By Harun Maruf
February 19, 2021
omalia’s government sent thousands of recruits to Eritrea for military training in a clandestine operation, as the country faces al-Shabab threats, the recent withdrawal of U.S. military personnel and the projected drawdown of African Union peacekeeping forces.
Somali forces previously have trained abroad, in Turkey, Uganda and Djibouti. The Eritrea operation differs because it was run by Somalia’s National Intelligence Agency (NISA), not the Ministry of Defense, and has been kept secret from the public.
Several sources with direct knowledge of the program – three Somali officials and a foreign diplomat – confirmed to VOA that Somali troops have been training in neighboring Eritrea since 2019. The sources all spoke on condition of anonymity, with the officials noting they were not authorized to speak to news media. The sources differed on the number of Somali troops who have been in Eritrea; the range was 3,000 to 7,000 recruits.
The training program in Eritrea came to light in January after unverified social media reports suggested that Somali troops had been killed in Ethiopia’s Tigray region. The reports indicated those soldiers were allied with Eritrean and Ethiopian federal forces confronting Tigray fighters in the regional conflict.
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