Egypt’s Somalia Gamble

The port of Mogadishu after an Egyptian warship delivered weaponry on September 23, 2024. Photo credit: REUTERS/Feisal Omar.

In late September, an Egyptian naval vessel docked in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, to offload a shipment of weaponry including anti-aircraft guns and artillery, many of them outdated and some even World War II-vintage. It was Egypt’s second major delivery. A month before, two Egyptian C-130s landed at Mogadishu’s international airport to deliver a […]

Making Somalia Safe Again

Somali security officers drive past a scene of an al-Shabaab attack in Mogadishu, Somalia, August 20, 2022. Photo credit: REUTERS/Feisal Omar.

In January 2018, I traveled via armored convoy over 20 kilometers of bad roads from a regional airport to the Hirshabelle provincial state capital of Jowar in central Somalia. Protected by Burundian soldiers of the African Union peacekeeping force, we sped through countryside and villages controlled by the al-Shabaab terror group. In Jowar, the UN […]