What’s Behind the Attack on Emirati troops in Mogadishu?

On February 11, a gunman from Somalia’s Al-Shabaab organization attacked the Gordon Military Base in Mogadishu, leaving at least 9 soldiers dead, according to Somali media. They included four Emirati officers and a Bahraini officer as well as five members of Somali forces. The jihadist group’s media channels claimed the gunman had killed 17 troops, including those mentioned above plus eight others from “Emirati-affiliated mercenary forces,” as Al-Shabaab describes them.

This article examines the context of this attack, the UAE’s growing presence in Somalia and the implications of the February operation on that presence.

The UAE’s Presence in Somalia

Emirati-Somali relations have passed through multiple stages of coolness, interdependence and hostility over recent decades, repeatedly changing course in response to major events and the UAE’s position on Somalia’s domestic affairs.

When the United Nations launched the second phase of its peacekeeping intervention in Somalia between March 1993 and March 1995, the UAE was one of several countries to participate, sending several military battalions to help keep the peace in Mogadishu and providing thousands of tents to refugees fleeing the war. It also built a field hospital which it later developed into the charitable Sheikh Zayed Hospital. The UAE also began backing charities and humanitarian organizations with financial grants and medical aid.

Abu Dhabi continued with this humanitarian support continued until the Gulf blockade of Qatar in 2017. That crisis produced a string of problems, the most prominently the suspension of an Emirati training program for Somali military units in Mogadishu in 2018. Somalia then confiscated $9.6 million from the Emirati ambassador’s plane in April 2018, and voted to prevent Emirati ports and logistics giant DP World from operating or developing Somali ports. Then-Somali president Mohamed Abdullahi Farmaajo further demanded that the UAE apologize for its interference in Somalia’s internal affairs.

Their relations only began to return to normal when former president Hassan Sheikh Mohamud returned for a second term on May 15, 2022. The UAE now signed new security deals with the army and the Somali government, including agreements to fight the Shabaab, exchange counter-terror and terror financing intelligence, and reactivate the Somali army training and financing program. Mogadishu also apologized for the previous government’s confiscation of Emirati funds and vowed to return the confiscated money, but the UAE gave it back in the form of support for Somalia’s efforts to confront famine and drought.

Media outlets and political officials present diverging images of UAE policy in Somalia, a strategic location where developments impact a number of sensitive issues across the Horn of Africa and the Red Sea. The UAE is also working in parallel to penetrate the country on the security and economic levels.

For example, since 2010, the UAE has been backing the separatist administration of the Puntland region, funding the coast guard there to tackle piracy, and has signed an agreement with the regional government for DP World to restore, develop and operate the port of Bosaso – on the coast, facing the Yemeni port city of Aden - for 30 years. It has also funded and trained the region’s own intelligence agency.

The UAE has also built ties with the separatist – so far unrecognized - Republic of Somaliland. In 2016, it funded the breakaway region’s security services, and DP World has since signed an agreement with it to restore, develop and manage the region’s main Berbera port for 30 years, as well as developing the city’s waterfront and its airport. The UAE is also financing and training the separatist republic’s coast guard, internal security and intelligence services and army, and financing the construction of an international highway linking Berbera to Ethiopia through the city of Wagali, to the west.

In January, the UAE supported an agreement between Ethiopia and the government of Somaliland to lease 20 kilometers of the region’s Red Sea coast, specifically the port of Berbera, to Ethiopia for a period of 50 years. The deal included several other important details, such as allowing the construction of an Ethiopian naval base in the port of Berbera in exchange for a pledge by Ethiopia to recognize Somaliland as an independent state, according to Somaliland officials.

The UAE has also strengthened its own military presence on the ground in Somalia. It now has military bases at the port of Bosaso, the city of Alula, and a military airport at the port of Berbera. It is also building a base at the port of Kismayo, under a 2016 agreement with the federal government under then-president Hassan Sheikh Mohamud and then-regional governor of Jubaland Ahmed Mohamed Islam, to accommodate its forces in the Jubaland region.

Operations Against Al-Shabaab

In June 2023, the UAE carried out a surprise drone strike against a group of Al-Shabaab leaders who were meeting at a house in the Shabaab-controlled city of Dumay, Mudug state. The first known direct Emirati action against the movement, the operation coincided with Somali government preparations for a military campaign against it, which it launched the following month.

The Emirati strike prompted Al-Shabaab to escalate its operations against UAE-trained military units in Mogadishu, as well as assassinating a number of civilians on charges of collaborating with the Gulf state. This included a suicide attack in September 2023 at a base for UAE-trained Somali commandos in the Denali district of Mogadishu, which killed around 20 personnel and wounded a further 30.

Al-Shabaab media describe countries who have joined the fight on the side of the Somali government as “crusader states” operating under U.S. instructions, referring to their forces and the units they train as “militias” and “mercenaries”.

The group has directly particularly harsh criticism at the UAE and Turkey, the Muslim countries with the most prominent military presences in Somali backing the “Crusader states”. The movement’s emir Sheikh Ahmad Umar Abu Ubaidah, in a May 2022 speech, said both had played major roles in fuelling the conflict in Somalia.

Abu Ubaidah said Ankara and Abu Dhabi were to blame for the troubles afflicting Somalia, and were blocking its development. He excoriated Turkey, a member of the “Crusader” NATO alliance, for tampering with the country’s economy by seizing Mogadishu’s air and sea ports and establishing a military base to protect its efforts to drain the Somali economy. He added that the UAE was also seeking to control Somali ports outside Mogadishu and to establish military bases along the Red Sea coast, in order to strengthen its influence with an army made up of “mercenaries” from across the region.

It is worth noting that the Shabaab had already carried out several operations against Emirati interests before the February shooting. In May 2018, it shot dead DP World’s director of operations for the port of Bosaso, Maltese citizen Paul Anthony Formosa, at close range, as he wandered around a fish market near the port. As far back as June 2015, a relief convoy of the Emirates Red Crescent was targeted by a suicide operation in Mogadishu, killing six Somalis working for the organization and wounding dozens of other people.

The Gordon Base Attack

The UAE’s presence in Somalia is part of its strategic drive to control maritime transport bases in the Horn of Africa, East Africa, and the Indian Ocean region. The UAE has invested directly in ports on a long coastal strip starting from the port of Sokhna, south of Suez, encompassing Egyptian facilities at Hurghada, Sharm El-Sheikh, and West Port Said, then Somali ports at Berbera, Bosaso, and Kismayo. It also has port interests in Rwanda, Mozambique, Madagascar, Angola, Guinea, South Africa, Senegal and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The Horn of Africa is also a strategic location for ensuring and protecting Emirati influence in Yemen.

With this strategy in mind, Abu Dhabi has deepened separate security and military alliances with Somalia’s various regions as well as strengthening its cooperation with the federal government. This has resulted in the transformation of the port of Berbera – temporarily, at least - into a regional center for the UAE’s port and logistics operations, as well as theoretically helping it prevent Iranian ships docked in Bosaso from smuggling weapons to Huthi rebels in Yemen.

In early February 2024, President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud signed a law annulling the coastline lease deal between Somaliland and Ethiopia as a violation of Somalia’s sovereignty, and threatened a “war” against the agreement to protect the country. However, he maintains a generally good relationship with the UAE, unlike the previous leadership, which was openly hostile and suspended deals with Abu Dhabi.

That said, the atmosphere remains charged and unstable, and the Al-Shabaab operation marked an unprecedented escalation. For a start, it exploited the tribal ties of the perpetrator, who had infiltrated the army and then waited for the appropriate moment to target the highest-ranking Emirati in Somalia.

The movement derives most of its strength from exploiting clan ties, in a society where the clan has the final stay in political and military matters. From this standpoint, it would be no surprise if certain tribes in the northern regions were to lean towards supporting Al-Shabaab, which has cells and bases around the city of Bosaso.

The Issa clan, whose members are present in the cities of Zeila and Lukhi, have refused to grant Ethiopia access to any sea port on their territory, a dispute that has the potential to develop into armed clashes pitting these clans against the governments of Somaliland and Ethiopia. This would resemble an episode in the northern city of Laascaanood in 2023, in which the clans ousted Somaliland army troops from the city by force.

Ethiopia will not be able to ensure stability in Somaliland without stirring discord among the tribes, which would in turn incite the Shabaab movement to mobilize and bring the largest possible number of tribal fighters into its ranks in order to confront the Ethiopian invaders.

The February operation also demonstrates that Shabaab fighters are signing up to government forces in order to infiltrate them and plant agents within the Somali army, exploiting social and tribal ties that can be leveraged to pressure officers into facilitating their integration. The has also exploited tribal loyalties to boost recruitment into its own ranks, giving these ties precedent over factors like professionalism and competence.

The movement’s operation against the Emirati officers also appears to have been in revenge for the killing of several Shabaab leaders in the Emirati drone attack in June 2023, as well as in opposition to the UAE’s backing for Ethiopia to obtain a sea port in Somaliland.

Future Scenarios

It is very likely that the UAE will respond to the February attack by intensifying its attacks against the Shabaab, initially with drones, and attempting to persuade certain tribes to form militias parallel to government forces to support their war against the jihadists. This would sharpen already acute security and tribal tensions in the country, and create exactly the right conditions for a re-consolidation and re-emergence of jihadist organizations.

The UAE could also review its activities and reduce its presence in Somalia, for fear of more attacks on its interests in the coming months. It should be noted that there is also the threat of similar attacks on training facilities run by the U.S., Turkey and the African Union for Somali soldiers in Mogadishu.