(28/01/23) MOGADISHU –Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud met with a committee representing the parents of Somali soldiers training in Eritrea at the Presidential Palace on Friday. The meeting was focused on providing updates on the recruits who remained in Eritrea and assuring their parents that the government would repatriate them as soon as they completed their training. President Mohamud guaranteed the parents that he would keep his promise to bring back the recruits to reunite with their families and relatives.
During the meeting, the President also emphasized that the recruits would be instrumental in defeating Al-Shabaab. The parental committee thanked the President for prioritizing their child’s situation and quickly fulfilling his promise, which alleviated their concerns. According to the Villa Somalia, the parents said they were honoured that their child would participate in the fight to liberate the country from Al-Shabaab.
This is not the first time that the President has met with the parental committee, he had previously met them in July, following a trip to Eritrea where he visited the recruits at their military barracks. In December, the first group of Somali troops sent to Eritrea for training in 2019 and 2020 arrived back in Mogadishu.
It is worth mentioning that the previous Farmajo administration sent 5,000 troops in a covert training program that NISA, Somalia’s intelligence agency, operated. However, parents of the recruits feared that their sons were being used as cannon fodder in the Ethiopian government’s war against Tigray, in which Eritrea was allied with Ethiopia.
