on its own.
That avoidance has a long history. AMISOM’s drawdown schedules, and ATMIS’s phased handovers were delayed, revised, or extended rather than completed. Somali leaders preferred the political credit that came with visible improvements in the capital. Foreign partners preferred the predictability of extending an unfinished arrangement. What makes 2026 different is that the money sustaining that compromise may no longer be available. The clearest evidence of who secured Mogadishu comes from the Somali government itself.
Speaking at the Kampala summit in late July, State Minister for Foreign Affairs Ali Balcad said Somali forces now lead operations against Al-Shabaab while AUSSOM troops remain at key bases providing security and operational support. He expressed confidence in the national forces, but added that AUSSOM remained important during the transition while Somalia’s full security capacity was being built.
The decisive words are being built. Not built. Being built.
Nineteen years after the African Union mission first deployed, the government’s own description is that full national capacity remains unfinished. Ali Balcad did not ask AUSSOM to depart because its work was complete. He proposed an eighteen-month to two-year phased withdrawal, with bases transferred gradually to avoid a security vacuum. That is not a minor qualification to the government’s political claim. It goes to the claim’s foundation. A government that has already secured Mogadishu should not need another two years of foreign support to determine whether it can keep the city secure.
The simplest test remains the most revealing. If the government’s account is correct, it should be able to identify a short and definite timetable under which Somali forces will assume responsibility for every base, position, and function now held by AUSSOM. No senior official has done so. The request is always for more time, more financing, or a longer transition. That is not the language of a state declining assistance it no longer needs. It is the language of a state that fears what the withdrawal of that assistance may expose.
AUSSOM’s Head of Mission made essentially the same point. Addressing the African Union Commission, he said the American funding decision had underscored the need for Somalia to assume greater responsibility for its own security. The statement did not confirm that Somalia had achieved self-sufficiency. It emphasized that Somalia still needed to reach it.
President Mohamud made the more politically important admission. Addressing the Heads of State session in Entebbe, he thanked the troop-contributing countries and said the AU mission had been vital in degrading Al-Shabaab, expanding humanitarian access, training Somali forces, and saving countless lives.
The verbs matter because they assign responsibility. The mission degraded Al-Shabaab. The mission expanded humanitarian access. The mission trained Somali forces. The mission saved lives. In Kampala, the president himself credited the foreign mission with the work that his supporters routinely present at home as proof of his government’s success.
Gratitude to allies is not, by itself, a concession. But this was more than ceremonial praise. The government was trying to persuade foreign states to preserve the system on which its security claim depends. It therefore described that system honestly enough to reveal the contradiction. At home, the administration claims political credit for securing Mogadishu. Abroad, it argues that the forces, financing, logistics, and bases that made the achievement possible remain indispensable.
The dispute over political legitimacy makes the contradiction more consequential. Five days before the Kampala meeting, the Somali Future Council, which includes a former president, former prime ministers, and other political leaders, wrote to the leaders of the troop-contributing countries. It argued that President Mohamud’s constitutional mandate expired on 15 May 2026 and asked those governments to recognize that Somalia lacks an agreed framework for political leadership and succession.
HSM’s supporters often answer such objections with an appeal to performance. Whatever the constitutional dispute, they imply, the government should be judged by the order it restored and the security it delivered in Mogadishu. That defense becomes much weaker if the administration cannot show that it created, controls, or can independently maintain the system for which it claims credit. The same government facing a challenge to the constitutional basis of its authority is asking for another eighteen months to two years to complete the security capacity that supposedly demonstrates its effectiveness.
The Somali National Army is regularly offered as proof that the transition is already far advanced. On paper, the force numbers roughly 32,000 personnel. Independent assessments place the realistically deployable number much lower, closer to 19,000, citing uneven training, clan-based recruitment, and continuing Al-Shabaab infiltration. In November, the Chief of Defence Forces told Parliament that between ten and fifteen thousand soldiers had been killed or wounded during the previous three years.
Those figures describe a force under severe and sustained pressure, not one plainly ready to replace the external military and logistical system on which current operations depend.
The political setting has also deteriorated. Constitutional amendments extending presidential and parliamentary terms, adopted in March without agreement from the opposition or all federal member states, deepened political divisions at precisely the moment a successful security handover would require broader national cohesion. A national army cannot easily hold the country together when major parts of the political system dispute the authority directing it.
The immediate risk should therefore be stated without exaggeration. If AUSSOM’s logistical network begins to fail and the mission reduces its presence before Somali forces can replace it, the first losses may not occur in Mogadishu. They are more likely to appear in towns and district capitals that have depended on African Union deployments for years. Foreign forces occupied and defended those locations because the Somali state had not yet developed the independent capacity to govern and protect them.
Mogadishu will probably be the last place where the consequences become visible. It is the political center, the principal destination for whatever international support remains, and the most heavily defended part of the country. It may also be the last place where the government admits that the transition has failed.
Some analysts believe Al-Shabaab’s eventual capture of the capital, through force or negotiation, is only a matter of time. That conclusion may be wrong. But it does not arise from fantasy. It follows from the vulnerability of any security system that depends heavily on external personnel, financing, and logistics when that support begins to disappear.
The present moment is significant not because the dependency has suddenly been discovered. It has been visible for years. What has changed is that the principal financing mechanism now faces a serious threat. A claim long protected from testing may finally have to be proved.
For nineteen years, that test was postponed. Donors preferred the stability produced by an incomplete transition. Somali leaders preferred to claim the political benefits of success before they possessed the institutions needed to sustain it. Each side had reason to treat an unverified outcome as an established achievement.
The Federal Government could make a credible case without denying this reality. It could acknowledge that Somalia has made substantial progress but still lacks the institutions, logistics, command systems, and military capacity needed to secure the country without foreign assistance. It could request a defined period in which to complete that work and explain that an abrupt withdrawal would create a vacuum that existing institutions cannot yet fill. Such candor might persuade skeptical legislators in Washington or increasingly reluctant voters in Europe. Instead, officials and supporters return to the same political claim: Mogadishu is secure. Look at 2000. Look at 2010.
The comparison is true, but it does not answer the charge. The question is not whether Mogadishu improved. It is who produced that improvement, which institutions still sustain it, and whether the Federal Government can preserve it once external support declines.
Kampala brought the government’s boast and its admission into the same record. The domestic boast is that HSM’s government secured Mogadishu. The admission in Kampala is that foreign assistance remains vital, full Somali capacity is still being built, and withdrawal must be delayed and carefully managed to avoid a vacuum. The administration cannot rely on the first proposition for political credit while treating the second as an incidental detail.
The summit closed on 31 July with familiar language. Uganda reaffirmed its commitment to Somalia’s path toward peace, stability, and self-reliance. Participants called for stronger regional cooperation, sustainable financing, and a comprehensive approach to Somalia’s security challenges. Yet the central problem remained unresolved. A meeting prompted by disappearing funds ended with an acknowledgment, expressed in diplomatic terms, that the foreign-funded system is still needed.
So who secured Mogadishu?
Not the Federal Government acting alone.
AUSSOM and the missions that preceded it played the decisive role, at enormous financial and human cost. Somali officials acknowledged as much in Kampala. They did not argue that the mission had become unnecessary. They argued that Somalia still needed time before it could function without it.
The financing that sustained the arrangement is now uncertain. Whether the Federal Government can do what HSM and his supporters have long claimed it already did is no longer an abstract argument. It is becoming a practical test, and the government may no longer be able to postpone the answer.
Isha Qarsoon
Email: Ishaqarsoon1@gmail.com
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