Uganda Is Pulling Out of Somalia Just as the UN Packs Up

Al-Shabaab does not hold a board meeting to decide when to retreat. It does not wait for donors to finish their budget cycles. It keeps killing, keeps extorting, and keeps recruiting children from villages that have nothing else to offer them. So when the world's peacekeepers start leaving, the question every Somali mother should be asking is simple: who is going to stand between her family and the next truck bomb?

Uganda has begun drawing down its troops in Somalia, only days after the United Nations ended its political mission there. The timing is not a coincidence. It is a warning. For more than fifteen years, Ugandan soldiers have been among the African Union forces holding ground against al-Shabaab, and they have paid for it in blood. Ugandan families have buried their own for that mission. We have a right to ask whether the reasons for leaving are good enough to justify the risk we are handing to Mogadishu, and we have a duty to demand the answers.

Consider why Uganda went to Somalia in the first place. On 11 July 2010, al-Shabaab attacked crowds gathered in Kampala to watch the World Cup final. Seventy-four people were killed. Among them were Ugandans who had gone out to watch a football match, not to fight a war. That attack was not an abstraction. It was the Somali militant group reaching across a border to murder civilians in a Ugandan bar and restaurant. Anyone who thinks a withdrawal from Somalia is merely a budget decision has forgotten what that threat looked like at home.

The African Union mission in Somalia, now known as AUSSOM, has never been adequately funded. Troop-contributing countries, including Uganda, have repeatedly been left waiting for pay, equipment, and logistics that were promised on paper and delayed in practice. Western governments praise African peacekeepers in speeches and then haggle over every dollar in the Security Council. The same powers that lecture us about democracy and human rights will happily send drones and cruise missiles to Somalia while refusing to fund the African soldiers actually living in the dust and the danger. That is not partnership. That is outsourcing risk to Africans and calling it burden-sharing.

Now the UN political presence is winding down too, and the institutional scaffolding that once helped Somalia's federal government coordinate with its partners is shrinking at exactly the moment Somalia needs it most. Somalia has made real progress since 2012, with a new constitution process, elections that inched toward a more representative system, and a national army that has reclaimed territory. But progress built on foreign security and foreign money is fragile. If the handover happens faster than the Somali state can carry the load, the vacuum will not stay empty. Al-Shabaab has spent years proving that it can fill empty spaces with checkpoints, taxes, and courts that answer to no one.

We should be equally honest about the wider African picture unfolding on the same news cycle. In Chad, a drought may be the worst the country has seen in more than four decades, pushing herders and farmers toward desperation and conflict over water and grazing land. In South Africa, the upcoming municipal elections risk deepening political fragmentation at the local level, where service delivery failures are felt most painfully in townships that still wait for clean water and reliable electricity. These are not separate stories. They are symptoms of the same disease: states that fail their citizens on basics, then wonder why their citizens stop trusting them.

Strong governments do not disappear when pressure rises. They plan, they fund, they communicate, and they hold their leaders responsible. Botswana built one of Africa's most durable democracies by investing in institutions, managing its natural resources transparently, and keeping elections credible for decades. Mauritius turned a sugar-dependent island into a diversified economy by protecting property rights and rewarding enterprise. Senegal showed in 2024 that citizens can defeat an incumbent through the ballot box when the electoral commission and courts hold firm. These are the models that should guide Africa's security planning too: clear mandates, transparent budgets, professional militaries under civilian control, and an independent judiciary that punishes corruption in procurement rather than protecting it.

So here is what must happen, and it must happen now. The African Union must publish, in plain language, the exact troop numbers, timelines, and funding status of any drawdown, and it must not allow Uganda or any other contributing country to leave a gap without a credible replacement plan. The UN Security Council must stop treating African peacekeepers as a cheap substitute for a real financing mechanism and approve sustainable funding for AUSSOM, including assessed contributions that do not depend on the mood of Washington on any given Tuesday. Uganda's government must explain to its people and to parliament why its soldiers are coming home, what conditions were met, and what protections are being left behind for the Somali communities that have trusted them.

And we, the citizens, must refuse to accept silence as an answer. Demand that your parliament ask hard questions about the Somalia mission. Demand that your government publish its defence commitments and the costs of meeting them. Demand that Somali leaders explain how they will secure their own territory, pay their own soldiers, and stop the cycle of corruption that has drained so much of the money meant for security. A nation that cannot protect its own people will eventually be ruled by whoever can.

Somalia does not need another handshake and another press release. It needs a plan that is funded, accountable, and honest about the danger. Uganda is entitled to ask for better support, but leaving without a responsible handover would be a betrayal of the soldiers who died there and the Somali civilians who are counting on the next dawn. We have seen what happens when the world looks away from Africa's crises. We will not let it happen again without a fight.

Based on reporting by FRANCE24