Thousands of African Union peacekeepers have been killed and hundreds more injured in Somalia since the forces began operating there in early 2007, the head of the mission told VOA Somali. The peacekeepers were deployed to protect the government and its installations from al‑Qaida‑affiliated al‑Shabab militants. Mohamed El‑Amine Souef, the special representative of the chairperson of the African Union Commission for Somalia, disclosed the casualty figures during an interview last week with the “Investigative Dossier,” a VOA Somali radio program. “The troops were not well‑prepared, and the administration was not even in Mogadishu. Many cases were not properly documented,” Souef said via WhatsApp.
Originally known as the African Union Mission in Somalia, the operation’s first deployment in Mogadishu came in March 2007 with troops from Uganda. In April 2022 the mission changed its name to the African Union Transition Mission (ATMIS) with a view to withdrawing from Somalia by December 2024 after Somali forces assume security responsibilities. ATMIS currently has around 19,000 peacekeepers operating in the country. “The mission has documented around 4,000 casualties. According to force officers who served in the mission, the casualties, including those disabled, can be as high as over 5,000,” Souef said. He confirmed estimated fatalities of 3,500, noting that troops from Burundi and Uganda suffered the most casualties. This is the first time an African Union official has publicly commented on the overall casualties of peacekeepers in Somalia.
Souef, a former foreign minister of Comoros, said he will prioritize compensation for the families of soldiers killed in Somalia, as some have not yet been recognized “because of a lack of funds.” He emphasized that the contributing countries “feel that they are close to Somalia” and that the support is not a loan but a reimbursement for Somalia’s historic assistance to other African nations during their independence struggles. “Somalia deserves that, and we are willing to do so,” he added.
The Somali government also paid tribute to the sacrifices of African Union peacekeepers. Hussein Sheikh‑Ali, national security adviser to the president of Somalia, said the government recognizes the work of the AU forces: “The Somali people are in their debt. In the areas the Somali government operates, the territories where progress has been established, they liberated with us, they protected with us, and they have lost many people. Therefore, we are grateful to them, but we want to repay them with a mission accomplished. This is why Somali forces are fighting to eliminate al‑Shabab.” AU forces helped Somali troops remove al‑Shabab militants from Mogadishu in July 2011 after more than two years of deadly street fighting, and later cleared the militants from all major towns. Al‑Shabab has long sought to unseat the internationally supported Somali government, and its expulsion has come at a high cost. The group has carried out complex raids on frontline bases, killing hundreds of AU soldiers. The last major attack in May 2022 claimed more than 30 peacekeepers in the town of El‑Baraf.
Previous estimates of AU casualties in Somalia came from Paul D. Williams, a professor of international affairs at George Washington University. “AMISOM is, by far, the most deadly peace operation worldwide over the last 80 years,” Williams told VOA. “There is no other peace operation that comes anywhere close to this many fatalities and casualties.” He noted a lack of transparency from the AU and troop‑contributing countries regarding casualty numbers. “The African Union has never been transparent about fatality figures from its missions in Somalia,” he said. “It has instead deferred to the wishes of the troop‑contributing countries, which did not want to publicly announce all their dead peacekeepers. This policy decision did a severe disservice to the peacekeepers who paid the ultimate sacrifice and their next of kin.”
Somali government forces, supported by local fighters, have been conducting military operations since August 2022 and pledged to defeat al‑Shabab this year. Recently, the Somali government announced that non‑ATMIS troops from Ethiopia, Kenya and Djibouti will participate in a second phase of operations expected to start after Ramadan. Souef described the first phase as a “good initiative” and reported that ATMIS troops from Burundi and Djibouti were providing support. He said ATMIS assisted Somali forces with intelligence, casualty and medical evacuations, and air support using Ugandan helicopters.
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