Ex-Planning Minister Aynte Warns Mogadishu 'Cannot Be Defended' Once AUSSOM Withdraws

Somalia's former Minister of Planning and International Cooperation, Abdirahman Yusuf Hussein Aynte, said publicly on September 13, 2026 that Mogadishu 'cannot be defended' once AUSSOM troop-contributing countries withdraw their forces following the US funding cutoff to UNSOS, the mission's logistics backbone, at the end of 2026. Aynte said US diplomats have told Somali officials that Washington will not reverse the funding decision regardless of the outcome of political negotiations, and that AUSSOM troops cannot remain operationally effective without that logistics chain. He said this assessment is shared privately by President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, contrasting it with the president's public remarks on August 16 telling new SNA recruits that Somalia no longer needed foreign peacekeepers and it was time to send them home 'with a bunch of flowers,' and with Mohamud's July 31 Kampala summit appeal to troop-contributing nations to keep their forces in Somalia beyond the funding cutoff.