Major General Mohamed Ali Barise officially took command of the Somali National Army on Thursday, returning to the chief of staff post he held from 2019 to 2020.
He takes over from Major General Madey Nuuray Sheikh Ufurow. Barise was appointed on October 25, a day before the army convoy was ambushed by Al-Shabaab near Leego in Lower Shabelle.
The handover ceremony in Mogadishu was chaired by Major General Mahmoud Sheikh Ali (Dable Baylood) and attended by officers from the army’s commands and units. The chairman praised Ufurow’s service and wished the new chief success.
Barise brings more than two decades of command and defence policy experience. During his first stint as chief, he led reforms to the army’s command structure, training and doctrine. Most recently he headed the Joint Operations Command Centre in Mogadishu, and from 2024 to 2026 he served as Somalia’s military attaché in Nairobi.
He has also been deputy national security adviser to the president, helped set up a task force of frontline states (Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopia and Djibouti) in 2023, and served as a senior military adviser to the ceasefire monitoring mission in South Sudan. He is a graduate of Kenya’s National Defence College and holds a master’s degree from Cranfield University in the UK.
He returns at a difficult moment, with the army under pressure on several fronts and foreign support for Somali forces shrinking.
Source: Dawan Africa.
