National Security Adviser says AUSSOM withdrawal will be conditions-based, not abrupt

National Security Adviser Ambassador Aweys Haji Yusuf said any AUSSOM withdrawal would be conditions-based rather than abrupt, following a planned transfer of responsibilities and tracing the framework to the 2022 joint Somali–United Nations assessment of government capacity.

That places the transition inside the benchmark process the Security Council has required since Resolution 2748 (2024): handover district by district, measured against assessed capability, rather than by calendar date.

Two official positions, one reconciliation

The adviser's account sits uneasily beside ministerial statements that the country is already ready to assume full responsibility. The two are reconcilable only if 'ready' means ready to begin — ready to take the first tranche of districts — rather than ready to finish.

Read that way, the government's position is coherent: begin now, transfer where capability is assessed as sufficient, and keep the mission present where it is not. What that reading requires is published criteria, so that a handover can be shown to have met a standard rather than a deadline.

Conditions require financing

A conditions-based transition is more expensive than a calendar-based one, because it keeps two structures running in parallel until each district passes. With the mission's own financing unresolved, the condition that binds hardest is fiscal rather than military.

The adviser's framework is the right one. Its credibility now depends on whether the benchmark reporting is published with enough specificity for Somalis to see which districts have passed, and on whether the federal budget can carry the districts that have.