Weapons stolen from UAE training facility in Somalia, sold in open market

MOGADISHU: At least 600 weapons were stolen in the past week from a former United Arab Emirates-run training centre in Somalia’s capital Mogadishu and are for sale in the city, weapons dealers said on Wednesday.

The weapons, including new Kalashnikov assault rifles and Chinese versions of them, were stolen by Somali National Army soldiers who had been trained by the UAE at its facility, three Somali men who purchased weapons from the soldiers told Reuters. The Gulf nation has trained hundreds of Somali troops since 2014 as part of an effort boosted by an African Union military mission to defeat an Islamist insurgency and secure the country for the Somali government, which is backed by Western nations, Turkey and the United Nations.

The UAE ended the programme on April 15, shortly after security forces at Mogadishu’s airport seized millions of dollars and temporarily held a UAE plane. The escalating diplomatic dispute is one aspect of the fallout in volatile Somalia from a crisis in the Gulf region that has spilled into the Horn of Africa. Somalia’s relations with the UAE are strained by a dispute between Qatar and Saudi Arabia because Mogadishu has refused to take sides.

The UAE-trained troops began stealing weapons from the facility shortly after the programme was disbanded, the dealers said. The soldiers sold guns directly to the dealers and indirectly via their brokers. The looting appears to have occurred while the UAE was in the process of emptying its training centre. On Sunday night a ship docked at Mogadishu’s port was loaded with equipment from the UAE’s training centre, including several dozen shipping containers of weapons, dozens of armoured vehicles fixed with anti-aircraft guns and hundreds of cars, a port staff member told Reuters.