Somalia's Government Canceled Every Agreement It Had With the UAE in January, Including at the Bosaso Base. Nine Months Later, Emirati Drones Flew From That Same Base to Kill Al-Shabaab Fighters, and Mogadishu Still Hasn't Said a Word.

Abstract: Emirati drones struck four al-Shabaab fighters as they planted roadside bombs in the Galgala mountain pass in Somalia's Puntland state on 20 October 2026, after conducting reconnaissance flights the two preceding days, according to two local officials who spoke to AFP in reporting carried by Addis Standard's Daily Brief, Horseed Media, The Sun Malaysia and the Senegalese outlet Dakaractu. Two militants were wounded in the strike, and Puntland's paramilitary Maritime Police Force moved in afterward and killed them, the officials said. AFP and Dakaractu both described it as the United Arab Emirates' first reported strike anywhere in Somalia since November 2025. The drones flew from Bosaso airport, where the UAE maintains a military base, according to the same reporting. Separately, the US Africa Command struck al-Shabaab fighters in the same Cal Madow mountains, between Bosaso and Galgala, on 19 October, according to the Critical Threats Project's Africa File of 29 October, a claim this analysis found no other outlet corroborating. Both strikes followed an al-Shabaab roadside bomb that hit a vehicle carrying Puntland troops on 19 October, the first such attack on Puntland government forces in the Galgala area since early 2024, according to the same Africa File. The strikes arrived roughly nine months after Somalia's federal cabinet, on 12 January 2026, announced it was canceling every agreement the country held with the UAE, including security and defence deals, and ejecting Emirati forces from military bases, Bosaso explicitly among them, after accusing Abu Dhabi of facilitating Israel's December 2025 recognition of Somaliland, according to Al Jazeera and Middle East Eye. Puntland's government rejected that cancellation within a day, telling Al-Monitor and the East African it would not affect its own agreements with the UAE, including the Bosaso port concession held by a subsidiary of DP World, a position Somaliland and Jubaland separately echoed over their own UAE-linked holdings. Nine months on, the October strikes suggest Puntland's rejection, not the federal cabinet's cancellation, is what actually governs the UAE's military footprint at Bosaso: Somalia's federal government, which has not withdrawn its January decision, issued no public comment on either the AFRICOM or the UAE strike, according to Antiwar.com's review of the reporting. Puntland separately announced a fresh offensive against militants in the wider Cal Madow range, though AllAfrica's August 2025 preview of the plan and Kaab TV's October 2026 coverage of its launch disagree on both its name, Operation Onkod or Operation Unkod, and its target, a dedicated al-Shabaab campaign in the Calmadow mountains of Sanaag or a later phase of the existing Hilaac campaign against Islamic State-Somalia in the neighbouring Cal Miskaad range.

A base the federal government said it had closed

The clearest tension in this sequence of events is jurisdictional, not military. Al Jazeera's report on Somalia's 12 January cancellation quoted the federal cabinet's statement that all bilateral agreements with the UAE, including security and defence arrangements, were void, and Middle East Eye's own reporting on the decision said it extended to ejecting Emirati forces from military bases across the country, naming Bosaso specifically as one of them. That decision followed accusations, which the UAE has not publicly admitted to, that Abu Dhabi had facilitated Israel's recognition of Somaliland the previous month, a recognition Mogadishu has treated as a direct challenge to its own sovereignty claim over the breakaway region. But Puntland's administration did not treat the federal cancellation as binding on its own territory. Al-Monitor and the East African both reported that Puntland's government, within roughly a day of Mogadishu's announcement, said the cancellation would not touch its separate relationship with the UAE, explicitly naming the Bosaso port concession held by a DP World subsidiary as unaffected, a position Jubaland's presidency and Somaliland's government separately took over their own UAE-linked agreements, according to Dawan Africa and Peoples Daily Digital. Dawan Africa's own follow-up reporting noted that Somalia's government subsequently clarified the cancellation was limited to specific agreements and did not amount to severing diplomatic relations with Abu Dhabi, a qualification that, read against Puntland's continued hosting of a UAE base at Bosaso nine months later, suggests the January decision has had less practical effect on the ground than its own announcement implied.

What actually happened at Galgala

The immediate trigger for both October strikes, on the account given by AFP's local officials, was an al-Shabaab roadside bomb that struck a vehicle carrying Puntland government troops on 19 October in the Galgala mountain pass, part of the wider Cal Madow range roughly 40 kilometres south of Bosaso. The Critical Threats Project's Africa File of 29 October described it as the group's first attack on Puntland government forces in that specific area since early 2024, and said al-Shabaab followed it with at least two further IEDs and a mortar attack in the surrounding days. The US Africa Command, according to the same Africa File, struck al-Shabaab fighters in the Cal Madow mountains on 19 October, a claim this analysis could not corroborate against any AFRICOM press release or other outlet reviewed, leaving it, for now, a single-sourced account. The UAE's own response came a day later: AFP's local officials said Emirati drones flew reconnaissance missions on 19 and 20 October before striking four al-Shabaab militants planting roadside bombs in the Galgala pass, wounding two, after which Puntland's Maritime Police Force moved in and killed the wounded pair. Dakaractu's French-language account of the same AFP report and Addis Standard's Daily Brief both described it as the UAE's first reported strike in Somalia since November 2025, a gap of roughly eleven months. None of the outlets reviewed reported any UAE statement confirming or detailing the strike; the account rests entirely on the unnamed local officials AFP cited. Days later, Hiiraan Online reported that a mortar attack on Galgala village on 28 October killed at least three civilians and wounded seven more, an attack the Critical Threats Project's Africa File attributed to the same renewed al-Shabaab activity in the area, though Hiiraan's report did not state which side fired the mortar that hit the village.

A silence that is itself a position

What makes the October strikes more than a local counter-terrorism skirmish is what did not follow them: any statement from Mogadishu. Antiwar.com's review of the reporting on the US and UAE strikes noted that Somalia's federal government, which nine months earlier had declared the UAE's entire military presence in the country void, made no public comment on either the AFRICOM strike or the UAE drone strike launched from the very base its own January cabinet decision had named for closure. That silence is consistent with the pattern FIKIR Institute has tracked through Puntland's broader relationship with Washington and Abu Dhabi since Puntland signed its own base-expansion deal with the US at Bosaso in August 2026, bypassing Mogadishu entirely, and with the federal government's own acknowledgment, relayed by Dawan Africa, that its UAE cancellation did not extend to severing diplomatic ties outright. A federal government that has neither reversed its January decision nor objected when the arrangement it tried to end continued to operate against a shared enemy, al-Shabaab, has left observers no clean signal of where Mogadishu actually stands nine months on: whether it has quietly accepted Puntland's rejection of the cancellation, whether it regards UAE strikes against al-Shabaab as different in kind from the bilateral defence relationship it voided, or whether it simply lacks the leverage over Bosaso to enforce its own decision, a reading consistent with the East African's assessment at the time that Mogadishu has only limited practical control over the Bosaso and Kismayo ports regardless of what Villa Somalia announces.

An offensive whose name and target even local outlets can't agree on

Puntland's own government used the renewed al-Shabaab activity around Galgala to announce a fresh offensive in the Cal Madow range, but the public record on that offensive is itself unsettled. AllAfrica's August 2025 report on the plan described a coming operation, which it called "Operation ONKOD," aimed at clearing al-Shabaab from the Calmadow mountains of Sanaag region, distinct from the Hilaac campaign Puntland had already run against Islamic State-Somalia fighters in the nearby Cal Miskaad mountains since November 2024. Kaab TV's October 2026 coverage of the operation's actual launch rendered the name "Unkod" rather than "Onkod," and a separate summary of Puntland's counterterrorism operations describes Onkod as a fourth phase of the Hilaac campaign targeting remaining Islamic State cells, not a distinct anti-al-Shabaab effort, directly at odds with AllAfrica's original description. This analysis found no single authoritative source resolving which account is correct, whether Puntland's October offensive is aimed at al-Shabaab, the group responsible for the Galgala attacks, at Islamic State-Somalia remnants, or at both, a basic ambiguity that has persisted across more than a year of reporting on an operation Puntland's own government has now announced it is carrying out.

What to watch

Three signals would clarify how much the Galgala episode has actually changed. First, whether Somalia's federal government ever addresses the UAE's continued military use of Bosaso, either by reasserting its January cancellation or by tacitly or explicitly endorsing Puntland's position that the base lies outside Mogadishu's authority to close. Second, whether the US Africa Command confirms or denies the 19 October strike the Critical Threats Project attributed to it, since AFRICOM's own press releases have been the authoritative record for past Somalia strikes and its silence so far leaves that claim unverified. Third, whether Puntland's government clarifies the name, scope and target of its Cal Madow offensive in a public statement of its own, rather than leaving the record to divided outside reporting, which would indicate whether the operation is a serious, sustained counter-al-Shabaab campaign or a rebranded continuation of the existing anti-Islamic State effort.

Policy implications

For Somalia's federal government, allowing a cancellation it announced with considerable public force in January to go unenforced for nine months, up to and including a foreign military conducting airstrikes from the exact base it said it was closing, undercuts Mogadishu's claim to sovereign authority over its own territory in precisely the way its UAE cancellation was meant to assert that authority. For Puntland, hosting continued UAE military operations against al-Shabaab while the federal government stays silent lets Garowe demonstrate, in practice rather than rhetoric, that its security relationships with outside powers do not require Mogadishu's consent, a posture consistent with FIKIR Institute's prior reporting on Puntland's parallel basing deal with Washington and its rejection of the federal election timetable. For the UAE, resuming strikes in Somalia after an eleven-month pause, without any public statement of its own, keeps Abu Dhabi's exact role and intentions in the country as opaque as it was before the January rupture, leaving outside observers to infer UAE policy from unnamed local officials' accounts rather than from Emirati statements. For regional security more broadly, an al-Shabaab cell capable of striking Puntland government forces in an area quiet since early 2024, prompting both a US and a UAE response within 48 hours, is itself a signal that the group retains reach into parts of northern Somalia federal, Puntland and Emirati counter-terrorism efforts had treated as substantially contained.