The mission of the United Nations Political Mission in Somalia ended today, Saturday, after two years of supporting the transitional phase, concluding more than three decades of the international organization’s efforts to build peace in the country.
The United Nations Assistance Mission in Somalia (UNSOM) was established in 2013 to support the Somali authorities in the transition towards democracy and the rule of law after more than two decades of conflict involving militias, extremist groups and criminal gangs.
The mission began its work under the name of the United Nations Political Office in Somalia (UNPOS) in 1995. In May 2024, Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud asked the United Nations to end the mission’s mission before the end of its mandate in October of the same year. He later amended his request, proposing a two-year transition period.
During this period, the name became the United Nations Transitional Assistance Mission in Somalia (UNTMIS).
“Today does not mark the end of the partnership between the United Nations and Somalia, but rather represents the turning of the page and the opening of a new one,” Raizdon Zenenga, Chargé d’Affaires of the Mission and Deputy Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Somalia, said in a statement.
He added: “Despite the continuing great challenges, the end of the term of the United Nations Transitional Mission in Somalia comes after the country made remarkable progress compared to the first years of international efforts aimed at supporting its recovery,” according to what was reported by “Agence France-Presse.”
The mission's functions were transferred either to Somali institutions or to the United Nations team in Somalia.
This development comes in light of the continued control of the Al-Shabaab movement, linked to Al-Qaeda, over vast areas of central Somalia, despite the extensive international military campaign against it.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdel Aty said today (Saturday) that he is “very concerned” that any new escalation in the war between the United States and Iran will lead to more destruction and have serious repercussions.
This came during his speech at the Security Dialogue Summit organized by the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Manama, Bahrain. He said: “The next round will be more dangerous and more destructive, and will not lead to any results. We must draw lessons from the past,” Reuters reported.
A temporary agreement reached in June did not succeed in achieving a permanent ceasefire in the war with Iran or returning shipping traffic to normal through the Strait of Hormuz. Since then, Iran has proposed that Washington lift its blockade on Iranian ports in exchange for Tehran reopening the blocked waterway within seven days.
Qatari mediators returned to Tehran yesterday, Friday, in a renewed attempt to reach an agreement, but the two sides still differ on whether nuclear negotiations should come first or ease the blockade and oil sanctions.
The Russian leadership plunged the Moroccan Sahara file into an unprecedented geopolitical tunnel, after using its veto power in the UN Security Council to drop the amended US draft resolution No. S/2026/868, which aimed to bring about a radical shift in the nature of the structural regional conflict.
Despite the success of the American draft in garnering the support of eleven member states within the Council, the sudden Russian veto aborted the proposal in the cradle of implementation.
The American response did not take long, as Washington, in its capacity as the “pen-holder” and drafter of the file, was quick to use a counter-veto in which it blocked an alternative Russian draft resolution that was proposing the traditional technical extension of the UN mission without harming its basic structure.
This violent diplomatic ramming between the two superpowers led directly to the announcement by Moroccan King Mohammed VI, through an urgent official communiqué issued by the Royal Court, to close the page on the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in the Moroccan Sahara (MINURSO) after 35 years of its existence, demanding that the file be completely and permanently withdrawn from the agenda of the UN Security Council as it is an outdated context whose failure has been proven on the ground.
The structural precision of the Atlantic dispute lies in the difference in regulatory references that each party tried to impose, a confrontation whose features have begun to take shape since the adoption of Resolution No. 2797 on October 31, 2025.
That strategic decision brought about a historic shift when it clearly endorsed the Moroccan proposal for autonomy as the sole basis for negotiations, and excluded other options. The current American draft came to emerge from the spirit of Resolution 2797 by seeking to establish expanded autonomy as an exclusive and final reference, completely eliminating the word “referendum” from the international dictionary, and reducing the military component of the mission in preparation for its administrative liquidation.
On the other hand, the current Russian move came as an attempt to brake this legal path established by Resolution 2797, as the Permanent Representative of Moscow objected to what he described as “an attempt to jump over balances,” and Russia presented its alternative project to extend the mandate until October 31, 2027, while fully preserving the name “MINURSO” and the nature of its traditional tasks, to leave the door ajar to flexible interpretations that include all parties, including Algeria, And the Polisario Front.
This radical shift in the international approach represents a complete rearrangement of the cards of the regional and international powers concerned with the issue. At the level of international allies, this international blockade places major European capitals - such as Paris and Madrid - before a new reality that requires transferring their political support for the autonomy initiative from the voting halls in New York to the mechanisms of direct bilateral and economic partnership with Rabat, which is the path that Moroccan diplomacy has come to prefer as an alternative to the international system.
On the other hand, the forces supporting the traditional approach, including the African capitals allied with Algeria, find that the Russian veto succeeded in freezing the American effort to change the legal rules, but at the same time it transferred the burden of managing stability to local actors, which forces the network of regional alliances to reformulate its strategies to deal with a Morocco that is moving on its territory with full sovereignty, free from UN oversight, and the Polisario Front is searching for alternative paths to compensate for the cover of the Security Council.
The situation in the region is moving towards a new phase of conflict management on the ground in light of the expiration of the mandate of the “MINURSO” mission without renewal, which officially ends the role of the international community as a third party and neutral observer of the lines of contact and the ceasefire.
With the absence of this international framework, the two parties are freed from the diplomatic restrictions that were imposed by UN Security Council obligations, so that field decisions become governed by the sovereign vision of each party, as Morocco sees in the absence of the mission an opportunity to end the temporary situation and begin managing and developing its entire territory naturally and legally without the restrictions of United Nations reports, while the Polisario Front, supported by Algeria, finds that the absence of the international platform weakens the channels of the political faction through which it was demanding the referendum.
This institutional transformation completely moves the file from the closed corridors of the United Nations to the paths of field resolution and direct bilateral diplomacy, where the features of future stability and sovereignty in North Africa will be determined based on direct sovereign measures and the regional and international alliances of each party.
