In April, Somali Foreign Minister Abdisalan Omar Hadliye announced that his country would allow the GCC-led forces to use his country’s air, land and sea for operations in Yemen. Two months later, in early June, the Emirati foreign minister paid a rare visit to Somalia, where he met with the Somali president and other senior officials. Days afterward, military aid consisting of “armored vehicles, Toyota Land Cruiser-type vehicles and other equipment such as tank trailers” arrived from the UAE.
In early September, only days before the Houthi attack that claimed the lives of 45 UAE soldiers, an unnamed Somali diplomat reportedly accused Somali President Hassan Mahamoud of “allowing the UAE to train the country’s soldiers to go to war in Yemen, instead of fighting al-Shabab.” The unnamed diplomat alleged that while African Union troops were battling Somali insurgents, “Somali soldiers will be fighting in Yemen, and the whole world has to know.” The diplomat further charged that there could be more than 500 Somali troops receiving training to fight alongside Emirati forces, and that the Somali president “is doing this in order to get funding from UAE to defend a motion against him currently in parliament.”
Separately, on Sept. 9, another report quoted Dahabo Abdi Farah, the chairman of the Somali refugee community in the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, as “confirming the presence of the [United Arab] Emirates’ trained Somalis marching with the Arab forces.” Yemen’s Somali refugee community, which has fled war in their homeland, has been caught in the crossfire between rival Yemeni factions and now GCC-led airstrikes. Indeed, Abdi Farah is quoted as saying, “We are so scared because of these Somali forces. Their presence could pave way for the discriminate attack on the Somalis here [in Sanaa].”
Regardless of the veracity of the UAE’s Somali connection in Yemen, it appears that the GCC-led Operation Restoring Hope is set to become increasingly African.
Read more:
http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/origina ... z46rWqzkI2
lol, hutus causing pain and suffering in yeman now?!
