After three years of denials or contradictory declarations, we now know a little more about the thousands of Somali soldiers sent to train in Eritrea, and whose very existence has long been denied by the two governments. The new head of the Somali state Hassan Cheikh Mohamoud met them this Sunday, July 10, 2022, during his first official visit, highly publicized, in Eritrea.
Thousands of soldiers, lined up at attention on an Eritrean military field, we did not know until where they were precisely. Their families, in recent years, had also been worried, to the point of having put the former Somali president Farmajo in difficulty with their repeated requests for information on their fate.
From now on, we at least know that they exist. The former Somali government has long maintained doubts about them, denying their existence one day and then minimizing their number the next. Gold the new president Hassan Cheikh Mohamoud solemnly reviewed them on Sunday, in front of the cameras of Eri-TV, Eritrean television, in the company of his Eritrean counterpart Issayas Afeworki and his closest advisers. He spoke to them, complimenting them on having ” completed their training “, thus implying that they would return soon, as requested by their families.
It is not known, however, how many there are and what they have been used for in the past three years. Their unit was created in 2019, under a tripartite security agreement linking Ethiopia, Somalia and Eritrea. Some relatives claim that they were mistreated and that many of them died. ” No military training takes three years. So, what happened ? asks Somali analyst Rashid Abdi.