Issue No. 897

Fiqi's 100,000-Troop Fantasy

Briefing the Upper House on 5 November, the hawkish Defence Minister Ahmed Moallim Fiqi called for the construction of a 100,000-troop national army that could both defeat Al-Shabaab and, tellingly, defend Somalia's national sovereignty. It was vintage Fiqi, a knowing nationalist wink that referenced the perceived threat of Somalia's neighbours, combined with a call for greater external support for his own military, and, above all, a proclamation verging into fantasy. The notion that a 100,000-strong Somali National Army (SNA) could somehow be constituted in the coming years remains beyond the realm of not only political reality but financial plausibility as well. With Somalia's contorted security architecture already numbering tens of thousands more than envisaged in the 2017 National Security Architecture (NSArch), the SNA does not just have a numbers issue-- it has a political problem.

Over the past decade, Somalia's security sector has grown into a behemoth, propped up by billions of dollars of external assistance. In 2009, the SNA numbered fewer than 7,000 troops, but under the Mohamed Abdullahi Farmaajo administration, numbers ballooned to close to 30,000 and 37,000 police-- over half of which were on the federal dime. In another dangerous tack begun by Farmaajo, the rehatting of the National Intelligence and Security Agency (NISA) saw it transformed into a heavily-armed paramilitary force of thousands of soldiers, without a transparent chain of command and in violation of the Provisional Constitution. The war against Al-Shabaab, meanwhile, fizzled and died, with Farmaajo's Salafist allies seeking quiet accommodation with the jihadists rather than victory. And despite a brief spurt of optimism accompanying the return of incumbent Hassan Sheikh Mohamud in May 2022 and the ma'awiisley clan-led offensive that dislodged Al-Shabaab, any coherent counter-insurgency vision against the extremist group remains long-vanished. 

Nevertheless, force numbers have continued to climb on paper, with new battalions and units constituted and trained by a host of foreign partners, including Uganda, Eritrea, and Türkiye. Fiqi's figure of 100,000 would add to that yet further, bringing many thousands more under the command of a highly politicised Defence Ministry that has wielded the federal security architecture to subjugate its putative allies in Kismaayo and Garowe in the war against Al-Shabaab. But for all involved, it is more than apparent that numbers alone will not cure the rot at the heart of the SNA, with its issues ranging from feckless leadership to clashing training regimes. Nor will a sudden surge in forces somehow lead to a defeat of Al-Shabaab, the best-armed and well-funded affiliate of Al-Qaeda, entrenched across much of south-central Somalia and in a stronger position today than in years. One just has to consider the repeated surge in troop numbers in Afghanistan in the 2010s or Vietnam in the 1970s as evidence that counter-insurgency wars cannot be won in some grand influx against the well-established enemy.

Further, such a number of 100,000 goes well beyond the most optimistic estimates for reasonable force generation based on increased federal income-- by the government's own agreed metrics. The UN Assistance Mission in Somalia and the World Bank report from January 2017, which remains the guiding document of force generation in Somalia, outlined three plausible scenarios. The first envisaged, with federal revenue generation remaining around USD 200 million by 2025 on top of the expected foreign military assistance, costs for just 14,000 SNA and 12,000 police. The second goes further, now anticipating that if Mogadishu could significantly increase its income streams, it could cost 18,000 military personnel alongside 4,500 Daraawish forces. 

But the third scenario envisioned by Somalia's donors is in the realm of fantasy for this government, as it would require an income of nearly USD 600 million in 2025 to surpass the 50,000 mark for combined army and police numbers. Beyond this, it would place untenable pressures on the government's budget-- whose attempts to promote revenue mobilisation remained constrained by its sabotage of fiscal federalism. Meanwhile, although the Somali Transition Plan envisaged a force of around 30,000, this was understood as part of a careful training and equipping program in preparation for the simultaneous withdrawal of African Union peacekeeping operations. More probable than a gradual draw-down of these operations alongside a careful vetting and force-generation process is now its total collapse, with the mission racking up tens of millions of dollars in debt while the SNA has detailed its painful ineptitude this year in technicolour.

So who is expected to pay for Fiqi's new nationalist army? Villa Somalia's Turkish allies may well stump up more cash for Gorgor special forces with the rewards of oil drilling anticipated in 2026, but the traditional international community that has borne the financial burden for the best part of two decades is worn out. The sun is clearly setting on the heyday of foreign military assistance for Somalia, epitomised by the continued gulf in funding for AUSSOM. Even now, the federal government is struggling to pay and supply its forces, let alone begin to recruit and train thousands of new soldiers. A rapid increase in the wearied SNA invites other concerns as well, such as Al-Shabaab penetration and sustained politicisation. Somalia's Federal Member States (FMS) leaders, as well as those in Nairobi and Addis, are likely to be discontented by the prospect of the outgoing Villa Somalia establishing such a large army. 

Meanwhile, on the same day as Fiqi's grand pronouncement, the SNA Chief of Defence Forces General Odowa Yusuf Rage revealed to parliament that there had been 10,000-15,000 government casualties in the past three years against Al-Shabaab, including clan militia and regional troops. Odowa's speech was likely timed with Fiqi's, perhaps foregrounding the defence minister's-- and his own-- calls for greater injections of military assistance. But the upwards figure of 15,000 papers over another alarming issue this year for the SNA-- that of desertions, with thousands believed to have fled the frontlines as Al-Shabaab swept across Hirshabelle in the first 6 months of 2025. So great were the losses that Custodial Corps troops-- intended to secure prisons, not fight battle-hardened jihadists-- were deployed to the front. And so significant has been the scale of desertion and the chaos within the central command of the SNA that it is extremely difficult to accurately assess the genuine number of federal troops.

But even if the SNA could somehow magically transform into a 100,000-man fighting force, Fiqi conveniently overlooks the gluttony and duplication already within the bloated and overpriced security architecture today. At this current moment, Somalia's security architecture is less than the sum of its parts, with competing and overlapping mandates across a number of forces, as well as excess troops in several places. Rationalising—not suddenly scaling—should be the priority of the government. Villa Somalia, for instance, during the Farmaajo administration, created a parallel federal Daraawiish force as a means to funnel donor funding to its own loyal paramilitary forces, rather than investing in Puntland or Jubaland's forces. Even then, there are the Haram'ad—the Turkish-trained police paramilitary forces—that essentially double up as federal Daraawiish, creating surplus units that might be better deployed to the Federal Member States. Today, Somalia has more personnel than it requires or, critically, can afford.

Much of the work for envisaging how to create an affordable and professional SNA has already been done, understanding that a security sector must exist beyond the confines of the fight against Al-Shabaab. There are undoubtedly some effective units in Somalia, such as the US-trained and supported Danab special forces-- who have been conducting military operations near Kismaayo for several months. But with American military assistance drawing down, Danab's future is uncertain, while the force alone cannot magically restore security across the country. Warfare is changing as well, with drones becoming a favoured weapon of choice not just in the meatgrinders of the frontlines of eastern Ukraine but in Sudan, too. Most expect it to be simply a matter of time before Al-Shabaab deploys kamikaze drones to the battlefield, and yet the aerial protection at Halane, the home of the siloed international community, remains virtually nil. Rather than proclaim a need for a 100,000-person army-- more than double the number of Somali troops that existed in the days of Siyaad Barre's calamitous military excursion into Ethiopia-- Fiqi should look to a more sophisticated updating of the vast sums on his plate already. Relying on American, Emirati, and Turkish aerial support, with Fiqi also claiming at least 800 Al-Shabaab militants had been killed since February in 220 strikes, is no genuine alternative to sober NSArch reform.

Odawa and Fiqi would be better put to use deploying a comprehensive overhaul of the leadership of the intelligence, military and police, with the gluttony of incompetent, venal and Al-Shabaab-affiliated officials weeded out. Unqualified loyalists, both leftovers from Farmaajo's era and appointed by Villa Somalia's incumbents, are now dotted throughout the highest echelons of key security posts. Security sector reform is needed more than ever, but the current crop of Somalia's leaders cannot, sadly, be trusted to do so. 

Finally, Fiqi's objectives may be less noble than simply rolling back the jihadists. Last year, the defence minister established a name for himself in the wake of the Ethiopia-Somaliland Memorandum of Understanding by threatening military action against both, and it is not inconceivable that his fantastical 100,000 troops could not only be deployed against Al-Shabaab, but Puntland, Jubaland, and even perhaps Somaliland-- all at once. With Fiqi stating that national security is incomplete with foreign troops remaining in the country, whether "legally or illegally", this new SNA could even be deployed to expel an unwanted neighbouring military presence-- part of the last increasingly fragile line of defence against Al-Shabaab.

The Somali Wire