EXCLUSIVE: Senior officials behind missing soldiers in Eritrea exposed
NAIROBI, Kenya – When thousands of young Somalis gathered in Mogadishu in 2019, they were officially told they would be heading to Qatar for military training. Their destination would turn out to be wrong. But Qatar’s role in the now controversial military training of Somali youth in Eritrea has remained.
Days after a leaked report by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Eritrea indicated that there was credible information that Somali youths trained in Eritrea had fought in the Tigray War, new details emerged for confirm how the program was organized in secret and in violation of Somali laws.
Details of intelligence obtained by Garowe Online, and confirmed by two people familiar with the plan and who have been granted anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly, indicate that the decision to take the youngster in Asmara was so underground that the recruits themselves were lied to, and their families remained in the dark about it.
It was unprecedented. The recruits, mainly from minority sub-clans in Somalia, were first accommodated at the Nur Shirbow school for training. The center is used by the spy agency NISA to provide basic training to its agents. But they were not asked to collect intelligence in order to secure the country. They were ready to crush the opposition and organize a takeover, according to new documents.
Thus, each group attending the school was made up of young people with between 200 and 400 recruits. After this preparatory course, they were then flown to Eritrea at the end of 2019. Eritrea only entered the fray when the sanctions that the UN Security Council had imposed on it were removed. lifted at the end of 2018, allowing the country accustomed to global isolation to return to the Politics of the Horn of Africa. But it turns out that Eritrean military advisers went to Deegaanleey NISA training school outside of Balcad district for assessment.
There was a third recruiting and training center in this underground program, identified in El Ma’aan, outside Mogadishu. Eritrean military advisers ultimately decided not to do so and then shared their assessment with outgoing President Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo and spy agency boss Fahad Yasin, pushing for relocation to Eritrea.
Subsequently, intelligence sources reveal, the decision was made to do the training in Eritrea while the program remained top secret, with only a few people in the know. On the day the young people left, even airport officials were prohibited from stamping or checking their luggage, in total violation of aviation safety rules.
They were brought on buses and sent straight to the airside where the planes were initially waiting for them, without documents. In conventional practice, aircraft carrying passengers, whether military or civilian, must share their passenger manifests. This was also ignored, which means there is no record of who traveled to Eritrea for this program.
The recruits were misled into believing that they were being sent to Qatar for training. The program, the actual cost of which is unknown, was to be funded by the government of Qatar. The emirate then immediately did an about-face and abandoned the project for fear of an international backlash. In January, the Qatar government’s Communications Office dismissed any involvement in the program and called for an investigation into the matter.
“The State of Qatar condemns any abusive and deceptive recruitment of anyone who has been falsely told to move to Qatar for employment opportunities. The State of Qatar opposes such practices and urges all governments to investigate these abuses which constitute human trafficking, ”the statement read.
The then Prime Minister Hassan Ali Khaire, like both houses of Parliament, was kept in the dark. Samira Gaid, who was the then prime minister’s senior security adviser, in a recent interview on the matter, told Axadlethat it was not even usual for the prime minister to be involved. in such military matters. “The prime minister’s office was not aware of sending young Somalis to Eritrea for military training,” she said. “The OPM is generally not involved in recruiting but rather in policy and strategic direction.”
Up to 7,000 recruits were needed, but details show that around 5,000 troops were secretly taken to Eritrea. This training was endorsed by President Mohamed Farmaajo himself. But even in the current storm, only Information Minister Osman Dubbe has come forward to deny the troops fought in Tigray and criticized opposition groups for what he says is politicizing military capacity building.
Oddly enough, the leaders of the Somali National Army (SNA), with the exception of a few trusted officers, were not involved in the recruitment drive. Former NISA deputy director Abdisalam Guled said there is a separate recruitment process for NISA and SNA officers. “It is unusual for the NISA to recruit 5,000 officers and definitely has no role in recruiting the army,” he said.
Farmajo, it has now emerged, used his close associate Fahad Yasin as the main coordinator. Farmajo and Fahad could not be reached for comment. Other people involved are Abdullahi Kulane, the deputy director of the CSRN, and Mr. Abdirizak Mohamud Haji Muhumud. Abdirizak has close ties to Eritrean intelligence, having previously trained in Asmara, and is married to a woman from the Red Sea nation. Calls asking for answers to questions about Mr. Abdirizak’s involvement were not answered, nor messages on his cell phone.
The documents further reveal that Abdirizak Mohamud Haji Muhumud is fluent in Tigrinya and allegedly coordinated the participation of troops in the Tigray War, which left thousands dead, others raped and millions threatened with starvation. He grew up in Eritrea and is one of the people who cemented relations between the two countries.
Outgoing President Farmajo knew that the military training was aimed less at equipping the army, more at keeping it in power by crushing the opposition, and more importantly at capturing Bu’ale, the designated capital of the state of Jubaland which is now under control of Al-Shabab.
Eritrea, the party’s choice, has succeeded in crushing its opposition, does not run on any constitution, has no elected leaders or an independent judiciary. Its president Isaias Afwerki has never held an election in Eritrea’s history, making him one of the few presidential monarchs in the world.
Would they learn something?
Since the start of the program, Farmajo himself has visited Asmara twice, with the state only issuing vague statements about “cooperation”. Intelligence reports seen by Axadleindicate that the real intention was also to weaken the dominance of certain ethnicities and clans in the security apparatus. in Ethiopia and Somalia. This could strengthen the strength of the leaders of both countries.
Although most of the recruits were from minority clans, many dominant clans registered using questionable credentials, taking advantage of Somalia’s continued lack of a citizen database. With elections in sight, the program was directly linked to the manipulation of the elections. Moreover, the two countries did not organize elections on time.
Reports of troops in Tigray first surfaced in February when Axadleposted complaints from mothers saying they had not seen their sons for over a year and did not know their whereabouts. . At the time, the government denied both the existence of the program and the involvement of Somali soldiers in Tigray.
Even if officials admit it, it would go against the country’s interim constitution. Somali soldiers can only fight in foreign wars with the approval of the Federal Parliament, according to Senator Abshir Ahmed, Deputy Speaker of the Somali Senate.
According to him, the very existence of the program is illegal and maintains that it will pursue the families’ complaints to the authorities. But beyond legality, Farmajo could be the subject of further moral scrutiny. How did he manage to settle in Eritrea, a country with a questionable human rights record that has never previously participated in peacekeeping missions or in joint military training with d ‘other countries ?
In public, Eritrea has supported the rejection of allegations of atrocities by its own soldiers in Tigray as well as the enlistment of young Somalis at the front lines. Yemane Gebremeskel, Eritrean Information Minister, accused some media of “lies” in what he called “recycling horrible stories” about his country.
Eritrea, however, did not let the Special Rapporteur verify. He said in the report that they simply did not agree to discuss the matter. “The Special Rapporteur has also received information and reports that Somali troops have been moved from military training camps in Eritrea to the front line in Tigray where they accompanied Eritrean troops on their crossing. the Ethiopian border. It is also reported that Somali soldiers were around Aksum, ”the report said.
After the details of the Aksum massacre were revealed, Somalia, Ethiopia and Eritrea came under severe international reprimand.
The city of Aksum is considered a sacred shrine in northern Tigray in Ethiopia. Multiple reports published by various rights groups and international media revealed massacres that targeted worshipers in the city in November last year, mostly innocent children and women. The massacre lasted for three weeks and it was at this point that information leaked about the presence.
AXADLETM
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