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AFRICOM’s top commander came to Mogadishu to reassure Somalia. He left having delivered a warning instead.
Gen. Dagvin R.M. Anderson arrived in Mogadishu insisting America had “not turned its back” on Somalia. But beneath the reassurance was a warning Washington rarely delivers so openly: U.S. support has become conditional, patience is wearing thin, and Somalia’s political dysfunction may soon matter more than its battlefield gains.
The headline isn’t that the United States is leaving Somalia. It’s that the general refused to promise it will stay.
The Quiet Threat Inside the Reassurance
Asked point-blank whether speculation about a U.S. withdrawal was true, Anderson pushed back — but not with the blanket reassurance Villa Somalia might have hoped for. He acknowledged that voices “in Washington and other parts of the country” are asking a pointed question: at what point does Somalia become independent and take care of these issues itself?
Then came the sharper line: continued American resourcing isn’t unconditional. If Somalia’s political dysfunction becomes the story instead of the counterterrorism gains, he warned, “it’s going to be very hard for us to continue to stay engaged.”
An AFRICOM commander rarely delivers that warning publicly. It framed everything else Anderson said in Mogadishu.
Washington Isn’t Just Talking — It’s Already Pulled a Plug
Anderson’s warning landed against a policy shift already underway. Weeks before his visit, Washington informed the African Union it would oppose continued UN logistical funding for AUSSOM — the roughly 12,000-strong force doing the ground-holding Anderson himself said Somalia still needs — beyond the end of this year. The mission’s budget has already absorbed a 25 percent cut, and UN officials have discussed the UN Support Office in Mogadishu closing by December 31, ending the AU’s role three years early.
As Washington questions the sustainability of Somalia’s security model, Turkey is moving the opposite direction. Ankara already runs Camp TURKSOM, its largest overseas base. It has locked in long-term security agreements with Mogadishu under a ten-year defense and economic framework signed in 2024. And in January 2026, it deployed F-16s to Somali soil for the first time. While the U.S. asks Somalia to assume more responsibility, Turkey is embedding itself deeper into Somalia’s security architecture.
That’s the vacuum Anderson’s sustainability talk is landing in.
Danab: Built, Handed Over, No Longer Washington’s to Sustain
Anderson’s proudest talking point was Danab, the commando force AFRICOM built into one of the continent’s most capable units. The framing was pointed: the U.S. built it, the U.S. handed it over, and sustaining it now falls to Somalia.
He went further, describing how ground the Danab and the Somali National Army once cleared along the Lower Shabelle — as far as Mubarak, during his own earlier tour with special operations — has since been lost and is being retaken a second time. His diagnosis: the political and security focus wandered elsewhere, and clearing ground without governance behind it just invites the fight to repeat.
The Unnamed Case for Somaliland
Buried in his answer about why Somalia matters strategically, Anderson made the geographic case Somaliland officials have pitched for years — key terrain, critical northern waterways, the entrance to East Africa — without naming Somaliland once.
On the politics, though, his answers deserve to be read separately rather than as one dodge.
Recognition is not his to give. Asked directly, Anderson repeated the standard line: U.S. policy remains the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Federal Republic of Somalia. That answer was never going to be anything else — recognition is a State Department and White House call, and it’s the answer any interviewer walking in should have expected.
What makes that answer harder to read as routine is timing. Seven months earlier, Israel — the United States’ closest security partner in the region — became the first UN member state to formally recognize Somaliland. On December 26, 2025, Netanyahu and Somaliland President Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi signed a joint declaration establishing full diplomatic relations, explicitly framed as “in the spirit of the Abraham Accords.” Israel’s foreign minister followed with an official Hargeisa visit in January. The policy Anderson repeated now diverges from that of one of Washington’s closest regional security partners.
The base question is genuinely more his lane. Asked whether the U.S. plans to build a base in Somaliland, Anderson said there are no such plans. Combatant commanders rarely preview basing decisions in public; his answer therefore reveals little beyond the fact that no such decision has been announced.
That’s where President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud’s March 2025 letter to Donald Trump becomes relevant. In it, Mohamud offered Washington “exclusive operational control” of Baledogle airfield, Berbera’s port and airfield, and Bosaso’s port. Mohamud’s letter treated Berbera and Bosaso as though Mogadishu could offer them on the same terms as Baledogle. In practice, those facilities are administered by Somaliland and Puntland respectively, meaning any operational agreement would require engagement with those authorities — something Anderson had already done, having met Somaliland’s president, military leadership, and coast guard during his November 2025 visit to Hargeisa and Berbera.
Civilian Casualties: A Familiar Defense
On airstrikes and civilian harm, Anderson leaned on AFRICOM’s standard defense: every credible allegation gets investigated, mistakes have led to reparations, and no military invests more in avoiding civilian harm. He pivoted quickly to al-Shabaab’s own toll on civilians and its record of false claims against U.S. strikes.
The answer reflected AFRICOM’s long-standing public position. Whether it satisfies Somali critics is another question.
The Bottom Line
Anderson arrived in Mogadishu insisting the United States had “not turned its back” on Somalia. He left having acknowledged, more plainly than any senior American official has in years, that continued engagement now depends on what Somalia does next. Washington is still willing to invest. It is still willing to fight alongside its partner. But it is also openly asking how much longer it can justify doing so if political dysfunction continues.
“It’s going to be very hard for us to continue to stay engaged.”
That may prove to be the most consequential sentence uttered in Mogadishu all week. Its unclear if General Anderson will visit Somaliland following his trip to Mogadishu.
This analysis is based on an on-the-record interview with Gen. Dagvin R.M. Anderson, commander of U.S. Africa Command, conducted in Mogadishu. Anderson last visited Somaliland and Puntland in November 2025, as part of a separate trip through the region.
