The United States has resumed training and logistical support for Somalia’s elite Danab Brigade at the Ballidoogle airbase in the Lower Shabelle region, restarting a programme suspended following a ration-diversion scandal that surfaced in late 2023.
The resumption was marked by an inauguration ceremony for the 12th batch of Danab recruits. Somalia’s National Army (SNA) Land Forces Commander, General Sahal Abdullahi, attended alongside US military personnel and representatives from the African Union Support and Stabilization Mission in Somalia (AUSSOM), the AU peacekeeping force that replaced the African Union Transition Mission in Somalia (ATMIS) on 1 January 2025. The exact date of the ceremony could not be independently verified at the time of publication.
The pause in US support followed one of the more damaging accountability failures in the programme’s decade-long history. Somalia’s Defence Ministry confirmed that US-funded food rations intended for Danab troops had been diverted and resold on the open market. Reports of the misappropriation first surfaced in December 2023, and the US government’s decision to end ration support took effect in June 2024. Somalia’s government suspended and detained several unit members, while a US official told Reuters that Washington takes all corruption accusations seriously and was working with Danab to create “the necessary safeguards and accountability measures.”
The Somali Defence Ministry said it had arrested officers accused of involvement and was sharing investigation results with international partners. It was not an isolated episode: a similar black-market sale of food and fuel intended for soldiers led to a suspension of US aid as far back as 2017.
A Brigade Built for Urban Combat
The Danab Brigade was set up by personnel from Bancroft Global Development, a private military contractor funded through the US State Department, whose staff – many of them South African, British, and European – continue to train and advise the unit alongside US special operations forces. The brigade takes its name from the Somali word for lightning.
The Danab Brigade was established in October 2013 with just 150 recruits and has grown into a several-thousand-person brigade specialising in urban warfare against al-Shabaab. The long-term goal has been to build the force up to 3,000 troops. As of August 2023, the European Union Agency for Asylum (EUAA) put operationally active strength at around 1,700 personnel after 342 recruits completed training that year.
The U.S. has been a major defence and security partner to Somalia for decades, in 2021, United States African Command (AFRICOM) delivered six Puma M36 Mk 6 armoured vehicles to complement Somali security forces in the fight against al-Shabaab. Furthermore, in early 2023, the U.S. gave out $9 million in new military aid to help Somalia’s ongoing campaign against al-Shabab militants, and the U.S. embassy in Mogadishu handed over military equipment to the government. At the end of the year, U.S company Amentum was awarded U.S. Department of State (DoS) Africa Peacekeeping Program (AFRICAP) task orders to provide design, engineering and build management in multiple locations throughout Somalia.
In February 2024, the US agreed to spend more than $100 million to build up to five military bases for the Danab, underscoring the scale of Washington’s investment in the unit even as the ration scandal was unfolding. That commitment – made just weeks before the corruption disclosure became public – showed that American planners viewed the brigade as too central to Somalia’s counterterrorism architecture to abandon.
In August 2025, US trainers from the Joint Special Operations University ran a two-week course on civil-military operations for 13 Danab members, including four women – described by instructors as a milestone for the SNA. That session, focused on civilian protection rather than kinetic tactics, pointed to a deliberate effort to broaden Danab’s operational profile ahead of the current training resumption.
The restart of the 12th batch matters in the context of a deteriorating security picture. Al-Shabaab remains entrenched across central and southern Somalia and has continued to stage large-scale attacks, including in Mogadishu. Current order-of-battle estimates place Danab as part of a wider offensive coalition that also includes the Gorgor Brigade, Hirshabelle forces, AFRICOM air assets, and AUSSOM troop contributors from Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Djibouti, and Egypt.
AUSSOM, which came into effect on 1 January 2025, is working to a phased plan that aims to transfer full security responsibility to Somali forces by December 2029. In December 2025, the UN Security Council unanimously extended AUSSOM’s authorisation until the end of 2026, allowing it to deploy up to 11,826 uniformed personnel. That drawdown timeline places heavy pressure on the SNA – and on Danab in particular – to build capacity quickly.
The resumption of the 12th batch is the first visible step in rebuilding the US-Danab relationship after more than a year of fractured support. Whether accountability mechanisms introduced following the 2024 scandal prove durable will determine whether Washington continues to deepen its investment, or whether the programme faces another suspension as international peacekeepers move toward the exit.
