High youth unemployment in Somalia forces young people to leave the country

Despite the growing influence of foreign forces, Somalia faces a fundamental question: how to build a strong army without compromising its sovereignty? Instead of needing more weapons, the country needs to protect its military structures from the infiltration of external interests.

Military Programs and Foreign Involvement

On June 29, a delegation from the Saudi military mission visited two training camps for units affiliated with the Federal Government in Guriel town, Galguduud region of central Somalia. This trip was part of a Riyadh-funded program aimed at training volunteer military units. According to the newspaper New Somalia, which was subsequently published by regional and international sources, the program involves nine months of training for 5107 recruits, including about 2000 people from Puntland. The training is conducted by foreign mercenaries from Romania, Ukraine, South Africa, and Colombia.

Sovereignty and Dependency Issues

The Somali government has not yet provided sufficient information on the mechanism for selecting these instructors, their contractual status, or the nature of the tasks that will be assigned to the units after the training concludes. The combination of a large number of recruits, external funding, and multinational trainers in a country battling the expansion of the Al-Shabaab movement and deep political disagreements turns this issue into something more than just a technical training project. It opens up an important discussion about Somalia's sovereignty, the identity of its army, and the limits of Saudi Arabia's growing influence in one of the state's most sensitive institutions.

A New Threat to the State

While the global community focuses on the expansion of the extremist Al-Shabaab movement, another danger is emerging—one that is more complex and potentially longer-term for Somalia's future: the transformation of its military institutions into arenas of influence for external powers. States do not collapse only when extremist groups seize cities; they also lose the sovereign right to make decisions regarding security and military institutions, becoming platforms for the influence of other countries.

The Cost of Foreign Intervention

Over the past decades, Somalia has paid a high price due to foreign intervention, the presence of numerous foreign armies, political fragmentation, and the absence of a functioning central state. Today, after all these sacrifices, the country faces a new test: who shapes the Somali army, and to whom will its loyalty belong in the future? While no one disputes the right of the Somali government to develop its armed forces or utilize international partnership to create an army capable of countering terrorism—which is the sovereign right of any state—building armies is fundamentally different from turning them into arenas where regional powers compete for influence.

Risks of External Dependence

The more dependent a military institution becomes on external funding, foreign trainers, mercenaries, and imported military doctrine, the more vulnerable it becomes. It risks gradually transforming into a tool serving agendas beyond the country's borders instead of remaining exclusively a national institution. These concerns are amplified when discussing countries that have faced international criticism for supporting or financing extremist groups or promoting radical religious movements in various parts of the world in the past, such as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Requirements for Army Independence

Even if the official policy of some of these states has changed, their past experience means that any expansion of their influence in the security structures of fragile states like Somalia inevitably raises legitimate questions and requires the highest level of transparency and oversight. Somalia needs not just more soldiers, but an army with an independent national doctrine that will not be subservient to regional polarization or become an extension of external influence projects.

Consequences of Hiring Mercenaries

The sensitivity of this issue is heightened by reports of the participation of mercenary trainers and foreign fighters of various nationalities in military programs within Somalia. Bringing in such a large number of foreign specialists, regardless of justification, raises questions that cannot be ignored: Who determines the combat doctrine? Who sets the country's security priorities? Will these forces remain loyal to the defense of the Somali state, or could they be deployed to other conflicts in the region, such as Sudan, where Saudi Arabia is also active through funding and arming extremist groups allied with the army?

Balancing Counter-Terrorism and Influence

These issues are not purely theoretical; they are based on experiences observed in many regions where military training programs have gradually turned into tools for shifting the balance of power or exporting fighters to conflicts outside national borders. At the same time, Al-Shabaab continues to exploit every sign of state weakness, every political dispute, and every security vacuum to strengthen its positions. This means that any concern over regional rivalries or competition for influence within the military apparatus only gives extremist organizations more room to maneuver.

Path to Stability in the Region

Counter-terrorism cannot be achieved solely through an abundance of weapons. It requires building national institutions trusted by citizens, operating within the rule of law, and whose loyalty belongs exclusively to the state. Numerous examples have shown that extremism thrives when citizens feel that national decisions are being made not within their own country, but have become hostages to the regional balance of power and external interests. Therefore, the greatest danger facing Somalia today may not simply be the advance of Al-Shabaab, but the possibility that its own army will become an arena for competing external influence. As soon as a military institution loses its independence, the state as a whole becomes more fragile, and the prospects for peace become more distant. Somalia's future must be built by Somalis themselves through independent national institutions and transparent international partnerships that respect sovereignty, not through cross-border networks of influence. Stability in the Horn of Africa will be achieved not by exporting conflicts into the region, but by protecting its states from infiltration and preventing their armies from becoming instruments of others' wars.