News From Antiwar.com By Dave DeCamp
The US-backed Somali military has “melted” in the face of an al-Shabaab offensive in southern and central Somalia despite receiving billions of dollars in international support over the years, AFP has reported.
Citing data from the think tank Sahan Research, the report said that in its counteroffensive this year, al-Shabaab has regained 90% of the territory it lost in recent years. The Mogadishu-based government had success in an offensive in 2022 and 2023 because it relied on local clan militias to do much of the fighting, but President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud has since lost the support of some of those groups.
“The mobilisation went well when the president came from Mogadishu to start the first phase of the offensive (in 2022). Everybody was heavily involved in the fighting… assisting the national army,” Mohamed Hassan, a local militia member in Somalia’s central Hiraan region, told AFP.
“It’s no longer the same because the leadership are no longer involved and there seems to be disorganisation in how the community militias are mobilised,” Hassan added. Rashid Abdi of Sahan Research said that President Mohamud was “extremely inept at working with the clans.”
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