ENTEBBE, UGANDA – President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud asked President Yoweri Museveni at State House Entebbe on Monday 26 October to keep Ugandan troops in Somalia for longer, and the Ugandan account of the meeting recorded no new commitment from his host. President Museveni told him that “the problem of Somalia is ideological and a misdiagnosis of problems” and urged Somalis to unite the many to defeat the few, two months after his army chief set 1 August 2027 as the date the last Ugandan soldier leaves. Hours before the flight to Entebbe, Villa Somalia invited the opposition and the leaders of Puntland and Jubaland to a consultative conference in Mogadishu from 14 to 18 November. On the same Monday federal troops bound for Buurhakaba fought near Leego and Jameeco, and reports from the road put their losses at dozens of vehicles.
What Was Said at State House Entebbe
President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud flew in for a one-day official visit, and the Ugandan side of the table at Entebbe included Haruna Kasolo, minister of state for foreign affairs, Huda Abason Oleru, minister of state for defence and veteran affairs, the foreign ministry’s permanent secretary Vincent Bagiire and Uganda’s ambassador to Somalia, Sam Tulya-Muhika. Somalia’s ambassador in Kampala, Fardowsa Mohamed Qanyare, gave the meeting figures of about 8,000 Somalis running businesses in Uganda and about 15,000 studying at its universities. According to the Ugandan account of the talks, President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud briefed his host on security, commended the Uganda People’s Defence Forces for their part in restoring peace, and said he hoped Ugandan troops would stay longer to help achieve full pacification and lasting stability.
President Museveni compared Somalia with Sudan, where he said sectarian approaches to government had fed division and exclusion, and he told his guest that “all the problems you’re talking about, we know them.” He said the country had to organise against its main enemy, and he put it in one line: “Unite the many to defeat the few, but some Africans want to annoy the many to stay with the few.” The account of the Entebbe talks did not say whether he accepted the request, gave no figure for the size or length of any extended deployment, and quoted none of President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud’s own words.
Somalia has allowed Uganda to open a warehouse in the country from which processed Ugandan coffee will be marketed and sold, and Nelson Tugume, who had recently returned from Somalia, told the two presidents that Somali buyers import their coffee from Europe and receive Ugandan beans only after they have passed through other markets. President Museveni welcomed the warehouse as a direct route to Somali consumers, and it was the one arrangement the account of the Entebbe meeting reported as settled. The account recorded no change to the withdrawal date the Ugandan army announced in August.
Kampala’s Conditions Since Munyonyo
President Museveni, in power since 1986 and sworn in for a new term in May with President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud among his guests, sent the first African Union troops into Mogadishu in March 2007, and Ugandan soldiers have served in every mission there since. On Friday 31 July he closed an extraordinary summit of the countries that send troops to AUSSOM at Speke Resort Munyonyo, a month after Washington told the African Union it would not support renewing the mission’s mandate when it comes before the Security Council in December. “Somalia will not be abandoned. We have the capacity,” he told the summit, and he said Africa had solved its own wars without the support of the countries now pulling back.
On Tuesday 4 August the two presidents met at Entebbe, and Kampala’s statement spoke of regional security, state-building, governance reform and bilateral cooperation. A report that circulated on 20 August said President Museveni had used that meeting to press his guest to settle the electoral dispute with the opposition, and accounts of the Munyonyo summit said President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud had objected to a clause in its communique calling for political dialogue in Somalia. None of these accounts was confirmed by either government, and the Entebbe statement of 4 August mentioned no such pressure.
On Friday 28 August General Muhoozi Kainerugaba, Uganda’s chief of defence forces and the president’s son, wrote that “we are withdrawing completely from Somalia by the 1st of August 2027”, and reports the same day said President Museveni had warned privately that Uganda would leave unless Villa Somalia reached a settlement with its opponents within a year. Around the same time President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud said in public that Somalia was ready to take over its own security and that foreign forces should leave. Eight weeks later he flew to Entebbe and asked one of those forces to stay longer. No settlement with his opponents has been reached in the meantime.
The Invitation and the Quarrel Over Ugandan Troops
Villa Somalia’s invitation, issued on the morning of 26 October before the president left for Entebbe, asked the Future Council, which includes Puntland, Jubaland and the Samatabixin opposition alliance, the Nabad iyo Nolol party of former President Mohamed Abdullahi Farmaajo and the National Unity Council of former Prime Minister Omar Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke to Mogadishu for five days of talks on federal elections. The talks are to be held on the basis of mutual understanding and compromise. It followed a call by President Said Abdullahi Deni on Sunday 25 October for all Somali political groups to meet urgently, after he warned that Somalia faced a threat to its statehood. The electoral commission has set the national vote for 15 May 2027, and the opposition and both member states reject the model it is built on.
The secretary of the Future Council, Abdullahi Abukar Haji, known as Carab, answered within hours that “before one can invite anyone, one must have a law that authorizes the invitation”, and argued that the president’s term had ended. A member of parliament, Abdirahman Abdishakur Warsame, said the president still confuses consultation with dialogue, and that real talks would require both sides to give something up. Neither had said by the time the Entebbe talks ended on Monday whether his side would attend the conference in November.
On Saturday 19 September the UPDF suspended all defence and military cooperation with Turkiye with immediate effect, a day after supporters of a movement chaired by General Muhoozi protested at the Turkish embassy in Kampala. Sources familiar with the dispute said then that the quarrel was about Somalia, where Mogadishu had reportedly asked Uganda to end a deployment of about 6,500 soldiers, citing the brigades trained by Ankara. The same sources valued the deployment to Kampala at up to $72 million a year, and neither government confirmed the request. Five weeks later President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud asked at Entebbe for the same soldiers to stay longer, and the Ugandan account reported no discussion of Turkiye.
The Road to Buurhakaba on the Day of the Entebbe Talks
Gorgor and Danab troops advancing on Buurhakaba, the Bay district that forces loyal to former President Abdiaziz Hassan Mohamed Laftagareen have held since 15 October, came under attack on the afternoon of 26 October at Jameeco, about 60 kilometres from Baidoa. Security sources that night put the column’s losses at 36 military vehicles, six of them Turkish-made Kirpi armoured carriers, named five officers as missing and reported Halac, commander of the 64th Battalion of the 7th Brigade, wounded. Two soldiers said on Tuesday that dozens of their comrades had died, one of them that he carried 40 bodies and more than a hundred wounded to hospitals in Mogadishu, and an officer who travelled with the convoy said he saw at least 20 dead, while al-Shabaab claimed 321. By Tuesday morning the troops were reported back at Xero Shiino, and dozens of army vehicles were seen heading toward Baledogle.
The defence ministry’s statement on Tuesday 27 October said the army killed nearly 75 al-Shabaab fighters and wounded 56 at Jameeco, acknowledged that car bombs had damaged “some” army vehicles, and gave no figure for its own dead or wounded. None of the numbers on either side has been independently confirmed. A drone also struck a government position at Jiiro Yaasiin, near Jameeco, and nobody has said whose aircraft it was, while the government called reports that Turkish aircraft had hit its own troops “false and misleading”. The column’s first reported fight had come at Leego on Saturday 24 October, the day it left Baledogle under a campaign whose only declared enemy is al-Shabaab.
Ethiopian commanders whose soldiers garrison towns in Bay told Mogadishu this month that their mandate does not cover a political conflict between Somalis. AUSSOM’s mandate runs to 31 December 2026, and the UN office that supplies it is preparing to close by the end of the year. President Aden Mohamed Nur Madobe is reported to have made his return to Baidoa conditional on federal forces first retaking Buurhakaba. Uganda’s soldiers, whose stay President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud asked to extend at Entebbe, are due to be gone by 1 August 2027, eleven weeks after the vote the electoral commission has set for 15 May, and the columns he sent toward Buurhakaba spent the day of the Entebbe talks fighting al-Shabaab and former President Laftagareen’s forces on the Baidoa road.
