The author likens two decades of AU missions in Somalia—AMISOM, then ATMIS, now AUSSOM—to costly musical chairs: neighbors send troops, keep influence, and send Mogadishu the grocery bill. Uganda under Museveni is named as an example of peripheral interests over Somali state-building.

On 1 July 2026 Washington said it would oppose extending the UN logistics line that feeds those foreign forces. The piece treats that as overdue: you cannot rent a state’s security forever.

The prescribed turn is a Somali National Army with domestic legitimacy, including U.S.-vetted Danab units, funded by direct bilateral help rather than Addis/New York committees. A capable Somalia, with Africa’s longest mainland coast, is pitched as a Horn anchor for Red Sea and Bab el-Mandeb security—not a permanent ICU patient.

For nearly two decades, the international community’s approach to security in the Horn has resembled an incredibly expensive, multi-national game of musical chairs, except the music never stops, the chairs are armored vehicles, and the bill keeps running into the billions. The focus of this long-running saga is the African Union’s peacekeeping infrastructure in Somalia, a rotating carousel of regional military interventions that has transitioned from AMISOM to ATMIS and is now rebranded as AUSSOM (the African Union Support and Stabilization Mission in Somalia).

But as the United States signaled on July 1st, 2026, by announcing its intention to oppose the extension of the UN logistical lifeline that feeds and fuels these foreign troops, the........

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